Breathe in.

By Claudia Paez

What is the first thing we all do when we get born? Many of us will say cry. Well, let me tell you that
the very first thing we all do as we come in to this world is inhale. You inhaled and then exhaled, so
you breathe for the first time, and you never stop doing that until you finally die.

The thing with breathing is that sometimes you do not even notice its presence, you take it for
granted, and you “live” your life without even notice that without that “simple” function you won’t
even be reading this essay. Breathing is so underrate that people only understand its value when
they are jogging, or going upstairs because there is not lift on the building, or in the worst cases,
when there is smoke everywhere. And in all those situations your body tells you “Hey! You got lungs,
use them wisely, take care of them!”

I remember when I was a kid, I was in the pool with my friends and family and we always played this
game in which whoever held their breath the longest wins a candy. Well, I have to admit I never
won; my mind was not trained to hold my breath, I was only thinking: “I need to win”, and of course,
that never worked. It was until recent times that I understood how important is my breathing and
why I need to be aware and conscious in order to keep calm and wiser at harsh times.

At the beginning of 2019, I took a short course called “Happiness Program” where literally they teach
you how to breathe. I was already freediving, so that was just a coincidence, a fortunate one. There
I learned that basics, I learned to listen to my body, to understand that neither situations nor my
body or mind are still, that everything changes, every time, every second, and that I must learn to
react in the wisest way, and the key was breathing.

Here is a little tip whenever you feel mad or sad, or just out of control: you take a deep breath in,
you full your belly, your lungs, your collarbone, and then you slow breath out. You do that 2 or 3
times more so you start noticing your pulse slows down, your mind embraces the situation and your
body reacts to that order: calm down, let it be.

It is only fair; it was the first thing we all did. We inhaled, we took a deep breath in and shout out to
the world “Here I am”, so the message here is: once you learn to manage your breathing, you get to
manage your anger, your sorrow, your joy, and therefore you face situations in a wiser and healthy
way.

Breathe out.