Frequency of Being
We oscillate, vibrate, wigwag, whatever you want to call it, but we don’t stay still.
Things that vibrate do so with a frequency or speed. For example, your heart beats at 180 beats per minute if you’re exercising, 80 when chilling out.
Our bodies, brains, minds are swirling rivers of processes happening at different frequencies (speeds) all at the same time.
The brain has “rhythms.” These are patterns of groups of neurons firing.
Very interesting fact about brain rhythms: the slower rhythms set the pace for the faster rhythms.
For example, you might have a rhythm of 4 Hz (4 beats per second) and a faster rhythm in another part of the brain that’s firing at 8 Hz, but in sync with the slower rhythm, like a harmonic. 8–8–4–8–8–4–8–8–4.
Personalities have rhythms. You know how your personality is different when you’re rushing as compared to when you’ve just eaten a piece of cornbread?
Different rhythm.
The key to the rhythms of our personalities is the breath.
Breathing determines how we speak, and how we speak out loud determines our self-talk, or inner speech.
How we breathe therefore determines how we talk to ourselves.
Short, fast breath leads to short, fast thoughts, tuned to short, fast time periods.
Short breath is the “worried about what’s coming next” breath.
Long, slow breath leads to long, slow thoughts, tuned to long, slow time periods.
Long breath is the “Seeing a bigger picture” breath.
Our breathing is often dictated by the situation we find ourselves in. Unless we consciously breathe with a rhythm.
You could think of your breath as a river flowing through the tube of your body.
As you inhale, the breath goes wherever there is space. Certain parts of the torso are tighter than others. The breath will take detours, and you don’t have to do much.
Just start to inhale, and pause gently when you feel a “stuckness” of the breath, noticing how the breath then detours to an area with more space. Your breath is pretty smart.
As you almost get to the top of the breath, when the space inside the torso is stretched and filled, slow down before you get there.
See if you can make the transition to the exhale so seamless that you can’t pinpoint the exact time between in and out.
Then melt the attention downward, riding the exhale into the ever relaxing lower belly.
In the quiet space just after that, see if you can notice the beginning of movement for the next breath, which starts without you having to try.
Some of the information in this post comes from the book Rhythms of the Brain (found here).
Originally published at https://medium.com on January 14, 2017.
