How to Use Breath for a Positive Attitude

Using Attitude Breathing

Practice different attitudes you want to develop. You can tell yourself. “Breathe courage,” Breathe ease”, Breathe forgiveness,” “Breathe neutral,” or whatever attitude you need. Even if you can’t feel the attitude shift at first, making a genuine and earnest effort to shift will at least help you get to a neutral state. In neutral, you have more objectivity and you save energy.

The heart is the most powerful rhythmic oscillator in the body, so it pulls the body’s other rhythms into synchronization with its own. Your power to make attitude adjustments will build fast as you use Attitude Breathing in the middle of a reaction or disagreement.

1.  Focus on the heart as you breathe in. As you breathe out, focus on your solar plexus.

2.  Practice breathing in through the heart and out through the solar plexus for thirty seconds or longer to help anchor your energy and attention there. Next, select a positive feeling or attitude (try appreciation, for example) to breathe in through the heart and out through the solar plexus for another thirty seconds (or longer.)

3.  Once you feel the appreciation, lock in the feeling of that positive attitude. Now, as you breathe, visualize building and storing the positive energy that the feeling of appreciation gives you. Practice breathing that appreciation for a few minutes.

4.  Select attitudes to breathe that will help offset the negative emotion or imbalance of the situation you are in. Breathe deeply, with the intent of shifting to the feeling of that attitude. You can breathe two attitudes, if you’d like. For example, you can breathe in an attitude of balance and breathe out an attitude of forgiveness, or you can breathe in an attitude of love and breathe out an attitude of compassion.