In 2016, I was given an opportunity by Wirral Life magazine to begin highlighting the power of the breath and its role in improving health and creating wellness.

Hopefully, some of you will have felt the benefits and now appreciate how nature and the breath used correctly, really is pharmacy-free medicine.

For the remainder of you and the magazine’s flourishing new audience, whether you were born with a condition that affects your breathing or you subsequently developed one over time, have you thought about a resolution for the remainder of this year to breathe better?

Irrespective of you acknowledging or not, how your breathing affects your mood, your health and everyday life, how about treating yourself to some more calm, relaxation and energy in 2017 because that’s exactly what the breathing techniques that Reset Breathing will give you.

We work with companies and organisations as well as offering individual breathing re-training.

In our workshops, we regularly cite how practice of these techniques known as Buteyko, are a really powerful tool in combatting everyday stress in the workplace as well as the home.

When we’re feeling stuck or under pressure to make an important decision quickly, it’s perfectly natural to react from a place of fear or to become too easily overwhelmed.

Setting intentions and breathing consciously for a few minutes each day can help us break those habits of the mind that hold us back. Just to emphasise, it is literally a few minutes each day.

For example, you may have received an email that really upset you and you were about to reply with a harsh response. Everyone knows the phrase ‘and breathe’ but we take advice that a little step further.

Try taking yourself off for a twenty minute breather as soon as possible before replying to an email like that.

Stay with the emotion that’s in your body, feel it and breathe through it, very gently and silently through the nose and tummy, not analysing the situation but just staying present with your breath and feeling that emotion. Enjoy the calmness and the different perspective that appears.

It’s highly likely you’ll want to step away from the drama and calmly reply asking not to be forced into making a choice or decision.

The mind is like water. Sometimes it’s still and calm like a beautiful lake. Throw in a pebble (a thought) and we create a little ripple. At other times, it can be a murky, stormy, rough sea. When it settles, it becomes clear again.

As Bruce Lee once said: “Be like water making its way through the cracks…do not be assertive but adjust to the object and you shall find a way around or through it. Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless like water my friend.”

Joel Jelen is a highly experienced and qualified Buteyko breathing re-trainer. He is a fellow & board director of Buteyko Professionals International and the International Academy of Breathing & Health. He is also their retained UK & Ireland PR adviser.