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Welcome back to the Anxiety Slayer podcast. Before we begin, we'd like to thank all of our new patrons

for supporting us on Patreon. Thank you so so much. Welcome back in Nanga.

Hey Shen! Following on from last Welcome back in Nanga. Hey Shan.

Following on from last week's podcast,

we'll be talking about the benefits of a daily breathing practice for calming general anxiety.

So we'll be looking at the teachings from the ancient sciences of yoga and Irravada that both teach that our mind is really affected by our breath.

When our breathing is fast and shallow as it often is with anxiety and often without

us even noticing it it stirs up our thoughts the more rapid our breathing is the faster

our thoughts are there's a direct link between our thoughts and our breath.

So that's what we're looking at today is described often in Iravada that a calm mind is like a still lake, a still lakes clear and peaceful, the water's clear and it reflects its surroundings, it reflects the sky or the trees around it clearly and that's our aim for a peaceful mind. But when our

thoughts get stirred up by anxiety our mind becomes like a lake that's really

churned up and has all the mud and weeds stretched up from the bottom and mixed in with the water.

It's not clear, it's not calm.

And when our mind gets pushed around by anxiety, that's when it drags up unwanted thoughts.

And those thoughts become mixed up with the things we're trying to think about,

the things we're trying to do with our day and the mind becomes very turbulent.

Well I love this metaphor of the water.

As you know, I'm at the water as often as I possibly can be at Lake Michigan.

...