Dedicate at least a third of your waking hours to conscious breathing: bring the breath low in your body (below the belly button), allow your body to rise with the inhale, ensure your exhale is slower than your inhale, and aim for under seven or eight breaths per minute. This discipline builds a physical and mental reserve, reduces irritation, and cultivates relaxed concentration, removing the binary between relaxation and focus.
Apply the conscious breath protocol during ordinary activities like washing dishes, attending meetings, or taking out the rubbish. This practice helps you build a reserve, become more generous, round off triggers, and cultivate a sense of relaxed concentration where all your senses are sharply aware without being on high alert.
To start experiencing the benefits of conscious breathing, lie down, relax your chest, and allow your breath to come from lower in your body. Focus on breathing slower and making your exhale longer than your inhale for just 20 breaths, as this simple practice can make you feel different.
Open all your senses to your surroundings, noticing tastes, smells, sounds, and subtle physical sensations, even in non-pristine or ordinary environments. Settle into these sensory inputs, moving past initial annoyance or disgust, because the body is a much more accessible portal to reconnecting with your original self and experiencing oneness.
Actively cultivate both immense pride (ha’aheo) and immense humility (ha’aha) simultaneously. This ‘sweet spot’ is essential for personal growth and for showing that positive change is possible on a larger scale.
Before attempting to solve global problems or address injustice, engage in significant self-repair and internal work. Recognizing one’s own capacity for perpetrating injustice is crucial, as ‘better human beings can come up with better solutions’ than those operating from a binary of righteous versus unrighteous.
When having profound experiences, stay in the experience for as long as possible without immediately trying to analyze what it means. Your thoughts can take you farther away from the direct experience of beingness and oneness, which is best accessed through your senses.
Approach situations with an ’empty cup’ mindset, being open and receptive rather than full of preconceived notions. A cup is most useful when empty, as it can then be filled with many new things and experiences.
Intentionally slow down your personal rhythm to be slower than whatever rhythm is going on in your surroundings, especially in new or ordinary places. This allows you to stop, savor, and pay more attention, leading to a different, richer experience of your surroundings and minute, useful shifts in decision-making.
When faced with worsening global conditions, recognize this as a ‘sweet spot’ for inquiry and lean into it. This collective state of ‘creative desperation’ presents an unprecedented opportunity for fundamental shifts and personal transformation, as awareness is the first opening for action.
When discussing profound concepts, aim to communicate through shared experience rather than through analytical explanation. This fosters deeper connection and understanding, bypassing the ’tangled aspects of an analytical mind’.
When seeking to understand concepts like ‘beingness’ or ‘oneness,’ do not rely solely on reading or intellectual thought. Your thoughts can take you farther away from the direct experience, which is best accessed through your body and senses.