In order to keep myself in tip top coaching shape, I’m currently taking part in an online coaching course, run by Gregg Sugarman, a fabulous New York based Life Coach I met a few years ago. Our homework for the first week, was to check in with our breathing on the hour, every hour. Well blow me over with a feather, I was horrified to discover how shoddy my breathing skills are. While I can belly breathe along with the best of them when I put my mind to it, while going about my business on a daily basis, it turns out I shallow breathe like a pro.

The benefits of breathing deeply are common knowledge and most of us know that stress and the rushed pressure we live under are not good for our health. If you are like me, what you forget is that the solution is simpler than we realize.

After a week of simply paying attention to my breathing a couple of times throughout the day, there was a noticeable improvement in my well-being. Apart from the calming, steadying effect of deeper breaths, all that extra oxygen circling around was doing wonders for my brain. I was alert, more energetic and having vivid dreams I could remember. I think y’all you should know that one of those dreams was shoe shopping for my four feet!

So why don’t we breathe deeply all the time? It’s interesting. In Week Two of the course, although we were tasked with keeping the breathing exercises going, our focus shifted to a new area. What do you think happened? I fell right off the breathing bandwagon. Turns out I wasn’t the only one. Gregg received a flurry of emails from the group asking him to please keep reminding us to breathe!

Like with any new habit, it takes a concerted effort to change something we are doing. Breathing is no different. We are bombarded with sensory input throughout the day and breathing is not something we actually need to focus on. However, it certainly should be something we WANT to focus on.

Do yourself a favour and make the effort to take ten deep, sustaining breaths as regularly as you can during your day. Feel your belly expand as you draw sparkling oxygen into your body. Imagine every single cell throughout your body coming to life as it is bathed in the life sustaining essence of life.

Don’t make a big thing of it, in fact no one even has to realise you are doing it. But you will. You will feel the benefits immediately and like me, you’ll wonder why on earth you don’t do this all the time!