On Breathing

Welcome to What’s Helping Today, a newsletter about the everyday work of staying alive on earth, written by author and journalist Sandy Ernest Allen.

Let’s slow down shall we?

So much going on.

Too much to process.

Too much (bad shit) to process.

Too much (unspeakably bad shit) to process.

More bad shit imminent, no doubt. It’s all too much.

Too much is indeed the point. The point is they want us to feel chaos, overwhelm, mass panic, mass despair.

We cannot control much, but we can control our breath. Hence people like me are obsessed with the breath — by which I mean both mental health-focused people, and people who meditate daily.

Obvious, maybe, basic, yes, but so powerful nonetheless. So let’s take a breath.

Maybe do it right now. Slow down, maybe even close your eyes. Maybe try to be aware of your body in your present posture. Maybe try to get more comfortable, more grounded. Put your feet flat on the floor, maybe sit with your back straight.

Breathe in. Out.

Maybe you think it’s all corny. I dunno, try me.

In.

Out.

If you feel up for it, repeat a few times more.

I want to suggest another big principle, beyond ‘we can at least control our breath.’ We can also use our breath lengths to inform our nervous systems. In particular we can control the length of our inhale versus our exhale to calm ourselves down.

A therapist of mine who first explained this to me years ago said it’s what monks know, it’s what fighter pilots practice: breathe longer out than you do in, that’s the basic idea. You can structure this in various ways. You can count — so count 2 in, 4 out. Or count 3:6 or 4:8, even longer if you are very advanced. Even just 1:2. You can do “box breathing,” which means you count and hold for the same count between your in and out breaths too (so like 3:3:3:3 or 4:4:4:4). You can just do a long slow deep breath out and then take another shorter breath in and then another long slow deep breath out. You can even vocalize it, siiiigh.

When we breathe out long breaths, we signal to our nervous systems that we are relaxed; the body will get on board. For this reason — someone like me, diagnosed with anxiety and threatened by panic attacks and such — I practice breathing. A lot. 

In doing yoga especially, I try to shift myself in the direction of having more control of my breath overall, more power too. Likewise I build my control and power by having a serious, devoted singing practice — warming up at the piano and singing some songs as often as I can. I used to be a runner (and may again soon run again … maybe when I’m allowed to exercise once more I will run, I imagine lately, feeling so annoyingly sedentary). But no doubt it benefited me when I did run, all that breathing.

Having more intimacy with my breath has helped me have greater agency when my body wants to escalate into panic — including the scary, incapacitating kind. In my best moments, I can head off panic or rage by remembering this sort of wondrous internal override. I breathe out; I calm myself down.

It’s hard to know when to calm ourselves down if we aren’t in touch with how we actually are doing — like for real — inside. We cannot steer ourselves well when are suppressing our actual feelings, perhaps because we are attempting to ignore how we feel. Perhaps because we deny our feelings through a smile. Perhaps our real feelings only seep out of us as crabbiness or as a short fuse. Perhaps there is no convenient time or space to actually feel what we do, the whole awful heap of it.

Again, life is too much — especially right now, all of us are probably feeling too much. All of us need to offload the stress we inevitably receive from life. It’s as if we’ve been struck by a powerful electrical storm and we need to touch earth somehow, discharge it.

Hence it’s vital we all take time to release. There are so many ways to go about this — exercise and other movement like dance; singing; laughter. Connection with others, talking about deep stuff with somebody trusted, a friend or a professional, as in a therapist (or therapist-type person).

I also am often recommending practices like JournalSpeak, which can help you gently excavate whatever might be affecting you inside (that you may be least interested in addressing). JournalSpeak’s creator, therapist Nicole Sachs, has a new book out, as I’ve mentioned. (She recently did a 92 St. Y talk and an appearance on the Today show.) If you’re even mildly interested in this stuff when I bring it up, I encourage you to check out Nicole’s book, which she wrote especially for curious/skeptical newcomers.

For me, all of this sits atop a foundation of daily meditation. I try to meditate soon after I rise each day, if I can manage to. By meditating first thing when I wake, I try to get in touch first with my truest self inside. I try to remind myself that I can get centered. I can slow down. I can find that focus within.

Even if nothing else is steady I can try to be, even momentarily. This sets a tone for myself for the rest of the day, whatever may come.

I often use JournalSpeak as a preamble to meditation, especially when times are especially stressful; right now they certainly are. My sleep is frankly terrible these days. I wake often at night and stew in fearful thoughts. My healing from surgery has been frustratingly slow. Outside it’s been awful cold.

And then there’s all that’s happening, the torrent of horror.

So I wake up way too early, when the world is still dark and mostly asleep. I sit with my notepad and pencil. I write furiously, then I burn the pages in my wood stove. And then I meditate.

I am these days also experimenting with doing a second meditation-type-thing towards the end of the day as well (until I can do yoga again). Again, I’m thinking about how can I allow myself even more support, given how challenging this all is.

Just wanted to re-share:

My advice for really tough times.

My thoughts for cis folks feeling despair about what’s happening to trans people but who don’t know what they can do.

Take care,
Sandy

p.s. Great conversation about talking to kids about hard stuff, with Sonya Renee Taylor.

p.p.s. What’s Helping Today: I rewatched Spirited Away recently; it’s one of my favorites. I’d forgotten how fantastic that scene is when Chihiro eats the rice balls and finally lets herself feel it.

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