Breath And Balance
The ChangeMaker’s program, ‘Respira/Equilibra’ (Breath & Balance) is designed to provide young women with physical and mental techniques to help them manage their emotional responses to life’s events as they pursue their goals. It is offered as a tool for self mastery or, to begin with, self control.
The program meets them right where they are in life, as they are at an age where emotions can often place them in positions of vulnerability. This is a time when they need guidance to develop their own coping and thriving skills for finding their place in the adult world.
Investing time in the program should help equip them with a poise and balance that comes from having developed a stronger, fitter body and from processing information from a calm center of self.
There is a large body of information from professionally conducted studies on the value of body work for good psychological and mental health.
The evidence supports the usefulness of a mind-body practice to help anyone increase their ability to understand their own emotional state and to intuit the emotional states of others.
Being able to modulate the effect that all emotions, negative and positive, can have on a person’s decision-making process and actions can lead to a higher level of success in all aspects of life.
The main focus of this program is working with the breath, as most of us were never taught to breathe correctly. The breath work is supported by physical balancing, strengthening and stretching poses, most drawn from yoga postures.
Supplying the girls with basic knowledge of physical anatomy, centering techniques like meditation and mental practices to build self-esteem and self-love will also be integral parts of the program.
These postures, breathing exercises and mental techniques will draw from a number of global traditions for higher human development but yoga will be the primary wellspring.
Others will include a Japanese technique called Jin Shin Jyutsu, which is not a martial art and Tibetan breath work, affirmations and physical endurance tasks. Each session will end with relaxation/meditation/goal visualization techniques.
An ultimate measure of the usefulness of the program will be if, in the future, the young women craft their own version of the body and breath work from the program and continue practicing it as a essential tool for achieving their goals, long after their participation in Respira/Equilibra has ended.