Close your eyes (after reading this e-mail) and inhale deeply.
Take the breath all the way down to your belly. Blow all the stale air out. Repeat. Again. Again.
Why not once more? Feel better yet? If not, try again.
Breathe energy in, blow anxiety and stress out.
One of the reasons breathing is such an important discipline in yoga is that through the breath, our involuntary physiological responses and our voluntary choices meet. Like the heart, the lungs keep working whether we pay attention to them or not. Like the muscles of our arm, however, we can tune and choose how the breath will move. The heart won't slow down because we ask it to. The arm won't move without our intention. In breathing, however, both involuntary and voluntary responses are joined, or yoked together--and "Yoke" and "Yoga" come from the same linguistic root. Yoga means "union."

Another good reason to breathe deep? To clean the smoke out of your lungs. Tomorrow is the Great American Smokeout. Even if you don't intend to quit for good on this day, at least take the day (or one cigarette) off. Even one less cigarette immediately improves your blood pressure and reduces your risk (a tiny bit) for all of those nasty, lingering, extremely painful deadly diseases smokers get.