I wrote this article a couple of years ago. I think it is really interesting to look back at what I was working, how I was feeling and thinking and seeing if I can maintain my consistency. Now my son is living with me and I get to take him to school, soon he will be off on his holidays with his mother and I will have a lot to learn about how that feels! So I offer you this article below 🙂
I am not sure many of you know, but I am a dad. My son is 5 and we have a peculiar situation where we live in different countries. Life has taken us to this strange and undesired place and we do our best to manage it.
Every school holiday I travel and we spend the holidays together somewhere in the world.
Last night, after spending his birthday and the New Year with me in London my son left to go back to his school. I will not sugar coat it. It was tough. He is so incredible and his current age is so much fun! I do not wish for anyone in the world to feel what I felt when I said good bye.
Even as I write this I can still feel emotional from his last hug and our parting words.
After leaving them at airport security, I walked back to the trains and went home. I decided to take the slow path, to give myself time to manage the moment I had just experienced and so, when I finally got home, I would have been recomposed and ready to be productive once again — or ready to give myself a little more time to assimilate the moment, so that my next day would not be affected.
Now, when I write these words they do seem like a tall goal. But ultimately, the important aspect is that life happens and we need to manage whatever comes our way and remain focused and productive. So how did I manage the moment?In short, I breathed.
This allowed me to manage my emotions. It allowed me to experience the moment and feel how deep my love is for my son and how much it breaks my heart to say good bye. It allowed me really feel sorrow. As these emotions overtook me, I also felt the energy they brought with them and breathing was the key to transforming this energy from an introspective moment to a productive moment.
Here is how it works: There are many schools of thought on how to manage emotions. Some schools say to avoid the feeling, even to pretend that it is not there, “hold those tears back”. Another way of thinking is to allow the emotions to arise, to feel deeply and then transmute this energy into productivity. In the DeROSE Method we teach and work with the latter — feel, but you should be the decision maker as to how this emotion is going to make you act.
Why does breathing work?
When an emotion arises it creates a host of physical, energetic and psychological effects. From a physical level the (the automatic response systems (sympathetic or the parasympathetic) may be activated. At an energetic level you may feel more energy, more vitality, more strength; or the very opposite. From a psychological perspective the interaction between your mind and feelings is disturbed as the emotions are less stable and your mind is eclipsed by the intensity of the emotions.
Breathing is a key element in this chain reaction. As the automatic systems kick in there may be more hormonal production, changes in the tension of muscles, heart rate, skin conductivity and even the rate of breathing. As these systems are automatic, they enter a feedback loop and intensify the experience.
Changing the way you breathe can disrupt this chain effect and allow the systems to regain stability. However, this requires some training in breathing and awareness of this internal process taking place.
Can you do it?
Everyone can achieve these effects. Since 2008 i have been training my students a few times per week so that when the moments arise they are ready to manage and to direct events. But I felt that this was not enough…
So I developed a free app to teach everyone to breathe.
In this app you will find 8 instructional videos totaling over 30 minutes of explanations, training and teaching of the techniques and their intricacies. But just learning is not enough, you need to put in training, just as learning the mechanics of riding a bicycle will not teach you how to ride a bike… So you will also find 24 training sessions, lasting no more than 5 minutes each. This is over 2.5 hours of training so that, over the course of 12 days, you can acquire the skills and experience needed to put this into action.
Does it work?Well, this article is a fruit of this training. I felt the immense sorrow of saying good bye to my son and when I got home I transformed that energy into this article!
You can do this too.