Breathing Tour Day 14 at Sandtown Middle School

 

 

Tracy Baker is positivity embodied. She’s a noble teacher that leads yoga at Sandtown Middle full time.

She shares her intentions and goals with her students and models how to not only begin new habits but how to make them a part of their life.

A new positive habit starts off easy with that first taste of freedom, but eventually resistance creeps in.

Mrs. Baker begins each class with a few moments of rest to get grounded and set their intentions.

When we enact a positive new breathing practice, our brain temporarily floods our body with feel-good neurotransmitters, such as serotonin and dopamine. It’s our brain’s way of giving us a high-five!

We feel more joyful and have more energy. But then, after a few weeks, our neurotransmitters collapse back to their normal output levels. We may not feel as joy-filled.

Could be cause our new, healthy breathing habits are asking our cells to alter their shape. This can bring us down.

But in actuality, our cells are loving it! They’re transforming to accommodate our recalibrated levels of positive mood endorphins. They just need a little more time to reshape themselves. 

Instead of shutting down the new habits when they start to feel unpleasant, we can shift our attitude toward building our patience muscle.  Because if we can breathe through the awkward recalibration time—giving our cells adequate time to catch up with our good intentions—we can gain profound momentum.

We can wash out the groans and moans.

We can feel the resistance, wave to it,  and commit to the new deep breathing habit at the same time.

We don’t dominate our way to breathing free.  We can’t punish our way to joy. We can’t fight our way to inner peace. We can train our mind to follow our heart’s intention. We can let our creativity run free.

Thank you Tracy Baker and Sandtown Middle for a  brain balancing, self-esteem boosting, rhythmically intelligent deep breathing practice.

Thank you for showing us how to have presence with such love. How to have boundaries without barriers. How to be aware of yourself as well as your students. How to have empathy when stuff comes up.

Thank you Wally of Kelley Sue Photography for capturing the practice.