Mindful Breathing

Our ability to observe our own thoughts and emotions is linked to neural networks primarily located in the prefrontal cortex, just behind the forehead. Meanwhile, intense and unsettling emotions such as anger and anxiety stem from the brain’s more primitive circuits in the limbic system.

Between the ages of five and seven, the brain takes a significant leap in its ability to regulate emotional impulses, and this capacity continues to develop throughout life (though during adolescence, emotional centres tend to mature faster than those responsible for self-control). The ability to stay focused and resist distractions — to observe impulses without immediately acting on them — can be trained and strengthened with the right guidance and consistent practice.

One simple yet effective way to cultivate this skill is through short mindfulness exercises, such as a three-minute breathing practice. This brief but powerful exercise functions as a mental “push-up” to strengthen focus and awareness.

If you’d like to give it a try, set a timer for three minutes and follow these steps:

Bring yourself into the present — Adopt an alert yet comfortable posture. Close your eyes and turn your attention inwards.
Tune into your body — Feel the contact between your body and the surface you are sitting on. Focus on your spine, sensing each vertebra stacked one upon the other, from the sacrum to the skull. Now, shift your attention to your mind and ask: “What thoughts and emotions are present right now? What physical sensations do I notice?” Acknowledge your experience with gentle curiosity, even if it feels uncomfortable.
Focus on your breath — Follow each inhale and exhale. If it helps, silently say to yourself, “I am breathing in. I am breathing out.” Your breath acts as an anchor to the present moment, always available as a point of focus. Maintaining a steady rhythm between inhalation and exhalation can support a sense of awareness and calm.
Expand your awareness — Imagine breathing with your entire body, including your posture and facial expression. When you feel ready, open your eyes and return to your day.

Practising this simple breathing exercise regularly can enhance focus and emotional self-regulation, bringing greater clarity and balance into daily life.

Comments

Anxiety

Anxiety is a very generous word, so generous that it makes a lot more sense in the plural, anxieties. This is because, like a large umbrella, a load of elements can fit under it. However, despite its multitude of disturbances and manifestations, anxiety can be traced back to quite simple and predictable stress triggers. In its origins, it is much more visceral and organic than people imagine. A common trigger, for example, is hunger. You can lose hunger, overeat, stick to a crash diet, all as a neurovegetative expression of stress. Irritability is another trivial trigger. You are more easily irritated, frustrated, and angry over nothing, cultivating an inner anger, sometimes silent, sometimes explosive. Loneliness is also an important trigger. It is a complex feeling that includes inadequacy, weakened belonging, nostalgia for everything that has already happened and for everything that cannot happen. It is a mood that can be thoughtful, rueful, self-defeating, filled with needi...

Delusions

I've attempted to discover a quick way to deal with confrontational scenarios by interpolating empathy with courteous demeanour. While it didn’t interrupt confrontations, nor made them avoidable, it seems that begging to disagree can work, so long as you’ve have first learnt to mirror what is being talked in a different point of view. I like to call those exercises tools for mutual understanding. It took me a while to understand that it is natural for some people to showcase colourful disagreement only to capture a topic by exhaustion. Funnily enough, no words can interpret with precision what a subject matter can bring to a vulnerable person. I say vulnerable not to explicate people who eventually become vulnerable, oh no. We are all vulnerable to small stressors, too many of them, too many times. Triggers, say, of how much sentiment you will drill in a matter of seconds. More than that, it is a delusion to ignore them. That’s righteous okay, I need to add. Subjectivity is always ...

Remaining Attitudes

Sometimes one cannot just let it go. While I can understand why a patient would like to give up, if he is willing to put himself walking inside the hospital, I must comprehend he wants to keep fighting. Tons of medicines, exhaustive hours later and nothing has changed but a frightened soul. Walking in, walking out of his room, the pace seems unfair and unreliable; but then again, the patient remains fighting. Never truly could understand how it happens, whether that is due to faith, love, or some sort of primal instinct, but people fight for their survival more frequently than we can bare to imagine in their shoes. It is too easier and human to surrender, I guess, but it is so surprisingly godly to battle one cell’s battle. Maybe that is what makes us more human: our will, I am not sure. I watch this all, so erratic and alone in my own thoughts, slightly resilient than the day before on my attempts at understanding this effort. I wish I could say for sure to all of them “it will be alr...

The Hyggelig Journey

Search This Blog