The goodness of suffering is something real. Without suffering there cannot be happiness.  Thich Nhat Hanh

Your breathing can tell you a lot about how you’re doing emotionally.

When you’re angry, for example, your breath tends to become shorter, shallower, and sharper.

Changing the way you breath in that moment can have an immediate impact, helping to settle an agitated mind.

Sit up tall and place one hand over your heart and the other on your navel.

Gently deepen your breathing allowing your hands to move away from each other slightly as you inhale and a little closer as you exhale.

Now count silently to four for the length of the inhale. See if you can exhale to the same count.

Be patient. It can be challenging to lengthen your exhale.

After a few repetitions, you’ll probably find it easier.

Continue for 10 breaths – four counts in, four counts out.

Then pause, relax your hands in your lap, and breathe naturally.

How do you feel?

Just a few moment of shifting your breathing toward space and ease may help to shift your mind.

Next time you feel the heat and tightness of anger, try this pattern and see what happens.

Taken from REAL Simple, April 2015

We are not human beings trying to become spiritual; we are already spiritual beings, and we are just trying and needing to become human for one another. Richard Rohr

Meister Eckhart (1260-1328) said that to be poor in spirit is to “know nothing, want nothing, and have nothing.”

Some morning thoughts from Rainer Maria Rilke…

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.”