The One Habit Every Woman Should Develop

There are so many moments in our day that take our breath away. Not the moments that we want to take in and let expand. Those moments that are so big and beautiful our heart swells with joy. I'm not referring to that. Instead, I'm speaking to the moment a stranger's hand grabs your breast, or eyes undress you on the subway. It's scary moments of feeling vulnerable as you walk alone in an empty parking lot, and irked by a mansplainer. Perhaps you tense up every time you stand on a podium to speak, or you want to show your anger but keep it locked in because you've been taught that good girls and women don't get angry.

Instead of doing something different, what do we do? Freeze! You hold your breath. You become tense and tight. You are walling yourself off from the situation, protecting yourself from the misogyny and pain around you. Like the time you walk through fumes and hold your breath so you don't take in the poison and toxicity. This action of holding and constricting actually restricts our breathing, making it shallower.

But here's the thing, when you hold your breath, you lose your voice and your limit your choices. And the more you do it, the more normal it feels. It becomes something you're not even aware of doing, and when you are you probably feel like it's engraved in your system. Well, you're right, it is!

So, how are you supposed to speak up if you've practiced not speaking at all?

How are you supposed to come across as confident, if every muscle fibre in your body is constricted? 

All you need is this one habit - breath!

Deep breathing helps center us and ground us. It helps calm our nervous system and opens us up to possibilities - of connecting and responding. Allowing yourself time to become aware of your breath, allows you to find space beneath/under/through the situation. 

Just one deep breath allows you to inhibit the reaction that's already engraved in you to give yourself a different choice of response. Think of it as an internal preparation. 

Let me take you through an experiment. Let's pretend you're speaking to a crowd. They're looking at you, anticipating your words. Sense into how you feel standing there? Do you feel nervous? Anxious? Where do you sense that tightness? In your chest? Stomach? Jaw? Shoulders? Maybe even a heaviness in the legs.

“If you hold tension in muscles and skin you are going to speak with that tension. ”

Will that tension help or hurt your message? How will the audience interpret that tension? Now pause and take a breath. Soften your abdomen and feel the air move through your abdomen. As you exhale allow the air to travel down and out through imaginary holes in the soles of your feet. Feel that warm sense of connection to the ground. Now take that sensation of groundedness and speak from that place.

The more you practice this, the easier it will become until it engraves a new way of being on the older, less effective reaction. Breathing brings you to the present, into the felt sense of your body in that moment. It is from this place that you allow yourself to engage fully. Instead of withdrawing, you come from a place of self-assurance. Not only will you feel it, you will look it and THAT adds WEIGHT to our message.