Take a nice deep breath, hold it on the top, and then slowly breathe out.

Welcome to Love Notes from Rhonda and Today.

Let's breathe together.

Let's breathe in.

You can breathe in through the nose, and you hold it on the top and breathe out.

And then you actually hold it on the bottom for just a second or two and then you breathe in again.

You breathe in through your.

In through your nose, hold it and breathe out by your mouth.

And then hold it and you can keep breathing and you can watch your breath length increase.

I know when I've been doing my breathing regularly, consciously, I can breathe in and take, you know, five, six seconds, and then I can breathe out 12 seconds.

And then if I haven't been breathing, I'm more like two or three seconds in and four or five seconds out, right?

I don't have as long of a breath in or as long of a breath out.

So I can see where I am by my ability to breathe in and breathe out.

Hold it on the top and hold it on the bottom.

This is just a way to keep a measurement of my practice of how deeply I breathe.

You know, how blessed we are that we just breathe automatically and we don't have to think about it or do anything about it.

But that's how we walk through life.

If we just let it breathe us all the time without being awake to it, without pushing it, without growing into it, without being moved by it.

If we just let the breath breathe us, which again, is a wonderful, miraculous gift that we've been given that we don't have to be conscious of our breath.

It just breathes us, it takes care of us.

How loved we are that this is true.

Yet as we become aware of our breath, we become aware of our life.

When we become aware of our breathing and we slow down to take those breaths, we can feel the sensations in our body more acutely.

When I'm meditating for long periods of time and I'm in silence and I'm connected, which, by the way, in meditation, you're not always.

You don't feel always connected.

You meditate or do breathing exercises for the sake of doing it.

You don't.

You're not necessarily doing it to achieve this nirvana, even though that may happen occasionally.

So there've been times when I have meditated.

I've gone to silent meditation retreats and meditated for days and days and days in silence.

And actually, I love that so much.

I love to meditate in groups.

It's one of my favorite things.

And when I'm meditating in a group or over several days in a long period of time, if the room is completely silent and somebody just moves an inch, like makes a sound, I literally can feel that sound vibrating through my entire body.

And I think to myself, when that happens, wow, that was just ping.

And I felt it vibrating through my entire body.

Imagine as I go through the world and there's noise everywhere, how much my body is responding, reacting, processing all the noise around me.

Because when I'm in a silent place meditating for a long period of time and I'm in the zone of meditation, any noise vibrates my entire being, sometimes shattering the silence, sometimes allowing me to go deeper, but nonetheless, it is like a crane has broken through my house.

It is so loud and it's literally like ping.

Silence.

Awareness.

Breathing.

Practice your breath today.

Set your watch, your timer.

Every hour, on the hour, every 30 minutes, every two hours, whatever you'd like.

Just stop wherever you are and just breathe.

Three breaths if you can.

If not, do one.

And I invite you to think about how you can add more conscious breathing to your day.

When you wake up in the morning, can you just lie in bed for just a moment and take three deep breaths before you get out of bed?

Or can you do it in the shower?

Can you take three nice deep breaths in the shower?

Or can you do it when you're on the toilet?

Or can you do it getting dressed or getting in your car before you drive off?

Where can you add the awakening moments of three long breaths?

It increases awareness.

You start having more discernment, more refinement, more you.

Until next time, be fearless.

I love you, Sa.