Many times when I teach I think about how much easier it is for us to force than to relax. We understand much more clearly how to tense the muscles than how to ask the body to let go. And this applies to training and also to everyday life. Our body, by default, reacts to certain stimuli by generating tension, whether we are stressed about something or we are working under the air conditioning feeling cold and doing nothing about it. It is likely that the shoulders look for the ears as if they wanted to keep them warm and at night we are with a total contracture.

Learning to decontract is an incredible tool that in addition to making us rest better and feel better makes available an extra energy that was previously invested in tension. Let's get down to business, **how to channel relaxation?

1- Breathing is a great accomplice. It is interesting to concentrate (bring the attention) on that area that is perceived as tense and as we exhale, try to gradually release the muscles.

2- Observing our body habits also adds up: Do we breathe in an abdominal or high way? Are our shoulders relaxed or tense? Are our hands loose or tight? I don't know if you ever paid attention to that detail, when you clench your hands you tense your arms, neck and jaw. The jaw can't be left out of this journey; relaxing the mouth and the forehead also contributes a lot.

3- Register the situations of tension and generate a conscious change, in the environment if possible and, if not, in the breathing (making it deep) or in the body (decontracting the shoulders, hands, neck...).

There are infinite things to talk about and deepen on this subject, just the other day I was thinking about something specific that I would like to share: to the extent that one learns to decontract the body and therefore to relax when it is not necessary to generate tension, this can also be applied in life, start to keep track of the moments in which unnecessary tension is generated and try to let go a little, channel the relaxation.

—I was breathless!

How many times do we hear that phrase in the face of a surprising situation or one that generates emotion and stress? A kind of popular saying that is repeated without taking into account the great truth it contains. The expression highlights a vital and organic process discovered thousands of years ago in an intuitive way: the relationship between emotion and breathing.

In the face of a contingency, emotionality shoots up. A wave of energy is released and the organism transforms it and uses it to respond to the stimuli that generate primary emotions: anger or fear. These are not the only ones, there are other varieties of emotions that derive from these two main ones and with which we deal with on a daily basis.

The automatic reading that our organism makes is that survival is at risk and we will need all the strength to perform two immediate physical actions linked to those emotions: basically, fight or flee. This is the synthesis of the well-known process called stress, that physiological reaction of the organism that brings into play various defense mechanisms to face a situation perceived as threatening or of increased demand.

What I am most interested in highlighting about this resource, which has automatically been occupied in keeping us alive for millennia, is the link that exists between breathing and emotion.

Since ancient times, human beings have found in breathing a key to managing their emotions and conquering more objectivity in decision-making. A mechanism to feel more free and self-sufficient.

Philosophical schools, religions, martial arts and other disciplines incorporated techniques and capitalized on that power. Respect for the power of air became present in almost all mythologies, in the form of attributes of deities and grandiose stories.

In Hindu mythology, Parjánya, a figure who represented the hurricane in Vedic times; in ancient Greece, Aeolus, the lord of the winds in the Odyssey and protector of Ulysses; in the Mayan empire, Kukulcán, a divinity friendly to men, who administered the winds; in Norse mythology, Njörd, god of the sea and wind, invoked in storms. And these are just a few examples.

Among the Hindus it is mentioned that we are born with a credit of breaths to consume during life. If we spend them breathing in a hurry, our life time will be shorter. With this belief they strengthen the idea that we should always breathe slowly, deeply, completely and consciously.

With its advances, science supports the claims of ancient philosophies about the need to manage breathing and use it as the baton with which we can conduct our organic harmony.

However -as Professor DeRose explains in the book Respira, the new science of a forgotten art when interviewed by the author, James Nestor-, the most important thing is not only the air: it is the energy, the prána. A force that we can define as any type of energy that manifests itself biologically. An immeasurable source of power that enhances our evolution and allows us to perceive the world and its phenomena with greater objectivity and clarity.

Maybe it's time to observe how you are breathing. Don't forget that every time you breathe in, an opportunity begins.