Email   Print

Share

Don't forget to breathe

Breathetext.com reminds you to take a deep breath, via text.

Photo: istockphoto.com/martinedoucet

Do you sometimes feel a little over-whelmed by life’s pace and uncertainties? Steve St. Clair has an answer: Pause and take a few deep breaths. And because that can be easy to forget, he created a text message service that reminds you of this simple act. St. Clair, a meditation teacher in Salt Lake City, Utah, believes conscious breathing can “be calming and have great value. In general, we as a society have become disconnected from our breath, as evidenced by the shallowness of our breathing, no doubt due to the stress in our daily lives.”

Last year, St. Clair co-founded breathetext.com, a “global community of breathing together.” You can join by texting the word “breathe” to 313131. You’ll get one free text message per day alerting you to take a few deep, cleansing breaths. You can also follow @Breathetext on Twitter. St. Clair stresses that many centuries-old teachings about breath require discipline, time and dedication to make the intake of oxygen something profound and life-changing. He thinks it’s more feasible today to practice something a little bit easier. “Simple as this may sound, such a fundamental form of breathing has the capacity to reconnect individuals to their hearts and cores, thereby creating profound changes in them. And because we are breathing synchronistically, individuals unite with one another and with the larger collective forces at play.”