- Image by LunaDiRimmel via Flickr
Breathing exercises become essential as you get older because age reduces the level of oxygen in your lungs. When you only take shallow breaths, as you do in normal breathing, you will eventually notice stiffness in your rib cage as the muscles surrounding the diaphragm start to lose their elasticity. This causes stale air to build up in your lungs that is composed mostly of carbon dioxide.
Rapid shallow breathing also leads to heart disease after a number of years or excessive feelings of tiredness. Breathing exercises to cleanse the stale air in your lungs should be practiced on a daily basis. You do not need to set aside a long period of time for this – five to ten minutes is sufficient. You can do the exercises when you wake in the morning or just before you go to sleep at night.
- Image by hyku via Flickr
Do dolphins need self development?
This week I am in Florida. I met a dolphin called Rascal who let me swim with him. I also fed him some fish which he enjoyed. He seemed very happy with his life and probably needs no self development tips from me!
Dolphins lead a simple and natural life untroubled by:
- The recession
- Finding a job
- Paying the mortgage
- Taking up a health program
I spent the last few days of 2008 ill in bed. I now ask myself the question: Can illness be positive?
I accepted that I was ill, allowed my body to fight off the infection and went to bed for a few days. I lay there practicing mindfulness. This meant that I observed myself being ill. I noticed that my internal chatter – the constant flow of thoughts and words that normally race through my mind – was very quiet. Most of the time I was not sleeping, I was not awake, I was somewhere in between. Though there was some pain I stopped labeling the pain as ‘suffering’. It was just ‘sensation’.
Was this a positive experience? It felt neither positive or negative, my mind somehow detached from it all, floating in a strange bubble of consciousness in which I just allowed it all to happen, knowing that I was in a temporary state, knowing that the illness was not serious and it would pass in its own good time.
