The power of breath: I killed 5 flies yesterday.

I killed five flies yesterday with the power of my breath! But not how you think.

Our new house--I don't know what it is, but whenever my kids leave the back door open, flies come in. Yesterday I had six flies in the house. It was an irritation to be sure. I was not having any success with killing them.

But then I had an idea of how to harness my yogic power of breath to kill the flies--and I'll get to that in a minute. First, I need to back up.

A few days ago, my computer was having some struggles. Really, it was the internet. One page just wouldn't load. It was taking forever. At first I got frustrated, but then I thought: I'll use this time to practice my yogic breathing.

So I took the deepest breath I could breathe, so deep that my lungs were fully, entirely full, and--wouldn't you know it, the page loaded right as I reached the pinnacle of my breath.

A few minutes later, another page had trouble loading, and so I decided to continue my deep breathing exercise. I inhaled, inhaled, inhaled, and--just as I reached the pinnacle of my breath, the page loaded.

This actually happened two more times and then I noticed the pattern.

It was evening time and my little baby was having trouble settling down. He has a difficult time transitioning and transferring in his sleep. I went upstairs right after this and got him back into a restful state--but usually after I comfort him, if I leave, he just starts fussing again. So this time I tried my yogic breathing and breathed as deeply as I could--

And can you believe it? He made one fussy sound and was out. That was it.

This has been replicable. I have been experimenting with it for several days now.

Now as my children have their big emotions, I envision myself breathing them all in, and then processing those emotions for them on the exhale. But as I inhale very, very completely, it feels as if things are actually changing.

Seriously, try this with your computer when your internet is slow, try it with your fussy baby and whiny children. I have been very surprised.

But back to the flies--

Yesterday, I reached my limit. I pulled out the flyswatter. I thought: tonight is the night. You suckers are going down.

I tried a few times to swat one, and failed. And then I remembered the power of breath with getting my kid to stay asleep and getting the internet to load. So I inhaled, inhaled, inhaled, until my lungs were bursting--and then BAM! Swatted the fly.

Totally got him.

Then, totally got four more of them. Only one of them took multiple tries. It was because that one was on the ceiling and I was at a bad angle and also am short.

But seriously: I went from killing no flies and having it be seriously hard, to killing several of them in the course of a few minutes. At one point I had ten minutes to go before an appointment, but I just thought: I'll see how many I can kill in ten minutes. Totally got three of them. WHILE I WAS ON THE PHONE at one point. It blew my mind. I was stunned and overjoyed. Ah.

Experiment with the power of your breath today!! Inhale as deeply as possible in the moments where you need an extra something. Extra agility to kill an overabundance of houseflies, extra patience when your internet is taking forever to load, extra whatever to deal with the fussy kids. Then report back here in the comments because I am so interested to hear anyone else's stories about this technique. Love!!