You have been carrying things that were never yours to carry: someone else's mood, someone else's choice, the weight of how another person sees you. This breath-led practice sets those things down, one long exhale at a time, releasing the mood, the choice, and the judgment that were never yours, and returning you to the one thing that truly is your own.
Best for: anyone who absorbs other people's emotions, takes on responsibility that isn't theirs, or feels weighed down by others' opinions.
Use it when: you're holding someone else's bad mood as if it were your fault, you can't let go of a choice that wasn't yours to make, a person's judgment is sitting on you like a verdict, or you need to set down what isn't yours.
How it helps: by the end your hands feel empty and your chest open, the borrowed weight has fallen away on the breath, and you return to your own steady rhythm. You tend to what is yours, and let others tend to theirs.
A roughly ten-minute guided breathing meditation in a calm voice over gentle ambient sound, from The Silent Ember Letting go collection.