Identity – Take a deep breath
I care very little for chaos, but I used to think that I adored the chaotic.
The jumbled, entwined mess of thoughts and plans that help to create the energy I thrive off each day; my spirit within.
And then, after just 3 minutes of listening to someone encouraging me to feel where I breathe, to actually think about what my body does when I breathe — the noise I crave, the noise I felt I always needed, was gone. Replaced, simply, by the rhythm of breathing.
So no screaming? No haunted howls of fear and loathing. Just a calm voice talking to me about the way I breathe — the way my thoughts might wander, but it is easy enough to bring the focus back to that breathing. It’s always about the breathing.
I feel different, somehow. Not “life changingly” so, just a bit different. As if I have been telling myself a lie, perpetuated by an attitude that says: I always need to keep busy. Always have to be doing something, even when I am sat on my backside doing nothing. Now I know I can sit and do nothing; well, other than breathe. To feel the motion of my body as I do. To clear my head of the chaotic, replaced by a simple order — in through the nose, out through the mouth.
Headspace has proven to be a bit of a breakthrough. It’s another platform that was recommended as part of the Leading Edge Forum 21st Century Human Upgrade. I started it with scepticism, but now find, after completing the free basic element, that I have to decide whether this is the new me (the new, comes at a price every month, me)?
It’s a different me. It has helped. By doing it in the car at the start of each day, listening to the words — understanding how I breathe, how my body feels, where my head and thoughts are — it has added something I think I want to explore further.
It is another part of the identification process of what once was, versus what I could now become.
A 21st Century Chris?
