Can you stop thinking for a bit? This is possibly the most important question you can ever ask yourself. Try it now! Ready, steady, go . . . How far did you get before a thought crept in? One second, two, three maybe? Now, let’s try this same practice but by taking a conscious breath in and out through your nose.
Perhaps you find that you were able to pause your thoughts for just a second.
When you consciously breathe, you open a gap between your body and your awareness of it.
Though we are hard-wired to think that thinking is always the answer, it’s not! One key aspect of embracing inner peace and mindfulness is getting more comfortable with non-thought.
Embracing non-thought does not have to be complex. Integrating the simple practice called ‘Just One Conscious Breath’ into your day will bring you closer to the life goal of quieting your mind.
Ready to breathe deeply before you keep reading? Watch this short guided breathwork tutorial!
The Problem With Being a Society Hooked on Distraction
According to the Cleveland Clinic, we have up to 70,000 thoughts a day – that’s about one every second – and it’s the reason you counted in seconds.
Eckhart Tolle – spiritual teacher, best-selling author, and thought leader – says his greatest achievement in life is to stop thinking at will. Just that. To turn off the thought stream when he wants and become pure consciousness.
One key aspect of embracing inner peace and mindfulness is getting more comfortable with non-thought.
When you identify with your thoughts, you become lost in them and go down a never-ending rabbit hole. Smartphones exacerbate this by exponentially increasing distractions. There has never been such a need to stop scrolling, yet as we become captivated by it, the harder it is to stop.
We have become hooked on distraction. Now let’s park that thought for a while as we explore the solution . . .
Enter: Conscious Breathing
There are vast benefits of conscious breathing. When you consciously breathe, you open a gap between your body and your awareness of it. Breathing is the only way to do this – you can’t consciously digest food or circulate blood – but you can consciously breathe.
Use These 4 Simple Breathwork Meditation Practices for a Calm Mind
When you consciously breathe you become temporarily detached; you are on the outside looking in. This is the key because it enables you to pause and become truly aware.
Integrating the simple practice called ‘Just One Conscious Breath’ into your day will bring you closer to the life goal of quieting your mind.
Dolphins, like us, are mammals with lungs, but unlike us, they cannot breathe unconsciously. They consciously come up for air every eight minutes or so before diving back deep down into their lives.
So, let’s take a powerful lesson from nature by mimicking the dolphins with a breathing exercise based on it.
Become a “Land Dolphin” With the Just One Conscious Breath Practice
Just as the dolphins come up for air every minutes, challenge yourself to do the same just for today. Perhaps you set a timer, perhaps you try it just a few rounds.
Every eight minutes try to consciously breathe. It works like this: Breathe in and out through your nose for a slow count of four. Eight seconds of conscious breath every eight minutes – easy to remember, right?
As a “land dolphin,” come up for air consciously before you dive back down into your day. This gives you a micro-moment of peace.
Becoming a land-dolphin, you consciously breathe at least every eight minutes. Set a gentle reminder to support you. This becomes an in-the-moment spiritual practice that you carry with you through your day.
Try it now – take one conscious breath.
The Benefits of Conscious Breathing and the Why Behind It
Conscious breathing is a simple yet powerful practice that helps calm the mind, reduce stress, and improve overall well-being. By intentionally focusing on your breath, you activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which promotes relaxation and reduces the body’s stress response.
This practice enhances mental clarity, emotional resilience, and physical health. Studies show its link to improved sleep, better digestion, and heightened mindfulness. Whether used in daily routines or moments of anxiety, conscious breathing provides an accessible tool for finding inner peace.
Quick-Reference Benefits of Conscious Breathing Backed By Science:
- Reduces Stress and Anxiety
- Improves Focus and Cognitive Function
- Encourage Relaxation and Nervous System Downregulation
- Boosts Immune System
- Enhances Sleep Quality
- Supports Emotional Regulation
-
You can learn more about these benefits and the studies behind them here.
What Does Just One Conscious Breath Do?
When you take a conscious breath, you open up that gap between your thoughts and your awareness – you cross a bridge – and look back at where you’ve come. You’ve come from your head and the identification of your thoughts as the center of who you are, and start to see that there is more to you than your thoughts.
Take Just One Conscious Breath here now.
You become the observer rather than the thinker and discover the non-thought inner spaciousness of calm and wisdom.
This calm, still, wisdom is the point of it all. It is who you most fundamentally are beyond the identification with thought. Just one conscious breath takes you there – right here and right now.
Life is busy – getting busier – and it all happens in the moment. Yoga and meditation practices are great blessings. But they generally take place in the quiet of the morning or the calm of the evening.
You become the observer rather than the thinker and discover the non-thought inner spaciousness of calm and wisdom.
We all need their fruits moment-to-moment throughout the day. So, we need a practice that can help us here now that you can use on the go. And the benefits of conscious breathing prove that this is a valuable practice worthy of adding into our daily routine.
The Issue With Overthinking
Thinking is needed; it is the habitual identifying with our thoughts that isn’t needed. It masks us from our deeper self.
When we find our calm and our inner stillness, we find our heart. Here, we find our consciousness, which is often said to dwell within our hearts (not our heads).
You cannot solve the problem of the mind with the mind alone – you need to be guided by the heart, where your deepest and most natural intelligence resides.
The electromagnetic field of the heart is 5,000 times that of the head. It’s where we are our wisest and most embodied. When we access this, we become connected to ourselves. We become aligned with our truest identity. From this place of awareness, our head becomes our assistant, not our boss.
Final Takeaways and Food for Thought – Just Don’t Overthink It 😉
When we identify with the source of who we are as our thoughts, we only have thoughts to sort it all out.
But you cannot solve the problem of the mind with the mind alone – you need to be guided by the heart, where your deepest and most natural intelligence resides. Yet if you keep your mind on the problem, it becomes just more mind and more problem.
Ego is when we put our attention in the wrong place and identify with that as who we are. It is such a constant source of distraction and control that 95% of us identify with ego as the source of who we are.
To visualize ego, think of taking a young child on a long-haul flight. During the flight, they will be distracted, need to get up and down the aisle, press the in-flight call button, in need of food, a break, a game. Anything. Something to pass the time during the flight to get over the boredom of it.
Ego is a bit like that as we travel through life – it wants to stay in control, distracting you from your life journey. Toward the end of the flight, you both come into land. Landing is a massive act of trust and letting go – it’s the last phase of the flight and it’s the last phase of the ego’s journey. To let go and land in a new place you are no longer in control, you surrender to what’s happening and trust.
If ego doesn’t want to be found out, it certainly doesn’t want to let go, but when you do let go, you let go into the wisdom of the heart. This can only happen when the mind is still and the heart can open.
This is why the Buddhist tradition emphasizes the need to clarify the mind before opening the heart.
This journey from your head to your heart is the only journey you need to take. It is a very short one but can take a lifetime – sometimes more. And yet, this journey is the point of it all, and it all begins with integrating the simple practice of ‘Just One Conscious Breath’ into your day.
Guest writer Michael Wood is the author of Just One Conscious Breath, the book that presents this practice and overarching concept of mindful living.
