What would you think if I told you that you have an amazing power within you that can transform your life? I imagine it would be tell me more.
That this power will help you navigate a lot of the challenges of modern life? The ability to get back to sleep after you have woken at 3am? Or to reduce your stress and anxiety? feel more awake AND make you safer on the road?
This magical transformative power is your own breath. You already use it every moment of every day but simply you haven’t activated it’s potential.
For Sonja Montague Mackay, founder of The More Human Company, learning how to utilise your breathing is the foundation of good mental and physical wellbeing. A power she herself had to relearn and undo decades of learned “bad” habits.
In April, Sonja will deliver an NRSPP webinar demonstrating how learning more about the science of breathing and how to activate this superpower will give you the opportunity to improve driver safety. Everything starts with self awareness and we spend a shocking 90% of our time on autopilot.
Learning how to breathe will enhance your self awareness, help you figure out what causes you to lose it and equally important how to return to a baseline of calm focus not distracted irate aggression.
The all too familiar impact of being cut off in traffic, the kids yelling in the back of the car and the pop up of notifications all cause us to stress which impacts our focus which impacts our driving.
Sonja likens learning to utilise your breath to a getting a software upgrade: the operating system is there, it’s just not being utilised to its maximum. The upgrade, in this case however, is not for your computer or smartphone, but the operator.
“I have to go up and down a pretty busy road so I’m constantly scanning the environment ahead and if someone cuts in front of me, of course I jump,” she said. “I have that instant reaction, because that’s a natural physiological response and my body is designed to respond to that threat.
“And we want that reaction to happen, especially for saving our life, but it’s about then gathering yourself otherwise you’re carrying that heightened state of arousal into your driving.
“So you’re stressed out driving, which means you’re not going to be present and aware, which means you’re more likely to have a crash.
“It’s not about not reacting – we’re not robots – but it’s about ‘ok I can’t do anything about that now, let me take a slow deep breath and chill out’. I’ve got to get from A to B so let me be fully present to my driving and not distracted by the jerk who cut me off.”
Click here to register for the webinar: The Secret Road Safety Ingredient That Flies Under The Radar on April 7th at 3pm.