How To Feel Free

Transcription:

Hello, Hello, and Welcome to Inklings with Irena. The Weekly Energy Show connecting you to your Intuitive Guidance System. And today I want to talk about how to feel free. If we haven’t met yet my name is Irena Miller. I’m an Intuitive Energy Guide, Spiritual Life Coach and what I call an Energy Alchemist. I love to create recipes drawing upon all of the traditions that I’ve studied for the last two plus decades, from yoga to tarot cards to crystals to tuning forks to even my backgrounds in decision sciences and management information systems. Balancing that logic with that intuition, this is what I love to do, and I help visionary empaths with very specific energy recipes in their journey. And that’s what I’m here to do today with all of you. So thanks for joining. Now, this topic of how to feel free has come up for a couple of different reasons. One is that the clients that I’ve been working with, one on one, have found that there’s a hesitancy to enjoy life. Sometimes it’s around fear, sometimes it’s around stress. But they just want to be able to enjoy things again. They haven’t been able to for whatever reason. So as your hopping on and definitely give me a quick shout out. And hello, let me know where you’re watching from in the world and let me know what was the last fun thing that you did where you felt free?

I always think of roller coaster rides, takes a bit of pep talk to get me on one. But once I’m on that roller coaster, that feeling of just the wind blowing through your hair, there’s this freedom in the movement. And that’s what I’ve discovered, is with the isolation that so many of us are experiencing right now on Lockdown’s and just trying to really be smart and safe and take care of our families and everyone else, we’ve been isolated. We’re not experiencing the same kind of movement. So fear can creep in stress can creep in. And for example, you know, one of my clients, they are thinking back to younger days when it was like, oh, my gosh, just that feeling of no inhibition, you know, being able to just go out and enjoy yourself dancing on tables or simply getting in the car and driving and going on a spontaneous trip. And, you know, heck, even if there wasn’t a pandemic right now, sometimes it’s difficult to do that because of other responsibilities, work and family, you know, just drop everything and run. So I wanted to talk about the importance of the breath when it comes to freedom, because even though we may not be able to drop everything and just run and explore the globe, there is quite a lot of powerful shifts that can happen when you pay attention to the breath. One of the first things that happens when fear hits, when stress hits, is that the breath changes.

And I invite you to notice that notice. Are you holding your breath like you’re bracing for impact? Are the breaths shallow and short? Because here’s the thing. You know, like the old saying of take ten deep breaths before you say anything really has importance in meaning because it lowers our blood pressure. This was one of the most fun experiments I did. My parents had a blood pressure measure, you know, like one of those cuffs you measure your blood pressure with. And we were playing around with it and we put the little blood pressure cuff machine on and took the measurement of my blood pressure. And then I did a pranayama practice, which is that very sacred breath work practice from the yoga traditions and my blood pressure lowered on the second reading. So the breath is effective in lowering our nerve, lowering blood pressure and calming our nervous system and part of this deep breath practice. The reason it’s so effective is that when the breath hits the lower part of the lung, that lower lobe, it’s triggering a response or sending a response to the nervous system that triggers the event of, OK, we might be in a stressful situation, but I’m not running for my life. You know, this is OK. Stress is not a bad thing. Stress builds muscles. That’s why we work out to stress those muscles and build them up. It’s that fine line of going into distress.

So like when we’re breathing those shallow breaths, you think about somebody hyperventilating, they’re only breathing into the upper portion of the lung. And that in turn sends a message to the nervous system because we have little cilia, there, little finger like hairs, just like in our nose. That sends the message to the nervous system. This is a fight or flight situation. This is dangerous. We’re running for our life that pumps more cortisol into our blood, which is not what we want because it makes us hold on to the fat and it sends us into high distress and we won’t be able to function as well. Our thoughts get muddied. We don’t hear inner guidance as easily that wisdom of wait a second, look, before you leap, we just kind of go into reactionary mode and instead of being in a more response space. So what I’ve done is I’ve created this little energy recipe, what I call the triple B for feeling free, love those rhymes to help guide you on your pathway, because the first thing is just being aware of the breath itself so that first B is breathe. What is your breath doing when you take that deep breath in or when you’re breathing? Are you taking a longer inhale than an exhale? You know, are those exhales really short and explosive? Are you breathing through your mouth? Because that also affects what’s happening to your nervous system. If you take deep breaths in through the mouth, it’s harder, not impossible, but much more difficult to get the er the oxygen to the lower part of the lung.

So that is triggering that fight or flight response. The other thing is that when you breathe in through your mouth, you’re not regulating the temperature of the air. So if you have a cold winter climate where you are right now and you take a deep breath in, that cold air is going to hit the lungs and shock it. So by being able to breathe through the nose, you have the cilia there that filter out, you know, dust and then little things, nothing too wild. And it also warms the air so that by the time it gets to your lungs, it’s not quite a shock. It’s more body temperature. And that is a very powerful experience because that breathing in and out of the nose is going to shift things. And there are reasons why maybe we would exhale through the mouth versus the nose. So the tradition of pranayama, the breath work is a very sacred tradition that there are certain styles of yoga. They won’t even let you do breath work until you’ve mastered the physical arsenate, the physical yoga postures, because it takes so much physical strength and flexibility to do the deeper breath work. The other aspect to that is the current of energy that you start to run through your body and you need to make sure the naughties, these energetic pathways are ready to channel the energy because sometimes we’re not quite there yet. So certain breath practices are not advised. And this is why I love having that yoga tradition and background behind me, because there are so many different ways from very basic, you know, inhale to the count of four exhale to account of four to more advanced practices like the nadi shodhana the alternate nostril breathing, as well as the breath retention.

Lots of different practices with specific purposes. So the first thing I invite you to do with this Triple B and how to feel free is what is your breath doing? Notice the length of the inhale and exhale. Notice if you’re breathing in the nose or in the mouth. And then the second thing is Be, because when we’re in that feeling of being trapped, we’re not able to relax the mind. Usually this anxiety starts to build our mind starts to race the citta vritti that the yogis call it. That mental mind stuff just is going all over. We can’t focus. We can’t see the forest through the trees. So having a focal point. So once you’re aware of what the breath is doing, you start to shift that, have a focal point for the mind. So maybe it’s like gazing at a candle. Maybe it’s repeating an affirmation or a mantra, but something for the mind to focus on, to relax. And then the final aspect of this is the belief this is where the energy comes into it, because there is an underlying energetic experience that needs to be shifted. You know, we can say affirmations till the cows come home, but if we don’t believe it on an energetic level, we’re not going to make the shift.

It’s kind of like [I giggle and I joke]. It’s like getting on the scale and saying I weigh this much, you know, and you look at the scale, you’re like, I don’t weigh that much yet. Or like I am at peace. I am at peace. I am at peace!. It’s like the serenity now, right from Seinfeld. Serenity now. Yes. The words have an effect and yes, words can shift our energy.

But sometimes there’s this deeper, energetic patterning that requires a deeper shifting and that can happen in a couple different ways. It can happen definitely through energy healings, you know, that you receive from someone through the singing of mantras and also of specific yoga hand gestures mudras these energetic positions that we place our hands in that evoke a certain reaction in our body. So you probably are familiar with namaste. Well, Anjali Mudra, people usually say namaste when their hands are here. So known as Anjali Mudra, a position of thanksgiving ,being of gratitude, of a greeting and positions like that, they shift, they shift our energy in the way we engage in the world.

So these very wonderful three B’s, when it comes to feeling free, when you start to combine this energy recipe, all of a sudden your energetic field will expand. You’ll feel lighter when you notice. What is my breath doing? Let me just simply breathe deep breath in through the nose and out the nose, then be what are you focusing on? Because you know where your energy, where your attention goes there, your energy flows, you know, what’s the mind focusing on and then believe. Shift the energy beneath the belief in order to really create a sealed experience. That’s why we use the hand gestures, these yogic skills to really solidify a state of grace, a place where you can feel that freedom, even if you’re isolated in your home or even if you can’t drop everything and just get in the car and go. So if this brings up more questions than answers, definitely click the link above. Come hang out in my free Facebook group and I’m going to drop something in the comments below. A special practice that I’ve put together designed to help you when it comes to breathing, being and believing that combines sacred practice of pranayama, of mudras and of mantras. So thank you. Thank you for being here. Hello, Cindy. I see you. And good morning, Elaina. Have an amazing day and I’ll catch you all on the flip side.

Bye, guys.