30 TODAYS | DAY 2: mind-body connection

Consider the idea that all the parts of you that make you you can be divided into two separate categories, the mind and the body. The mind's focus is on anything having to do with the outside world. Manuvering through it, setting goals, making decisions, thinking, deciding, observing what's going on around you,

interacting with other people, figuring things out. The mind navigates the outside world by constantly jumping back and forth between thinking about the past, remembering it, learning from it, and the future, trying to predict it. And then there's the body. Anything having to do with our internal world goes in the category

of the body, how we're feeling, what we need in order to function, what we're craving, how we're processing, how we're dealing with things, our memories, all of our automatic functions, our heart beating, our blood circulating, our food being digested. The body is always in the present moment, executing the commands coming in from the mind and reacting

to what's going on. So up in our heads we've got this constant chatter, past future, past future, and then down in our bodies, we've got how we feel right now and reactions to those feelings.

Another way to think about it could be that our bodies are like vehicles and our minds are the drivers of those vehicles. While the drivers looking out at the landscape, making decisions on where to go, deciding whether to push the gas or the break, thinking

about directions. The car is adjusting accordingly. The car is speeding up or slowing down. The car is running, absorbing, turning, lubricating, burning. The car is signaling that it needs gas or that it's overheating. Imagine yourself, your thoughts, your mind, you, as the driver. Going about your day, moving back and forth between thinking about the

past and thinking about the future, knowing the things you want to avoid, figuring out how to move in the world. As you move about the world, your body, your vehicle is adjusting accordingly. Something scares you. You inhale sharply. You get confronted and put on the spot your heart starts racing.

You say something embarrassing, your cheeks flush red. You realize how late it's getting, suddenly you're yawning. You look at the clock and remember that you have an important call that's about to take place, your hand reaches for the phone.

The driver observes and steps on the gas. signals to the body where in Go Mode, the vehicle reacts. When this happens, you start breathing a little more shallow, preserving energy by stopping less important activities like digestion to focus on more important activities like a faster

heartbeat. Your body listens, receives that message, and then reacts accordingly. As you continue to use your mind to try to predict the future, as your driver scans the road ahead, what will this phone call in tail?

Am I in trouble? Am I doing things wrong? What will happen if this goes badly? Your body continues to react. The shallow breathing creates a lack of oxygen in your muscles. Your upper back starts to tense up. Thoughts start speeding up as synapses in the brain start firing, leading to a quicker flow of information. Your hands get clammy. Chemicals

get released into your bloodstream, traveling to your organs. Some begin over functioning. Some slow down. This can happen within minutes or seconds. This can be taking place throughout your entire day, perhaps your entire week, perhaps your entire life. Tiny micro thoughts, paired with tiny micro-physical reactions,

taking place thousands of times throughout your day. These add up over time. Just like drivers use the gas pedal and the brake pedal to accelerate

or slow down their vehicles, we too have a gas and brake system that controls our inner world, and that is our breath. We're always breathing, our system,

Our body is always running, always reacting, listening to the mind, adjusting accordingly. With breath work, we have the ability to override the system and set our own speed. We can reverse the process. Instead of the mind and our thoughts controlling how we feel, we can set the pace of

bodies we can choose our speed and set the internal cruise control which then allows the mind to react instead of the other way around. In other words we can breathe purposefully in the way a calm, powerful, confident feeling person would breathe and produce chemicals and reactions that a calm, powerful, confident person would have.

Thoughts become clearer, observations become sharper, decisions are easier, tension decreases, we feel more at ease, no matter what our surroundings are. Our breath is the foundation of mind-body communication. It listens and reacts. It goes both directions.

And once we begin to understand the connection between our thoughts and our feelings, the actions and reactions between both worlds, how what's going on outside affects what's going on inside and vice versa. We start learning how to collaborate with ourselves,

develop more trust with ourselves. We stop battling ourselves. So for anyone who's transformation goals have anything to do with thoughts. Instead of wrestling them or trying to outthink them,

telling them they're going the wrong way. Perhaps consider what might happen if you were to instead, allow them to take a back seat. By setting the cruise control,

breathing intentionally and rhythmically for a few minutes at a time, We bring the mind out of the back and forth between past and future, allowing it to just look out the window, enjoy the present moment. We learn how to co-pilot.

We start by tuning into the body, focusing on the breath, learning the pace and the method that works for ourselves, the pace and the method that puts your vehicle in cruise control. focusing on the senses, physical sensations, the present moment by taking a few minutes to turn up the volume of the body, the volume of the mind becomes much quieter.

And the more you practice speaking this language, doing this dance, the easier it becomes to adjust those dials whenever you want.