May Your Exhale Be Longer Than Your Inhale
This year I picked up gentle yoga.
Although I’ve been practicing for six years, for the last two, I’ve been more accustomed to heated yoga. Practice that challenges you physically. Strenuous yoga (an oxymoron if I ever heard one). However, through gentle yoga I’ve learned the art of slowing down.
My yoga instructor said something last week thatβs been echoing in my mind ever since:
βMake sure your exhale is longer than your inhale.β
When she said that, it sounded simple enough, but I felt something in me release. It was one of those messages that lands softly but resonates deeply. It summarized a chapter I just closed. Because if Iβm being honest, Iβve been “inhaling” A LOT – planning, strategizing, fixing, building β rarely giving myself the chance to just…be, and let go.
The inhale has always come naturally to me. I know how to take things on, I *thrive* under pressure. Responsibility, ambition, complicated to-do lists. I know how to create, organize, and execute. But the exhale β the surrender, the softness, the stillness β thatβs where Iβve struggled.
This week, I was reminded of why itβs necessary.
The Week of Letting Go
I had plans this weekend to go to Baltimore for an esthetician appointment I booked months ago. After that, Atlanta for two weeks. I had flights booked, appointments scheduled, outfits packed. Even through exhaustion I kept moving, staying up until 3 AM to pack after a long work day. But when I woke up Saturday morning to head to the airport, something in my spirit told me to stop.
Lately, Iβve been juggling so much β managing my full-time job, Roze Gold (my marketing agency), preparing to launch Concrete Roze (sign up for our email list if you haven’t already, we’re launching on 10/27!), staying consistent with content creation, trying to keep up with my routines, and somehow finding time for rest at least 6 hours a night. Iβve been doing all the βrightβ things, conquering my to-do lists, but somewhere in the busyness…I started holding my breath.
So I canceled everything. I didn’t even care about the money lost on hotels, appointments or schedules. What I was gaining, a gentle pause before another busy season, silence, PEACE meant way more to me than that. I chose stillness over schedule.
And in the pause I realized: You canβt receive peace if you never make space for it.
The Lesson in the Breath
Breathing is essential in the practice of yoga. Where there is breath, there is life. Your exhale is what calms your body, slows your heart, and signals that youβre safe.
My instructorβs words β βMake sure your exhale is longer than your inhaleβ β suddenly felt less like guidance for my breathing and more like guidance for my life.
Because this season has been testing me in quiet ways. Iβve been holding on to things β expectations, disappointments, resentments β that only made it harder to breathe. And when you live in a constant inhale, you start confusing control for care.
Emotionally, I finally decided if it was too much to carry, then it canβt come with me into this new season. So I put it all down.
The inhale is where I take things on.
The exhale is where I gave myself permission to let them go.
The Inhale I Inherited
As Iβve been preparing to launch Concrete Roze β a brand built to honor my dadβs legacy β I canβt help but laugh at how much Iβve become like him. I used to always tell him, βDonβt stress. Itβs not that serious.β
Back then, I probably had no idea how heavy things mustβve felt for him. How hard he was on himself. How much he carried quietly because he never made time to exhale.
Now here I am, his daughter β carrying big dreams, juggling ten things at once, telling myself to βpush throughβ when my body and spirit are begging for rest.
And in this full-circle way, I realize that this brand β his legacy and mine β is teaching me the very thing he never got to master: the art, the LUXURY, of slowing down, moving at my own pace, breathing through the pressure, and trusting that itβs all unfolding as it should.
This Is My Exhale Era
Lately, Iβve been moving quietly β not because nothing is happening, but because everything is. Between building Concrete Roze, finalizing the website, and preparing to share something that carries so much of my heart, my purpose, and my history, Iβve realized that peace can be loud in its own way. Thereβs a kind of power in not rushing to prove your growth β in just being it.
So if youβre reading this, I pray this Sunday, this week, this last quarter of the year becomes your exhale.
As you make space for the new, itβs absolutely necessary to put some things down. You don’t have to carry them any longer.
You deserve love. You deserve joy. You deserve care.
And I hope youβre giving that to yourself, too.
Because peace doesnβt just happen.
You have to breathe your way into it. Literally, and figuratively.
So, Iβm letting myself feel it all β the grief, the gratitude, the growing pains. By the time this next chapter begins, I just want to be light enough to receive it.
Because sometimes the biggest shifts donβt make noise. They just make room.
May your exhale be longer than your inhale.
