I'm moving my site over to a php-based server again. I'm using laravel. I love it and I'm really happy with the results this time. But I haven't rebuilt my box breathing page yet. I just started it a few minutes ago. It's going to be extremely simple. I'm just going to do it with a CSS animation.
Box breathing is extremely powerful. The last animation I had made a note about Navy seals. It turns out Navy seals use box breathing to control their reactions, their stress, their excitement so that they can perform better in the field. Well that's good enough for me. If a Navy SEAL can use that technique to their advantage, so can I
I've used it many many times in the last few years. I found that it pushes my emotional state back to zero. Not zero in a bad sense, but zero in a neutral sense. It doesn't make me happy. It doesn't make me excited. It takes away my excitement. It takes away my nervousness. It takes away my sadness, believe it or not. I consider it to be a kind of emotional reset, and it helps me in many situations.
The big problem is remembering to use it. Now there's also a problem with my box breathing page. The problem is that you become dependent on it. You think that you need to be looking at the animation and breathing along with it in order to do the technique. You don't. You can just breathe and count silently or even go by feel. On the other hand if you use the animation it certainly makes it easier. It's one nice thing to think about.
But remembering to read to use this technique is the hard part. That's where I think mindfulness meditation might come in handy for many people. Mindfulness meditation is a way of helping you become aware of the mood while you're in it. I was speaking with my son a few weeks ago and I came upon a realisation. As I talk to him the words came out of me. You're often happy and you don't know it. Then afterwards you realise that you were happy. This is often the case with other emotions too. When you're in the middle of the emotion you're not aware of it.
That awareness is really really important to all of us. It helps us to regulate our emotions. You can realise that you're getting too excited, too nervous, too sad, or some other emotions. I think the two techniques, mindfulness and box breathing can work superbly together. I've also found that box breathing helps me become more focused. Because I've detached away from my emotional state I have a certain amount of freedom and I can use that freedom or that space, to enhance my focus.
So anyway I should have the box breathing page up soon.