More Than Just Coping: The Power of Breath

Recently I’ve been seeing a lot of posts online about various fitness challenges being suggested.  A popular one involves doing 30 seconds of plank every day for a week, and gradually increasing to a 2 minute plank over the course of 1 month.  Just to be clear, “plank” is when you hold your body perfectly level to the floor, usually holding yourself up on the forearms and toes, but can also be done from the palms, knuckles, or knees if modifications are needed.  The objective is to hold the body perfectly rigid, like a board. People who attend my Pilates classes regularly know how much I love to include planks.  The plank position is a fantastic strength building exercise for the core and lower back, with some bonus toning in the arms and chest.  In my classes we generally do a set of 3 planks (30 seconds, 45 seconds, and last for a full minute).  I suspect this 30 seconds to 2 minute plank “challenge” I’ve been seeing is intended for fitness beginners or people who don’t currently have much core strength, but want to start building that foundation up reliably.  For those people, I highly recommend it, and hope that it’s actually being tried and not just reposted.

For me, however, or people that I work with regularly, holding a 30 second plank once per day is not remotely a challenge.  So, I devised a different plank challenge for myself that would allow me to harness the benefits of holding plank position, but still offer a reasonable amount of challenge.  I decided that I would start with a 2 minute plank, push up into a 5 minute downward facing dog, and then level back out to a second 2 minute plank. I would then bookend it around my day, once in the morning, once in the evening.    Every week I decided to increase the length of the plank by 1 minute until I eventually reached a 15 minute set (meaning 5 minute plank, 5 minute downward facing dog, 5 minute plank).  I feel that 15 minutes twice a day is a reasonable amount of time to commit to a personal challenge.  Once reaching that goal, I decided I would add leg raises to increase the challenge without increasing the time.

At the moment, I am only in the second week of my self-proclaimed challenge. For the record, it’s hard! But that was the point.  I wanted to be challenged.  It takes my focus, but is not out of my reach.  And it has brought my attention back to one of the primary lessons I teach my clients: everything is easier when you breathe with purpose.  Sometimes when I get to the end of my day, after teaching Yoga, Pilates, Water Aerobics, Pilates again, and taking a 2 mile walk around the lake at lunch time (because I have also challenged myself to take an average of 15,000 steps per day—it’s good to have goals), I will be completely exhausted.  My focus and willpower during my evening set of planks is often flagging.  I will decide, yes, I am committed, and I’m going to stick with my plan, but that final minute of plank takes every ounce of my willpower to see it through.  The thing that gets me to the finish line is my breath.  I do a very deep, moderately paced, forceful breath, in through the nose, out through the mouth.  It goes in cycles of about 3 seconds in, 3 seconds out, fully using the diaphragm.  This breathing technique focuses me.  It steadies me.  It keeps me in plank, using good form, even when I’m tired, and carries me through to the end with strength and grace. (Grace on both a physical and mental level.)

Right now, I’m using this breathing technique to master a difficult physical routine that I want to achieve.  But I have used it in many other situations before.  That is what I want to share with you today.  Not the benefits of plank or the thrill of succeeding at such a challenge (and I am totally killing it so far, but the way), but to share the power of this simple breathing technique.

I have most often heard it called “The Energizing Breath,” but I’m sure there are many other names for this technique.  You don’t need a lot of lung power to begin using it, but using it will quickly increase your power and lung capacity.  You can use it to focus yourself,  and as I am doing with my current endeavor, to carry yourself through a physical activity.  You can use it for pain relief.  If you’re in chronic pain, or have a sudden pain that you can’t immediately remedy, doing this breath helps reduce the pain so that you can function until the pain subsides.  This technique also works well with emotional pain.

Over the past year, as I’ve been dealing with the grief of my mother’s untimely death, I’ve tried a wide range of things to help me cope with the oppressive weigh of that grief.  Having goals helps.  Having awesome friends and community involvement helps, too.  But sometimes, the pain is too much.  The inside of my chest feels like it’s collapsing in on itself.  My heart beats too fast, my vision gets tunneled, and I feel like someone has kicked me in the gut.  Grief manifests in many forms.  For me, this is the physical manifestation of my grief over living in a world without my mother.   It feels like I’m going to be crushed under the weight of it.  But if I remember to do the Energizing Breath, steady, deep, forceful breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth, the pain begins to dissipate.  It’s like turning on a light in a very dark room.  Every time the grief tries to consume me, I do this breath.  It clears away the pain until I can bare it again.  I still feel the sadness, but it doesn’t suffocate me.  Using this breath, I do more than just cope.  I move forward.  I heal little by little.  I integrate my loss instead of being consumed and stagnated by it.

This is my offering to you today: focus, mental clarity, improved lung capacity, emotional and physical pain relief, and stress relief all in one.  This technique can also be used to help wake you up in the morning or calm you down before bed at night.  It’s totally free and takes practically no training to master.  Unlike other breathing techniques, such as what you might use during meditation, you can begin doing this one right away.  You will become better and better at it over time, but you don’t have to learn how to do it, or practice it in order to use it successfully.  You just need to try it.  Put force behind the breath.  Pull in through the nose quickly; push out through the mouth with purpose.  That’s it.  Breathe really hard as DEEPLY as you can.  That’s all there is to it.  Put it in your toolbox and use it every chance you get.

Count Your Blessings

In the months since my mother’s passing, I have spent a lot of time looking for ways to manage my grief.  Small things often do make a big difference, and the reality is that grief simply takes time.  You have to be with it and go through it in order to get past it.

However, in the meantime, as life is going on, as life is want to do, it is necessary to find ways to stay chin up in order to keep moving forward.  In both the best and worst of times it is often recommended by nearly every spiritual teacher out there to keep a gratitude journal.  I’ve highly recommended this method myself.  Gratitude keeps the heart light, even a broken grieving heart, if you can make the shift.  But I found that the more I wrestled with my feelings of loss and grief the harder it was to connect to the feelings of gratitude even as I was in the process of writing about things that I know I am grateful for.

One day, I decided to just count my blessings.  Literally.  Ever one of them, as they happened.  “I woke up this morning.  That means I’m still alive.  It’s a blessing.”  That’s one.  “I have a roof over my head.  A good one.  And I like this house.  It’s a blessing.”  That’s 2…maybe 3 if you want to be technical about it.  “There’s one banana left, just what I need for breakfast.  It’s a blessing.”  So I did this all day, any time I thought about it, and do you know what?  72 blessings in one day!  Now, even if you’re feeling low and only come up with 10 or 12 things all day long, that’s a seriously blessed day.  Did you know that you were that blessed every day?  It’s one thing to think about all the little things we take for granted, or even big things we quickly forget about, but if you write them down, one at a time, and then give them a number and actually count them, you may be totally astonished at how blessed you truly are.  Often I did not actually appreciate that something was a blessing until I wrote it down and counted it as such.  “Five of my clients thanked me, with genuine gratitude for the class I taught today.  Wow, that is a blessing!”

 It’s a very simple practice.  You might even try alternating between gratitude journaling and counting blessings.  I’ve been able to change my perspective on bad, sad, and lonely days many times just by realizing that in the midst of all the pain, hurt, loss, confusion, and dissatisfaction, there are still a wealth of blessings even on the worst of days.  The pain may still be there, but at least when you have a list of blessings to review at the end of the day, your last thought will be light and filled with gratitude regardless of whatever else you’ve been feeling.  Ending on a positive note is always a good way to begin a little better in the morning.

Time and Tide

Time and tide wait for no man.  I know that.  I am watching that very fact play out before my eyes.  Yet here I am, waiting...waiting.... Waiting in numb, shocked silence.  Waiting for what?  I don't know for certain.  For the silence to become the earth shattering scream I expected?  For the end of the world to have the good grace to come the way I thought it would when my mother died?  Of course, I knew the world wouldn't end, but in every fiber of my being, I truly felt it would.

For those who know me, or who follow my posts in social media, you'll have heard the news, several months ago now, that my mother passed away after not one, not two, but three intensive battles with cancer.  It's not that we didn't see it coming.  We did.  But that doesn't make her death any less untimely.  We had all shaped our future with the expectation that she'd be in it: myself, my family, her friends, her colleagues and co-workers, we were holding open a space for plans we hoped she would fulfill.  She's gone, none the less.   What do we do now with that great, gaping hole?

Everyone feels this way when their mother dies, don't they?  I'm guessing here, because I've lost plenty of friends and family members in my life, but only one mother.  This is like no grief I've ever known.

There are many types of bonds between mothers and daughters, but for me, my mother was the one person in all creation who truly understood me. She knew me from the brightest peaks to the darkest depths of my soul.  She knew what to say, when to say it, and how to say it, even when I didn't know myself.  I am blessed in that I feel deeply loved in many aspects of relationships that I have with people in my life.  But there is a big difference between love and understanding.  Mom understood!  She just knew.  All of those things I could never put into words, she could express in a single sentence.  It was a soul level knowing that I may never experience again in this life.

I have always been, at the very core of my being, free-spirited.  I see the world a little differently.  I always have.  I am a ship that rides wild currents, that often, others cannot even see, but my mother, she was my lighthouse. Without her, I am cast adrift.  To me, she was the Oracle at Delphi, The Library of Alexandria, and the guiding light of the North Star all rolled into one.  How do I plot a course without her?  Where was I going, anyway?  Do I even want to go there if we can't go together?

Painfully, inexorably, time marches on.  Mother used to always say "This too shall pass," in times of adversity.  It gave me a lot of strength in the past, but feels incredibly hollow now.  I see the world is moving.  I see that the worst has already come to pass.  I know that I can only move forward.  I can not honor her parting by standing still.  But for this moment, for just a little bit longer, I am waiting.  Where do I go from here?  I no longer know how to find the shore.

Perhaps in the new year I'll be able to impart some wisdom about health, wholeness, or the journey to inner peace.  I have always hoped my words will inspire others in a positive way, whether subtle or profound.  But right at this moment, I'm so far off from my center, I can not inspire anyone.  But maybe I can tell my story.  I can share this tiny sliver of my grief  in pale and empty thought forms, mere shadows compared to the demon I tried to describe.  Maybe that story can reach others in the depth of despair and for just a moment, perhaps they will know that they are not alone.  Sometimes you have to be still in the darkness.  It's OK to feel broken, even for very spiritual people.  Sometimes, the only thing you can do is wait, weeping as the world passes you by.  Because this too shall pass...isn't that right, Mom?