How to practice the Sun Salutations.

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Yoga by Rebecca Kemp. Words by Michael Townsend Williams. Music by Katie Elliott. Film by Andrew Kemp. [3 mins]

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One round of Sun Salutation consists of two sequences, the first leading with the right foot in positions 4 and 9, the second leading with the left.

Keep your hands in one place from positions 3 to 10 and try to co-ordinate your movements with your breathing.

Start by practising four rounds and gradually build up to twelve rounds.

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1. Exhale

Stand with feet together and hands in the prayer position in front of your chest. Make sure your weight is evenly distributed.

2. Inhale

Stretch your arms up and arch back from the waist, pushing the hips out, legs straight.

Relax your neck.

3. Exhale

Fold forward, and press your palms down, fingertips in line with toes – bend your knees if necessary.

4. Inhale

Bring the left (or right) leg back and place the knee on the floor. Arch back and look up, lifting your chin.

5. Retain

Hold the breath, bring the other leg back and support your weight on hands and toes.

6. Exhale

Lower your knees, then your chest and then your forehead, keeping your hips up and your toes curled under.

7. Inhale

Lower your hips, point your toes and bend back. Keep legs together and shoulders down. Look up and back.

8. Exhale

Curl your toes under, raise your hips and pivot into an inverted ‘V’ shape. Try to push your heels and head down and keep your shoulders back.

9. Inhale

Step forward and place the left (or right) foot between your hands. Rest the other knee on the floor and look up, as in position 4.

10. Exhale

Bring the other leg forward and bend down from the waist, keeping your palms as in position 3.

11. Inhale

Stretch your arms forward, then up and back over your head and bend back slowly from the waist, as in position 2.

12. Exhale

Gently come back to an upright position and bring your arms down by your sides.

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Why not synchronise your breathing to 6 breaths per minute with our Do Breathe Now video?

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Awareness of our breath connects us to the way we move, the way we think, and the way we feel.

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The way we breathe reflects the way we live.

Breathing is the only system in the body that works both unconsciously and, at the same time, can be consciously controlled. We can breathe away stress. We can breathe our minds into focus. We can breathe ourselves into the present moment.

Or, we can use our breath to exaggerate our stress response and make things even worse—and let’s be honest, we’ve all done that!

Stress makes us do things that don’t serve us and stops us doing things that nourish us. It makes us say things we don’t mean to those closest to us, and ruins the most precious of moments.

And yet, we have the most advanced stress-reduction technology in the world with us whenever we need it. Not our phones, our breath.

Listen to your breath. It will tell you when you need to refocus or rest. Unlike your mind, it only has one agenda, to look after you the best it can. Make your breath your constant companion and it really will be your best friend forever.

Here are some practical ways to breathe yourself better every day.

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“To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist and poet

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Relax.

Breathe like a baby. Babies are the best breathers. They haven’t learnt any bad habits yet and they use their physiology efficiently, as nature intended. As such, they breathe from their bellies, which is 20 per cent more energy efficient. They breathe through their noses.

They breathe out longer to calm down.

Try it now:

1. Breathe in from the belly through the nose to a count of four.

2. Breathe out from the belly through the nose to a count of six.

3. Repeat until you feel just right.

Breathing at this rhythm of six breaths per minute has been shown to optimize the impact on your physiology.

Watch the video and relax.

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Balance.

Simple, alternate nostril breathing balances the flow of the breath from one nostril to the other, creating focus and harmony. Use your right hand to open and close the nostrils, using the thumb on the right nostril and the ring finger on the left one. (Tip: fold the index and middle fingers into the palm of your hand.) Research in India has also shown a connection with the healthy functioning of the autonomic nervous system. 

Try it now:

1. Close the right nostril and exhale completely out the left.

2. Inhale through the left nostril to a count of 4.

3. Exhale through the right nostril to a count of 6.

4. Inhale through the right nostril.

5. Exhale through the left nostril.

6. Continue as above for a few minutes.

Watch the video and rebalance.

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Focus.

Our attention spans are decreasing. We are finding it harder and harder to focus. Goldfish have attention spans of around nine seconds. Sadly, according to the New York Times, humans now have only eight.

Luckily we can regain control of the ability to focus better. Simply counting breaths can train your mind to not only pay more attention but also to recover faster from distractions, and before you know it you will be in a state of meditation without even trying to be.

Find a quiet spot and try this:

1. Count both your inhalations and exhalations from 40 down to 20.

2. Count just your exhalations from 20 down to zero.

3. Just follow your breath for a few minutes.

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Pause.

The states of our mind and our breath are linked. At the end of our in-and-out breaths there are little pauses. Slightly lengthen them. Notice them. Observe what happens in your mind. As your breath stills, so does your mind.

Next time you find your mind racing, notice these gaps.

Finding some mental space can help you move on more clearly. Why not use these natural pauses to also remind you to take more breaks in your day?

Research shows that people who take regular short breaks of around 15 minutes every hour are more productive than those who just keep going.

Watch the video and pause.

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Energy.

We can go days without food, hours without water but only minutes without breath. Breathing is our main source of energy.

However, when we face a big challenge, need courage or are in a period of mental or physical recovery, we probably need some really deep breaths. Don’t forget to completely exhale though, as if no matter how much you breath in, without that long exhale you will not be using your breath to your full capacity.

1. Breathe in to a count of six from the belly, to the chest and above.

2. Breathe out slowly with control to a count of 12.

3. Practice three rounds.

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“Our breath is perhaps the greatest connector of all. It connects us to our planet. When we breathe out, plants breathe in. Our breath connects our bodies with our minds – when we slow down, we think better.”

Michael Townsend Williams, from Do Breathe: Calm Your Mind. Find Focus. Get Stuff Done.

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A collaboration with lululemon in Europe & Asia

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A day of breathing yourself better.

What would your day be like if you made every breath just a little bit better?

Try this:

When you wake-up:

Get up! Sit up on your bed. Take 10 deep mindful breaths from the belly.

Breakfast:

Sit down to eat. Close your eyes and take one deep breath being thankful for the food in front of you.

On the way to work:

Practice counting your breaths to train your attention.

In your first meeting:

Close your eyes and do three guided breaths together with your colleagues. It will bring you closer together, and that’s always good for business.

At lunchtime:

Sit somewhere away from your desk and preferably outside (weather permitting). Close your eyes and eat your first mouthful slowly, savouring the flavours and textures. Now take one mindful breath with awareness.

Afternoon tea:

Stopping is often the most productive thing you can do. Give your mind a rest. Create your own tea ceremony. Take time. Make it beautiful. And breathe…

With friends:

Give someone a big hug. Heart to heart. Hold them a little longer. Breathe with them. Really feel being with them. Look into their eyes and smile.

Before bed:

Sit for a few minutes. Let the thoughts of the day come and go. Return to your breath. How does it feel? If you have trouble sleeping, breathe like a baby and you might also sleep like one.

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Turn off the internet :)

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Stress and anxiety are often caused by a lack of organisation.

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Michael Townsend Williams has a 4-step plan.

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“Anxiety is caused by a lack of control, organisation, preparation, and action.”

David Kekich

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We all like to think that the stress and anxiety in our lives is due to outside influences. Sometimes the whole world appears to conspire against us. The causes can be money, or the lack of it, our jobs, our partners, our children … the weather, the train, the traffic … our declining health, our computers, our phones … you get the idea. To paraphrase Jean-Paul Sartre, ‘Stress is other people!’

However true this may appear to be, we don’t exactly help ourselves. We hop from task to task. We say yes when we mean to say no. We can’t find things when we need them. We forget appointments. We use our email inbox as our to-do list. We use our email inbox as our filing system. We can’t stop checking Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Medium, Tumblr, Google+ … OK, maybe not all of them. We get buzzes and beeps from our phones, our computers, our ovens and our dishwashers. Life itself seems to be out of control. Although the truth is that you are the one out of control.

One of the most powerful motivators for me was the clarity and peace of mind that comes from being better organised. Our minds are not designed to hold the amount of information that we expect them to cope with. Neuroscientists refer to our ability to hold stuff in our working memory as ‘cognitive load’. When we overdo it we get ‘information overload’ — we can’t think clearly, make poor decisions, feel stressed and the quality of our breathing drops.

‘But creative people thrive on chaos!’ I hear you say. ‘Organisation is for boring people.’ ‘I haven’t got time to get organised.’ ‘One day I will earn enough so I can pay someone else to do all this stuff.’

I know where you’re coming from. I too held these beliefs until one day I got so fed up with living in a state of stress, anxiety and not getting stuff done, I decided to learn how.

No one teaches us the art of doing. We are thrown in the deep end at school, somehow avoid drowning in university or college, and end up splashing wildly through our working lives. The emphasis is on results, not on how you get there. The solutions to our chaos are sold to us in the form of books, apps, filing systems and beautifully designed stationery and bespoke pens and pencils. And we consume them avidly. Alas, they offer only temporary respite. Because the only solution to us being disorganised is getting organised!

So if you are reluctantly accepting that it’s you who might need to change, you are on the right track. And it’s not only about doing more — by learning the art of doing you will also discover the art of being too. The following is a simplified approach that I have implemented personally and coached many others in. It is not a complete guide, but will give you enough to be getting on with.

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Care about what you Do.

The simple framework that I use is to ‘C-A-R-E’ about what you do:

Collect

Arrange Ÿ

Reflect

Execute

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1 - Collect your stuff

At present you probably have two or three email accounts, post arriving at home and at work, messages on your phone, messages on social media, voicemails on your mobile and your home phone (if you still have one), documents on your desk, scribbles on a notebook (or several), a pad with an important phone number (somewhere), business cards and receipts in your wallet, a draft presentation outline in your laptop case with notes from your last meeting, notes on your phone’s notes app, photos of things you think are cool and oh so many brilliant ideas in your head.

So let’s start the process by creating a simpler way of gathering new inputs into your life:

• Get all your email into one inbox

• Have one physical in-tray at home and one at work

• Carry a mobile in-tray (I like a zippy mesh folder thing)

• Have one notebook

• Use one app on your phone to collect stuff

• Now turn off all notifications — yes, that’s right, all of them (OK, we’re all allowed one exception). No more badge icons on your phone with 2,000 unread emails, 43 missed calls, 17 Facebook alerts, 62 unread ‘read later’ articles.

No more vibrations. No more beeps. No more unnecessary interruptions.

Seize back control. You decide where your attention goes. You are in charge. If people you work with don’t like it tell them that you are doing it so that you can work, create and think better, and if they have a problem with that maybe they need to change! Get tough.

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2 - Arrange it systematically

It is very common that people on a mission to get organised get good at getting tidy but fail to maintain things. The reason is they don’t make decisions about it or have a systematic way of going about it. If you follow the simple process below with all the inputs in your life, all the time, it becomes a habit. You won’t need to remember what to do or even think about it — it becomes your way.

There are different ways you can keep track of your actions, make to-do lists and set up reference files. The key is to find a system that works for you, and stick to it. You’ll see that things will quickly become clearer, both in your outside world and in your mind.

You can download your own mini guide to The Art of Welldoing here.

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3 - Reflect on your workload

Every day look at your diary, your to-do lists and your email actions folder before you go looking for more work in your inbox. This simple reordering of how you start your day at the computer will put your agenda first.

Every week spend at least an hour having a meeting with yourself. Get your physical and email inboxes clear. Run through your commitments — your to-do lists, your projects, your diary for the next two weeks. And give yourself some time to look at the bigger picture, and review your goals and project plans. Does anything in your life need rebalancing? Are you working towards something that really matters to you?

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4 - Execute!

Once your mind is clear and your actions are clear you can do what needs to be done with a lot less friction. You don’t need to think twice. You just need to do. Although it can take time to set up, once you have a system in place your work, your mind and your breath will work a lot more smoothly.

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Adapted from Do Breathe: Calm your mind. Find focus. Get stuff done. by Michael Townsend Williams. Available as Paperback, Audiobook and eBook.

You can buy the book here.

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