A Tool to Create More Peace and Stability in Your Life

What is emotional regulation?

It is your ability to interrupt thought patterns and thought spirals—or emotional and physical sensations—as they are happening, and choose to “shift” into a different state.

What are these thought patterns and sensations, anyway?

In Traditional Chinese Medicine and other ancestral philosophies, emotions originate and exist in the energetic body or energetic field. In Western psychology, they mostly exist mentally and as physical sensations in the body—though some schools of thought also see emotions as chemical imbalances.

The reality is that emotions are all of it: they exist in the energetic field, the mind, the body, and as reflections of balance or imbalance within your bodily systems.

How Can You Shift?

The use of your breath is a powerful tool.
Your breath is a great mystery: it’s the first thing you do when you enter the earth (inhale) and the last thing you do when you pass on (exhale).

Your breath can be witnessed and experienced energetically, but it’s also a physical sensation—as you breathe in, your body expands with air; as you breathe out, your body releases and your muscles soften.

Your emotions directly respond to your breathing patterns.
And your breathing patterns directly respond to your emotions.

For example:
When you are fearful, angry, or worried, your breath becomes shallow and narrow. Your body works faster and harder to get air in quickly, as a stress response.

When you are calm and relaxed, your breath becomes deeper and wider. Your body takes its time inviting air in, slowly letting it go, and regulating your energetic and physical body.

They respond to one another—directly.

Reverse Engineer Your Breath

Since you know that your breath responds to your emotions—and your emotions respond to your breath—then you know that if you can control one of the two, the other will respond. And it will change both your energetic and physical experience.

Since it’s a bit harder to realistically say “I’m so angry - let me just be happy” but much easier to go from shallow breathing to intentionally breathing slow and deep - you can use the change in your breath to change your state of being.

This can begin as an intentional, meditative practice.
Then, once it becomes more natural, you can use it in everyday life:

• Sitting in traffic while running late

• Having a difficult conversation

• Feeling tired and needing a little reset
  

Breathing Techniques to Try

Box Breathing (4-4-4-4)
Breathe in for 4 seconds, hold for 4, out for 4, hold for 4. Repeat.

Slow Capacity Breath
Breathe in as slowly as you can until you can’t breathe in anymore. Hold.
Then breathe out as slowly as you can until you can’t breathe out anymore. Hold.

Hand-on-Heart Breathing with a Sigh
Place one hand on your heart, one on your belly.
Engage your diaphragm and begin to breathe in from your belly—fill it, expand your ribs, fill your chest, draw the breath all the way up…
Open your mouth and release with a big sigh.

A Tool Every Child Should Learn

Learning to cultivate your breath is something I wish everyone learned in preschool.
Can you imagine what the world would look like if everyone knew how to harness the power of shifting their emotions?

We’d have a lot fewer hot heads—and much more emotionally intelligent experiences.

Try teaching this to your kids.
They’re never too young to learn how to regulate!