Take just one conscious breath before responding to anything. Make this a habit. Your response will be freer and wiser for breaking the vicious cycle of response. My book Just One Conscious Breath is all about this.
As a part of my series about “How to Slow Down To Do More” I had the pleasure to interview Michael Wood.
Michael is a spiritual companion, breathtworker and teacher of presence. His great grandfather was the Chief Druid of England and the one of the last to celebrate the summer solstice at Stonehenge. After thirty years of meditating and working in a demanding role with neurodiverse children, he has written his first book, Just One Conscious Breath.
Thank you so much for doing this interview with us! Can you tell us the “backstory” about what brought you to this specific career path?
Life. I started off in marketing in London then retrained in Special Education and moved to Ireland where I built a retreat house in the Slieve Bloom Mountains. Working with neurodivergent children I explored the breath as a way of supporting them and the whole school community — and it worked. So, I started to write about it. Three years later my book Just One Conscious Breath has been published.
According to a 2006 Pew Research Report report, 26% of women and 21% of men feel that they are “always rushed”. Has it always been this way? Can you give a few reasons regarding what you think causes this prevalent feeling of being rushed?
Noise. We are bombarded with it. Our heads have always been noisy, we have a thought every second on average, but now with constant stimulation, they are amplified and magnified from every angle. We don’t have a thought as much as it has us — and we don’t have strategies to stay awake in the vortex of cascading thought. Meditation or yoga practice helps but we need something that’s portable and that supports us right now in in the middle of the noise and the cut and thrust of life’s . This is where Just One Conscious Breath fits in.
Based on your experience or research can you explain why being rushed can harm our productivity, health, and happiness?
When we are rushed, we become reactive. Our amygdala stimulates an instantaneous reaction and a vicious reinforcing cycle of reaction kicks in. As we get stressed this is compounded and we start to take faster shallower breaths in the upper chest where the nerves associated with our sympathetic nervous system are — these foster adrenalised energy. As a result, we end up rushing around going faster and faster, getting more and more stressed getting less and less done. Think of the headless chickens — entirely of our own making.
On the flip side, can you give examples of how we can do more, and how our lives would improve if we could slow down?
Just One Conscious Breath cuts through the reactive cycle and all the noise — it opens our wisdom gap. With a conscious breath we become the observer rather than the reactor (or re-actor). From here we can step back and look in. This takes us momentarily out of our head and gives us a fresh perspective. When we do this, we open the way to become original, free and authentic. This movement from reaction to response is the key to our freedom — right here and right now.
We all live in a world with many deadlines and incessant demands for our time and attention. That inevitably makes us feel rushed. Can you share with our readers five strategies that you use to “slow down to do more”? Can you please give a story or example for each?
1. Take just one conscious breath before responding to anything. Make this a habit. Your response will be freer and wiser for breaking the vicious cycle of response. My book Just One Conscious Breath is all about this.
2. Become a land dolphin and consciously come up for air (a conscious breath every 8 minutes or so). This is why we commissioned a dolphin for the cover of the book.
3. Be generous, be a role model. Sometimes people aren’t ready to hear take a breath, or take a moment, — but if you do it and model it, you emanate the energy and the composure that you want them to have. This worked with neurodivergent children in a crisis and when they were in such an elevated state they were not available to hear.
4. Sigh consciously. When we sigh, we are letting go. It is not a negative to sigh — it is not a sign of boredom — it is a sign that we a surrendering to the way in front of us and are open to the life lessons that come our way when we simply let go. When we let go, we get our contrived selves, our ego, out of the way, and open up the possibility of life leading us. This is the Way of the Tao.
5. Breath consciously through your nose and lengthen the exhale. This gives a greater sense of ease and relaxation. When listening to someone, model good listening skills by breathing quietly through your nose. They know you are listening,, you are attentive and your mouth is shut, so you are not going to butt in with your but. So, they open more. The conversation will go deeper and be more fulfilling as a result. Watch a good interviewer on television, as they listen, they nasal breathe and they wait attentively. When we breathe through our nose, we encourage rapport and so our companions open further.
How do you define “mindfulness”? Can you give an example or story?
Actually, mindfulness is not mindfulness at all. When we think about being mindful, we are present, but our mind is not full, it is clear and open. The term mindfulness is more accurately translated as presence (Source jack Kornfield). The breath brings us to this place. Just One Conscious Breath brings us to presence and clarity from where we can make more authentic responses to what is in front of us.
An example of this is when I used to make presentations to staff. I would always take a conscious breath before talking. It slowed me down and signaled to colleagues that what was coming was considered and of value. It also signaled to me that I was in presence and could talk from this place without the need for notes. When colleagues sense you are talking from presence, from your heart everything, literally everything changes.
Can you give examples of how people can integrate mindfulness into their everyday lives?
By taking just one conscious breath. By making it a practice and becoming a land dolphin.
Do you have any mindfulness tools that you find most helpful at work?
Take Just One Conscious Breath as often as you can. Become the observer of a situation rather than the participant and see what the situation most needs from you. Try and ask what the most conscious way to respond in any situation is. When we operate from truth, it gets our colleagues to up their game and creates flow Also Box breathe*, this is the breath that creates a state of relaxed attention and is the technique employed by the Navy Seals.
Box breathing is when we split our breath into four equal sides (Inhale-hold-exhale -hold) to a count of three or four seconds each side. An even higher order skill is to coordinate the count with our heartbeat.
What are your favorite books, podcasts, or resources that inspire you to use mindfulness tools or practices?
The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle (1997) In Love with the World by Mingyur Rinpoche (2019) After the Ectasy the laundry, Jack Kornfield (2005). The Chimp Paradox, Steve Peters (2012). The Camino Podcast. Dave Whitson
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
I have many but as we absorb the lessons we read, and learn over a lifetime they are embodied. They become our own and we become our own teacher. This process allowed me to write my book and so I can use a quote from this:
“Getting out of our heads and living in our hearts is both our journey and our destination.”
It took me 30 years to fully know this and embody it in a series of rebirthing sessions with a world-class breath worker. I finally learned the lesson that I found hardest, which was to just let go and to flow with the way of life.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I would invite everybody to become a land dolphin — to surface for one conscious breath every eight minutes or so. That would change the world.
Thank you so much for these insights! This was so inspiring!
Michael Wood of Just One Conscious Breath On How To Slow Down To Do More was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.