This is the third in the series of Inspiration Techniques.

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Many people say, mistakenly, that inspiration occurs only serendipitously when you forget to be worried about life. They think that those inspirations are sudden impulses that cannot be deliberately caused. But we know, we know that we know, that those people are sadly wrong. We can cause inspiration any time we choose.

But there is, and there always is, and if. In this case the if is, whether you are living life as a puppet or whether you are living life as a string. If you are dancing from work to life and back to life and back to work and back to life trying to make happy happy when you are home and just going to work with a seagull manager den the odds of you causing inspiration in your life is zero. It’s the equivalent of a drowning person flying.

So now that we have started to get a little bit real and enjoy the idea that the expectation of causing inspiration when we are behaving with the intelligence of a donkey is probably not a wise expectation to put on ourselves. The first article in this series I explained that a person who is stressed, stressed for more than one hour about one topic, is behaving stupid. And while we behave stupid it doesn’t matter whether we go to yoga or meditate in the Himalayan monastery for the rest of our born life, we will not cause inspiration. So let’s put that one behind us. Now let’s talk about breathing.

Everybody breathes. Well at least we suggest that they would otherwise they are a somebody who is not being anybody in other words they are dead. So given that everybody breaths it might be wise to start with the premise that everybody can be inspired. Because it is through the breath that we can cause inspiration to deliberately arrive any time we choose. However it’s not just any old breath and it’s not just any old time of the day. The first thing is not to be stressed, and the second condition is, that we are not running away from work.

When a person is running away from their work obviously something is completely wrong and it is the same experience as me standing on the Ben Bucklund cliff and watching salmon. You see salmon fish and they do not jump nor do they fly unless something is underneath them and they are trying to become airborne to escape it. The most likely cause of such an appetite to fly is a shark. Now sharks in the ocean and natural predators and it’s very understandable that the salmon have developed a technique called jump out of the water in order to avoid being the one that becomes part of the 50 or 60 salmon that one shark will eat per day. It is also ironic that the people who preserve the oceans and want to save the shark don’t give a shit about the 50 or 60 salmon that become eaten every day in order to preserve one dumb shark. But that’s another story. So a person who is running away from their work in other words looking forward to going home as soon as possible or hating dealing with a seagull boss is being like a salmon in the ocean being chased by a shark and just trying to reduce the probability of being eaten. Sadly, this exhausts the salmon, it also exhausts the human, which means the human, when outside of the range of the shark, all the seagulls bass once desperately for everything to go there way. In which case they become a total demanding arsehole at home.

By the way it also works in the other direction as well. If a person is looking forward to going to work to escape the tedium of parenting and partnering with a grumpy partner then they are running to work with false expectations that everything when they get to work will go exactly as they thought it should and therefore they have false expectations that they project onto everybody around them because life is already tough at home.

In the previous article I wrote about consciousness. I also suggested that modern human resource techniques cannot measure consciousness and therefore they avoid talking about it. But at Innerwealth we can measure consciousness very easily. We also said that it’s very hard for a person, no, we said it is impossible for a person to work for a boss who is less conscious than themselve. And so it is wise to be able to measure this variable in life especially at work. But it also makes for a very interesting measurement at home to. So we arrive at the idea that breathing can cause inspiration any time we want provided that condition one, no stress, and condition too, no running away from work or life. So I made a little poem for you. Maybe you would like to copy this or print it out and put it on your wall. Because this poem is a condition of being able to cause yourself to be inspired and if you can cause yourself to be inspired you will have all the security and confidence and mental and emotional and physical health you ever could dream of in life.

A Master in the art of Living 

Draws no sharp distinction 

Between their work and their play 

Their labour and their leisure 

Their minds and their bodies 

Their education or their recreation. 

They hardly know which is which. 

They simply pursue their vision 

Of excellence 

Through whatever 

They are doing and leave 

Others to determine 

Whether they are working or playing. 

To themselves, it always seems 

As if they are doing both. 

Christopher Walker 

And so now we come to the breathing technique which is very important in fact the most important aspect of creating inspiration for yourself any time you choose.

In normal English inspiration means to breathe in. Exhalation means to breathe out. But for today let’s replace inspiration breathing in with inhalation. If you can do this practice you can arrive at an inspired state of mind any moment you choose provided the previously mentioned conditions are met. Firstly, you breathe in to the top of your capacity and then you breathe out to the bottom of your capacity. Do this a few times. Then, when you are ready breathe in and try to expand the time it takes between breathing in and breathing app without holding your breath. In other words make your breathing pattern like a sign curve, and at the top of the curve drift as if you were weightless between the inhale and the exhale without stopping the breathing pattern. You can also practice this at the end of the exhale before you breathe in trying to slow the moment where the exhale finishes and the inhale starts.

The sense of weightlessness that occurs between the inhale and exhale is a fraction a moment in time unmeasurable. And in this moment there is inspiration. Inspiration is not a pro traction of time but what it is is a reception of genius. In that moment when you stalled and go into freefall between the inhale and the exhale, all the exhale and the inhale, you experience inspiratio during that moment your emotions pause and you turn up 100%. If you do this practice with a good intent, and you have a question you are looking for the answer for, it will be like catching a feather and after you walk away from that practice the answer will be in the palm of your hand.

It does not take me to educate you on the power of breathing. You know already that a person who gets a sudden shock breathe in rapidly and a person who is depressed or exhausted from trying (hopeless) extends the exhalation for a very long time compare to the inhale. This depressive breathing causes mental health problems. But it may surprise you to know that person who breeze to long inhale and short exhale will also have mental health problems. And so getting the breath correct is the fastest and most powerful secret to mental health on the planet. Ironically between the inhale and exhale there is that moment available to every human being on earth who conforms with the previous two conditions of being stressless, and, not running away from the life they have, and can achieve inspiration.

The actual breath itself can be incredibly complicated. Many people breathe into their upper chest trying to keep their abs nice and tight and then there are those who breathe into their belly and forget that the lungs are 90% in the upper chest. If the diaphragm that supports the lungs does not expand up which means down during the inhale and does not contract down which means up during the exhale that persons breathing pattern will be causing them mental and emotional and obviously physical damage. It was the original design of yoga to keep the body flexible enough to allow this full yogic breath.

Every day I like to lie down on the floor over what is called a yoga wheel. This is a stretching technique that opens the chest after bike riding and swimming and sitting at a desk but while I’m in this position I practice the breathing technique called the yoga breath. During this practice I also include holding the delay between inhale and exhale and exhale and inhale in order to trigger inspirations and answer my questions to the universe.

If we live our life like salmon jumping out of the water to avoid sharks or we live our life running from a boss or from a partner there is no use wishing for the miracles of inspiration because the body will be tight like a drum of petrol just waiting for a match. Sometimes we can even, if we do not look after our stress and our moment, we can become the shark. That something none of us want.

When I go for a walk along the beach I practice the breathing in the delay of the exhale in order to trigger inspiration. I call this my mobile meditation. Sometimes I’m not even looking for answers but I get them anyway. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.