Many people use vacations as the time when they truly relax. What’s not to love about sun, sand, and stars?

But what if you never needed a vacation? Not because you work all the time and never take time for yourself, but because the feeling of a vacation is always accessible to you?

This is the power of a mindful breath.

A “vacation breath” is simply a breath that focuses on nothing but the breath. Don’t focus on the work you have to do. Don’t focus on the tasks you need to do. Don’t focus on the strategy you need to execute. Instead, release all of that and simply take a deep breath.

It doesn’t matter if it’s the “deepest breath you’ve taken all day” or a regular deep breath. Simply breathe in. Pay attention to the wind you create as you suck in air from your nostrils. When you exhale, exhale like you’ve just come off a thirty-hour flight and you’re glad to have a clean bed waiting for you whenever you’re ready for it.

Don’t expect that you will feel good. Don’t expect that this breath will solve all your problems. It won’t. But it will solve the problem of thinking that there are problems. Just for a moment.

This breath is what leads to everything else that meditation offers a person.

If you can truly release yourself from this world and take a clean, pure breath that holds nothing but you and the breath, you will feel like you’ve just returned from the most restful vacation you’ve ever had.

In order to have that vacation, you have to breathe like you are on one. Imagine the arduous trip for someone living in the United States going to Thailand or Ghana. These places are far away and stressful by the sheer length of the plane ride. So when you finally get to your rental apartment or house, what is the first thing you’re going to do? You’re going to breathe a sigh of relief.

But that sigh of relief is always yours to take. It doesn’t only exist when you are stressed and worried and ready to not do anything. You already have the ability to deeply relax within you at this very moment. And you can always harness that to feel more in touch with the goodness of the world, wherever you are.

So how many seconds do you need to change your life?

Ten should do it.