The world is in a mess, with psychopathological, greed inspired leadership, rampant corruption, misinformation, climate and economic crises, surely we want change not acceptance?

If you were to begin a journey from one place to another several thousand miles away, it is good to prepare. What provisions and resources do you need? What obstacles might you meet on the way? What route could you take? 

You need to know where you are and what you’ve got right now.

If you can't be here, you can't go there.

Acceptance is the beginning of change. It is the starting point, the landing in what is that is needed to progress anywhere. 

Acceptance arises from awareness. It is a function of awareness. 

If we can clearly see and feel how this current situation is without feeling overwhelmed, then we have a place to begin. 

A place to begin is invaluable, because it is from this point of leverage that change and transformation of anything - difficulty, disease, or dysfunction begins. 

If you find yourself always chasing the future and wanting things to be different, then the way to make that difference starts right here, right now - and this is in this moment of acceptance. 

Acceptance isn’t collusion, it’s not saying that what is happening is alright or even agreeable, it is acknowledging how it is, and therefore clearly seeing how it needs to change.  Seeing more clearly, we know where the next step needs to be, we come out of the wishing for difference and start to journey into creating actual difference. 

If you find yourself remembering the past through rose tinted glasses and forgetting how turbulent and difficult it actually was, or conversely, remembering the trauma and turning a blind eye to the beauty - then you were not fully in acceptance. 

Will you do the same with this moment? 

What is your focus like? 

Where is it placed? 

What kind of judgements do we place on what is happening that prevent us actually seeing and feeling what is really happening? 

A prejudicial, filtered or conditional perspective is not acceptance. Acceptance is raw, unfiltered and powerful in its capacity and scope to hold the fullness of what this moment, this place, this space actually holds.  

Authentic acceptance is vast, spacious, open and aware and can hold the paradoxes of polarity effortlessly, agony and ecstasy, simplicity and complexity, light and shadow.

If you find yourself trancing out, numbing out, not really being here, you are not in acceptance. Whether you have disappeared into the TV or screen, or got lost in an addictive state of relationship to something - a substance, activity or experience that promises relief, release or freedom - yet never actually delivers - it simply commands repetitive cycles of ever more engagement with the glitter, the allure of faux freedom, then you are not here, not now, not in acceptance.

So, where are you? 

Wherever you are, start from the base of acceptance and go from here. 

Conscious Breathwork methods, understood and applied intelligently, are incredibly powerful in helping you realise acceptance. 

One of the reasons my core practice of conscious breathwork is the utter tedium of awareness of breathing (mindfulness of breath many call it), is that it offers us the depth of acceptance. It invites presence so deeply that we transform tedium and boredom, evasion and desperation into presence, the sheer joy of this breath, this moment of life, in all its complexity. 

Of course, I teach another one hundred and eight methods of conscious breathwork, yet they all revolve around the power of acceptance. If we are not in acceptance then we use breathwork to get high, to space out, numb or distract ourselves from what is. And so, we begin here - in acceptance. 

My physical practice of the Nagas is a profound practice of being here in the now of the body, in embodied awareness. To fully feel and explore the body as awareness. Remember acceptance is a function of awareness, feeling how the body really is pulls us into acceptance. 

We can overlay dynamic, powerful movements and dominate the body with strong yoga, but can we rest in acceptance. If we can't, then we are simply addicted to movement as a way of dodging presence. 

Acceptance requires our mind to rest, here, now, in this flesh, exactly as it is. 

Acceptance is the first and most important step to powerful change. 

If you want to invite acceptance into your life, and are new to breathwork, then you could start out with the 7-day breath challenge - a gentle introduction to Conscious Breathwork, so that you can implement it into your daily life. Find out more about this short online course here.

For a deeper experience of the immense mind and body benefits of breathwork, check out my newest online course, Conscious Breathwork Level 1 - Breathwork For Beginners. It has pre-recorded video demonstrations of over 20 breath-based practices. This is an incredibly valuable investment into your mental and physical health. It will open your heart to the incredible possibilities that Conscious Breathwork offers - it will change your life.