Tag: breathing

Emotional turbulence

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What a difference a couple of weeks can make. When I last wrote about the stress of COVID-19, it was becoming a source of anxiety, but it felt remote, still at a distance for most of us. We were still going to work, shaking hands and enjoying restaurants and movies. Now it has completely upended the lives of virtually every American. I can hear birds chirping outside my window in the springlike weather, but theirs is the only sound of cheerfulness I hear.

Underlying all the busyness of reorganizing the home office, figuring out how to use Zoom meetings, and shopping for bleach is a current of fear and uncertainty. We know it’s only a matter of time before we, or someone we love, is diagnosed with the virus. We have no idea how long we will be confined to this circumscribed existence. We’re unsure how far out to cancel our plans. Even as I type this, I can feel the knot tightening in my stomach.Take me away

Today I was flipping through Thich Nhat Hanh‘s book, “Fear.” He writes that, “If you are truly present and know how to take care of the present moment as best you can, you are doing your best for the future already,” and won’t lose “yourself to anxiety and uncertainty.” What can any of us do right now except do our best one day at a time, trying to protect and be present for the people who need us?

In an email today, Michael O’Donnell (CEO of the Art & Science of Health Promotion Institute) wrote that, “We need to enhance our social embrace while we increase our physical distance” from others. Yes, we may be physically confined to our homes, but reaching out socially and emotionally is more important than ever. My daughter and I have been writing longer emails to each other and spending more time talking on the phone than usual. My husband is calling his siblings more often. I’m trying to spend more time on the phone with my elderly mother as well, because she’s even more isolated than the rest of us. None of it feels like quite enough, but I’m taking care of the present moment as best I can.

Living by yourself at this time can be lonely, but living with others is challenging too. With some of us laid off and others working from home, it can feel like no one has quite the amount of space they are used to. Good communication and some ground rules about privacy, workspace, and household obligations can help, as can patience and a sense of humor. While the first few days together were pretty stressful, I’m beginning to sense a new rhythm to life in my home as we all settle in to our revamped routines.

Here are some other things I’m doing to manage fear, loneliness & boredom:

  • Practicing belly breathing – placing hands on the belly and taking slow, deep breaths while focusing on the rise and fall of the abdomen.
  • Using online classes for yoga. Yogaglo will give you a 14-day free trial.
  • Guided meditation using phone apps like Mindfulness Coach, Headspace or Calm.
  • Reading! If you haven’t already, sign up for digital downloads from the library.
  • Limiting news viewing to certain times of the day.
  • Checking in with friends and relatives regularly. Funny emojis bring a smile.
  • DIY projects – organizing photos, doing something crafty, finally tackling home repairs.
  • Playing board games or putting together puzzles. The old-fashioned games with real pieces, like Monopoly, dominoes or chess pieces are great. The tactile stimulation helps with your nervous energy.
  • Taking regular walks outside – there are so few people out that it is easy to keep your distance in most places. Nature is known to be a wonderful antidote to stress.

If nothing else good comes out of this pandemic, perhaps it’s a way to remind all of us what is most important in life and what is unnecessary. Until we get there, let’s care for each other and remember to be compassionate to ourselves and others.

Take care.

 

 

Use the breath during times of change

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The fall equinox is always a time of change, whether it’s as simple as putting on warmer clothes or as challenging as starting a new school or a different job. This year many people have had even greater hurdles in September, as they have been hit with hurricanes, floods, fires and devastating earthquakes. Although there are plenty of stories about people bouncing back, rebuilding and starting anew, the reality often is that people struggle a great deal, and for a long time. This can have a ripple effect on overall well-being.

Whether we’re dealing with a change we’ve chosen or a change that has been thrust upon us, we usually do best by utilizing both problem-focused, actionable strategies, as well as emotion-focused methods for reducing anxiety. One of the most accessible ways to calm anxiety is with the breath. Recently I did an online yoga practice called “Metamorphosis” with teacher Claire Missingham. As we relaxed into the practice, she said,  “Let your breath begin to soothe you.” Even though I use breathing techniques a lot when I am stressed or anxious, I had never framed it as self-soothing. But I realized that, of course, that’s really exactly what it is. So what follows are some of my favorite breathing practices (I’ve tried to give credit where it’s due).

“Don’t forget to breathe”

In the 1985 movie, “Follow That Bird“, Grover gives Big Bird a piece of advice as he is leaving Sesame Street. “Don’t forget to breathe,” he says, “in and out.” Sometimes when anxiety strikes, the first that happens is that the breath gets shallow, or we even hold our breath. So the best way to start any breath practice is just to notice your natural breathing, in and out.

“Letting Yourself be Breathed”

Do this while lying on your back:

1. Close your eyes, letting your arms rest alongside your body and focus your attention on the breath without trying to influence it.
2. Imagine that with each inhalation, the universe is blowing breath into you and with each exhalation, withdrawing it. Imagine yourself passively receiving the breath. As the universe breathes into you, let yourself feel the breath penetrating every part of your body, even your fingers and toes.
3. Try to hold this imagination for ten cycles of exhalation and inhalation.

(Recommended for once a day. Adapted from Andrew Weil)

universe

4 – 7 – 8 Breathing

This is particularly good for relaxing before you go to sleep at night:

1. Close your eyes, relax your jaw, and rest the tip of your tongue on the roof of your mouth just above your top teeth.

2. Take one or two deep breaths to start.

3. Now begin counting as you breathe: Inhale to the count of 4, hold the breath for a count of 7, then exhale slowly for a count of 8.

4. Repeat this 4-7-8 sequence three or four times.

(Recommended for once a day. Adapted from Andrew Weil, 8 Weeks to Optimal Health)

Alternate Nostril Breathing

Balances the nervous system. Hillary Clinton says she used this technique after the election.

1. Sit comfortably with eyes open or closed.
2. Use the thumb and forefinger to alternate closing off one nostril at a time.
3. Beginning with an exhalation, use the thumb to close off one nostril. Keep it closed off as you take your next inhalation.
4. Then release the thumb and press the opposite nostril closed with your forefinger as you exhale. Inhale through the same nostril, then switch the finger and thumb again.
5. Continue alternating from one nostril to another in exhale-inhale cycles for as long as it feels comfortable.

(Adapted from Olpin & Hesson)

Anti-Stress Breathing

Sit comfortably as you would for meditation:

1. If you would like to use a “mudra”, touch the tips of your pinkie fingers and thumbs together, while keeping the other fingers on each hand together but not touching the opposite hand.
2. Close your eyes or focus on the tip of your nose.
3. Inhale deeply through the mouth, and then exhale through the nose. Then inhale through the nose and exhale through the mouth.
4. Continue with this alternating pattern for several minutes.

just breathe

 

How to use a billion breaths

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If there is an art to breathing, Jill O’Bryan has made a career of it. Since 2000, the NY artist has focused on a series of drawings based on capturing her own breaths over periods of time. Along the way, she has calculated that in a 97-year lifetime, she would breathe a billion breaths. To celebrate longevity and a life well-lived, she has created a piece that has been installed outside the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.DSCN3750

When you walk by “One Billion Breaths in a Lifetime,” you’re invited to complete the art by gazing at your own reflection in the polished chrome of the letters. Reflection, not just of your face, but of your life, feels called for. If we each have around a billion breaths, how will we use them?

Do you take a breath to say words of love, or to say words of hate?   Do you take a breath to whisper a secret or to shout a curse? To slow your heart or to fuel your passion?  The breath is something that we take for granted, and yet it is the first thing we wait to hear when a baby is born, and the last thing we look for when a person dies.

We can use our breaths in so many positive ways:

To sing a song

To laugh out loud

To whistle a tune

To blow bubbles with a child

To blow out candles on a cake

To blow a kiss to someone

To warm our hands

To say a prayer

To run a marathon

To release tension in the body

To ease our pain

To help us sleep

Yet much of the time modern life works against us, and we subconsciously inhibit our natural breathing rhythm. Our breaths are shallow and tense as we wait for traffic to move, or as we practice the angry words we are waiting to say to someone. Compare that tight feeling to the relaxation that occurs after you use your breath for a big, unrestrained belly laugh. When was the last time you laughed that way?

The breath is so important in the yogic tradition that we have an entire practice, pranayama, for learning how to control the breath, or life force. Focusing on the breath, especially to deepen it and slow it down, is the best way to get in touch with our autonomic nervous systems and to counter the effects of stress and anxiety. Because the breath links the body and mind, it can be useful at those times when body and mind are discordant. Thich Nhat Hanh suggests focusing on the in and out of breathing to bring them back together again: “Breathing in, I know that I am breathing in…Breathing out, I know that I am breathing out.” In, out, in, out, in, out – until the mind and body are unified and peaceful once again.

The idea of a billion also represents abundance, but we know all too well that something that is plentiful is often wasted. We even have an expression, “Don’t waste your breath,” and although it means something different, it’s good advice to follow. At 12-16 breaths per minute, even one billion breaths don’t last forever. We have no choice but to breathe — we cannot hold onto our breaths, or save them for some unknown future purpose. We can only soften our grip and choose each day how we will make the most of them.DSCN3754

Seeking a muse

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Where does inspiration come from? A stray word overheard on the street, a beautiful view, an ironic piece of art, serendipity? Should we seek inspiration or let it come to us?Lake Como_373

All week, I’ve been suffering from a bad case of writer’s block. I don’t know if it is a result of boredom, going on vacation for a week,  or waiting for a spring that never seems to arrive. Sometimes I think it has something to do with the loss of my yoga teacher (no, he didn’t die, just stopped teaching for a while). He would often say something simple in class that would set me off on some whimsical train of thought. Whatever the cause of the barrier, I find that desire for relief makes it hard not to work at finding an idea; hard to relax and trust that something will come.

Thomas Edison famously said that “genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration,” but he didn’t actually say where he got that inspiration. There seem to be two schools of thought on this – the first is what I call the “Just do it” school, and the second is the “Wait for it” school. Jack London was in the first category, saying that “You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” Pablo Picasso too, thought that “Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working.”

Waiting for inspiration is a little like calling on the muses from Greek mythology. The ancient Greeks believed that poets, artists, musicians and even scientists got their inspiration from one of the nine muses, goddesses that were the source of knowledge. Amy Tan has said, “Who knows where inspiration comes from. Perhaps it arises from desperation. Perhaps it comes from the flukes of the universe, the kindness of the muses.”

Consider another definition of inspiration – “the act or process of inhaling” – and compare creative inspiration to the act of breathing. We know that the breath doesn’t have to be forced. It will happen without us doing a thing. We are born without the need to control the breath, yet it’s incredibly difficult to give up control of other things we want. We don’t have the patience to just let them come.

If we have both open airways and clean air, we trust in our continued ability to breathe. If I keep my mind open and let the breezes of experience flow through, can I learn to trust that ideas will come? I am reminded of two of the qualities of mindfulness: non-striving, which is about being, rather doing; and non-attachment, which means letting go of the idea that things have to turn out a certain way.

Maybe I am my own muse. By being and trusting who I am, letting go of fixed ideas, and not being afraid to wait, inspiration will come – just like my next breath.

The Space Between

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The other day my yoga teacher was talking about pausing between breaths, and how that relates to taking moments of stillness between life’s activities. I thought about how we tend to focus on what we do, hear, say and see rather than on what we don’t. A couple of years ago, I went to a concert where the musician commented that the space between the notes is still part of the music. When I teach communication skills, I remind students that silences are still part of a conversation. White space in an advertisement is part of the message. And not doing can often help you get where you want to be.

Too often, we have the urge to fill those spaces between. We barely wait for someone else to finish talking before we begin. We fill all the space on the page with words and pictures. We fill our houses with stuff. We fill our days with activity after activity. We are uncomfortable with silence, we mistake simplicity for emptiness, and we confuse activity with accomplishment.

In his book, Wisdom 2.0, Soren Gordhamer suggests that our stress and irritation whenever we have to stop and wait for something (traffic, checkout lines, slow computers) might come from our disconnection with our inner life.  We just feel uncomfortable being alone with our thoughts and feelings, even for a few minutes.  To restore that connection, Gordhamer recommends viewing these forced pauses as an invitation to relax, to breathe, and to take a break. Yes, it’s frustrating to wait when you might already be late, but since you cannot change it, accept it as a gift. Use the time to breathe deeply and notice what’s going on around you, and “be present as you wait.”

I tried this yesterday while waiting in line to pick up a prescription. Everyone in front of me was taking a long time. But I didn’t get impatient; I just waited, and breathed. I even let the person behind me go ahead of me because he seemed to be in distress. I felt pretty good when I left the store – at exactly the same time, but in a much better frame of mind, as I would have left if I had been fuming the whole time.