Are you breathing?
Strange question to ask right? I mean, of course you are breathing, but it's occurred to me, as of late, that not only should I pay more attention to my inhale and exhalation, but I might need to have a bit of a come-to-Jesus with my entire relationship with my breathe-in, breathe-out. So, let me first take a step back and preface that I am not completely void of understanding the importance of a good deep breath. I have heard 'cleansing breath' in just about every workout class I've ever taken and, well, if you've read any of my other postings, as a competitive swimmer, I learned early on the importance of a strong pair of lungs. And let's not go into what us mothers have gone through with breathing techniques in lamaze. What has occured over time, however, is how something positive and completely necessary as breathing has turned a negative manifestation. What I mean is that I'm only acutely aware of 'breathing' when I hear it as a sigh (frustration), yawn (exhaustion), grunt (physical exertion), yelp (pain), and whatever random mix of sounds that create the annoying snore. So, as a result, I don't associate breathing with anything calm or soothing or relaxing. It is not a silent activity if I'm to be aware of it.
My childhood friend of close to 30 years has clearly maintained a healthy relationship with her breath as a yoga instructor and, even on her voicemail, tells people to "stop, breathe, and take a second to enjoy the moment that we are in." I'll be the first to admit, for awhile I'd ignore her request, give a sigh instead and then proceed to leave my message. But why? The impetus for me to even write this post is a moment I had last night when checking in on my kids before going to bed. I've done this every night since bringing them home, but it was last night that I had this 'a-ha' moment. In checking on my eldest, I see her lying completely motionless, all tucked in and cozy under her covers and, as I kiss her check, I instinctively check for sounds of breathing and I hear nothing. No sound, just silence. So what do I do? I panic. I nudge her just so slightly until she moved and I could hear her take that breath. This is when it hit me..I just disturbed my peacefully sleeping daughter because her breathing was too quiet for me..her breath didn't have a sound to reassure me that everything was okay.
The point? I've taken efforts in all kinds of ways to take care of myself - eat right, exercise, take work breaks, etc., but I've failed to take care of the foundation on which everything rests. I need to stop mirroring my breath to the pace of my work where shallow breathing is the standard and anything deeper is only because I'm irritated, tired, angry, etc. If my best friend tells me to take a moment, stop, breathe, and enjoy the moment i'm in, I need to just suck it up and do it. It will make me feel better. It will make my body and mind feel better. It will give me a moment to be present. Heck, someday I might graduate and even allow myself to stop for one whole minute during one of those Calm app commercials and breathe. Regardless, in the end, we are ALL breathing, but maybe there is something to be said that a deeper life may be had if we all just took deeper breaths, appreciate the silence of it, and be all the better for it.