Using breath as the anchor amidst of it all

Can you recall from one of the movies a plane scene, when a character would reach for a paper bag and start to breathe deeply in an out of the bag to calm down?

Situations where people can get into a reaction of hyperventilating, freezing and holding? A reaction in breath, due to an external event on which we are reacting.

It feels there is not space for thinking, so whatever has been integrated in your capacity to respond, is already there, or it isn’t. There is an element of surprise, the strong unexpected external event brings up something in you. Often in that reaction there is the truth of what is it in you.

In some practices of leadership embodiment (Wendy Palmer) that trigger is practiced in a  group. When you are spontaneously walking with someone, are you holding the hand tight, is there fear there of letting them go? When someone is in front of you and pulls your hands, do you move back, forward, freeze or able to stay in your centre? Those are couple of reactions that are prevalent when our body is provoked by external swift event.

It’s kind of all that you have been practicing for, accumulated, will it be awakened and seamlessly put into behavior.

This unexpected can be different things in our environment:  big storm, floods, lots of confusing communication, all of a sudden finding yourself in deep waters after having past trauma of drowning in a shallow one, a big wave coming, after experiencing how it is being underneath and feeling it’s holding you down, in a moment not knowing will I get a chance to breathe again?

Imagine that all the fear of not having enough time is gone. That you have the capacity to wait and hold your breath or breathe to the capacity that you are able to until you breathe again in full, in flow, relaxed? That makes a major difference. A lense that there is space and time and relaxing into it with Trust, makes a difference between a panic and going under or trusting the moment.