The Power of Your Breath

Wellbeing mindfulness and meditation practitioner Natalie Cowell –  ​led our bereaved by suicide group with some beautiful techniques for meditation and breathwork.

She has written this piece for our blog to help anyone who has been bereaved by suicide, and explains how using your breath can help with the shock and trauma that can continue living inside people who have lost their loved ones this way.

Learning to consciously use the breath as a tool allows you to become the master of your thoughts, emotions and the conductor of your physical well being. It allows us to open up our mind, raising our thoughts, emotions and body to a whole new way of experiencing inner peace and peace within the external world.

Some reasons to learn good breath work:

It increases oxygen uptake. It balances your heart rate, opening up the arteries for more oxygen and blood flow. It balances all the bodies’ systems including the cardiovascular system. It massages our internal organs. It boosts the immune system and white blood cells. It reduces cortisol (stress levels) and the adrenal fight or flight response. It balances our thinking and slows our brain waves. It creates heart coherence and aligns the autonomic nervous system of the body to homeostasis. It allows our central nervous system to remain alert but calm. It allows us to consciously release feel good hormones like oxytocin and serotonin into the body as the antidote to stress and overwhelm. It connects to the present moment, to our body and out internal experience, our thoughts and our emotions. We use it as a tool to intentionally activate dormant parts of our brain when we head in to prayer meditation. And it does so much more.

Learning to breathe in to the body is a transformative tool for grief. We can hold trauma, shock and our loss in areas of our body such as the lungs, throat and heart.

Click on the link below to learn more about breath work and follow the guided breath work techniques to learn quickly how to support yourself back to mental, physical and emotional wellness.

Natalie Cowell

www.flourishsfu.com