What Is Effortless Living?
Today's Theme: Effortless Breathing
INTRODUCTION: Effortless living is about living in a mindful, intuitive way. What does this mean, specifically? What is it like to live this way?
Have you ever just “known” what to say to someone, what you needed to do to get over something terribly painful, or to play an instrument, to succeed at learning something, at playing a particular game? Maybe you struggled to figure out what to do or what to say, and then suddenly, the right thing to do or say just came to you, spontaneously?
This is effortless living. It’s not like one day, after learning some technique, you “learn” effortless living and for the rest of your life, you never make any more efforts. But you can learn gradually, over the course of weeks, months, and years, to make this kind of intuitive guidance more and more a central core principle of your life.
The Effortless Living Community and Effortless Mindfulness
In our Effortless Living courses, you’re provided with a step-by-step course structure to learn how to bring an intuitive, effortless quality to whatever you’re learning. In the Effortless Living Community, we have weekly, biweekly and monthly Themes to bring some kind of structure to learning effortlessness.
THEME #1: Our community’s first theme is effortless breathing.
You might think that developing a regular practice would be the first step. But so many people get so stressed about developing a regular practice, and put so much effort into getting it “just right,” that it can be a major obstacle to developing an attitude of effortlessness.
So let’s try effortless breathing.
Unless you have a major breathing disorder, you’re actually already breathing effortlessly (though when you pause to pay attention to your breathing you may, without realizing it, introduce an unnecessary quality of strain and effort — just notice how without doing anything or making any effort at all, your body just breathes on its own).
Now let’s try one of the most basic breathing practices, “Coherent” or “Even” breathing, and let’s see if we can do it with as little tension and effort as we can.
It is utterly and absolutely simple — you’re going to inhale for 4 counts, and exhale for 4 counts. Don’t worry about counting exactly right — just very gently, “hear” in your mind the count
1….2…..3….4… as you inhale, and
1….2…..3…..4… as you exhale.
That’s it!
Try this, now, just 4 times in a row. If you know how to do diaphragmatic breathing, that will make it more effective and the quality of effortlessness will be more prominent. If not, don’t worry.
Ok, after pausing a bit, try it again, but see if you can do it 8 times in a row, This time let your attention be more on the FEELING of the breath flowing in and out, and let the counting be in the background of your awareness.
Counting:
1….2…..3….4… as you inhale, and
1….2…..3…..4… as you exhale.
And finally, just three more things:
· If you want to start a practice you’ll never give up, take one minute every night when you lie down to do even breathing. If you feel like even one minute is too much, try it for 20 or 30 seconds (that’s about 3 to 4 cycles of even breathing). Congratulations — you’ve got a regular practice going!
· If you know ocean breathing (or what’s technically known as Ujjayi breathing, or more casually known as “breathing this way and you’ll feel like you’re getting a minor marijuana high”) practice coherent, even breathing using ocean breathing.
· As you practice even breathing, see if you can let your attention very VERY gently flow through the entire phase of inhaling without a break, and through the entire phase of exhaling, without a break (if this doesn’t make sense, don’t worry When you join the effortless living community, you’ll have a chance to ask questions about this and other practices in our Conversation Lounge.
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MORE ABOUT THE EFFORTLESS LIVING NETWORK, COMMUNITY AND COURSES
Jan (my wife) and I have created the Effortless Living Network to provide an online support community — The Effortless Living Practice Community — for all kinds of contemplative, meditative and mindful practices.
The intention of the community is to provide a safe, welcoming space where people can receive daily support for (1) learning mindfulness and related contemplative practices, (2) turning an occasional contemplative practice into a regular daily practice or (3) deepening or enlivening a daily practice you already have, and (4) and applying the practice to specific areas of your life.
Currently, the Effortless Living Network offers 2 online cohort courses:
· From Restless Nights to Effortless Sleep — an 8-week online course for learning effortless sleep
· Train Your Brain, Change Your Life — a 12-week online course for learning effortless mindfulness
Soon, we’ll be adding several self-guided mini-courses to our offerings:
· Effortless Mindful Movement
· Effortless Musical Improvisation
· Learning the Basics of Effortless Breathing, Relaxation and Yoga Nidra
You can learn more about the Effortless Living community and the related courses, and subscribe to our newsletter, at our website, www.RememberToBe.Life
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