Conscious Exhalation: using your breath to inspire greater awareness and identify vital opportunities

Forget where you are for a moment. 

Forget the hustle and bustle of the holiday season and forget all those untouched items on your to do list. Forget those phone calls you should make… the news you heard in the meeting… on the conference call… through the grapevine… on the TV at the gym. Forget what you think is waiting for you on the other side of the door, and just close your eyes. 

Let your eyes soften and sink a little more deeply into your cheekbones, and allow them roll out a little toward the edges of your laugh lines. Now, realign your posture. Gently bring your ankles in line with your knees. Now your hips. Now your shoulders. Let your shoulders drop and intuitively roll them down into your back, away from your ears and closer to the place where your wings might be. Feel your arms fall against the sides of your body. Feel your hips open and relax. Then, let go of everything you know (or think you know) about relaxation. 

Do not take a deep breath. Instead, exhale.
Exhale whatever is inside of you, no matter how much or how little.

With an exhale, you begin again.
In many Eastern traditions, the breath does not begin with an inhalation. It begins with the exhalation, an emanation. When we exhale, we are expressing ourselves, not from a point of recovery, but from a point of origin. 

Without diving too deeply into metaphysics or biology, just consider an exhalation the mark of a beginning. After all, how do we come to take our first breaths? As children, after we enter the world through the birth canal (or via Cesarian), we cry out. We exhale. It is through this act of exhalation, this letting go, that we are able to begin receiving our breath and start along our life paths.

An exhalation is an opportunity.
When we begin our breath with an exhalation, we are actually making room for an inhalation. In other words, as we exhale, we are creating an opportunity. We are inviting freshness, vitality, possibility, fullness. In that single act of letting go, we actually open ourselves to potential.

What is it you need to let out? How can you begin again by exhaling and discharging the feelings, ideas and preconceptions that do not serve you well? What opportunities can you create for yourself, just by letting go?

Further Reading: Yoga Journal Online