Breathing in Crisis

I have a favorite mug that I use for my tea everyday, its lavender and written on it is one simple word: Breathe. I picked this up at discount store where everything is under a dollar. Every time I drink from it, I love to look at it and it reminds me to breathe.

There was a time when I didn’t understand the importance of breathing. It’s one of those bodily functions that go unnoticed, unless when you are running and breathing can become painful- I know I am a out of shape smoker, so the thought of jogging and my lungs cringe…. I know…Breathing that’s what Im talking about.

It took the most devastating moment in my life to really understand breathing. Okay, apart from breathing as being totally essential for living, knowing calming skills through breathing can be extremely helpful in neutralizing negative stressors.

One night, last year, I was on the phone with my sister, sobbing- it had to do with something regarding the end of my marriage. Man, was I crying, hysterical, eventually I was crying so hard that my chest was heaving and struggling to catch my breath. My sister told me to breath.

“I, I, I, ammm BREEEEEEEAAAAATTTTTTHHHHHIIIIIIINNNNNGGGGGG.” I tried to tell her in between sobs.

On the phone she had me close my eyes and breath in a slow and deep inhale through my nose, until my stomach stretched to it’s capacity. All the while counting very slowly until she reached 10 and than she had me slowly control my exhale- until there was nothing left to breathe out. We went through this breathing exercise for about 15 minutes, over and over again. I had calmed myself down. It only took a few minutes but I felt just a little relieved, not much, but enough to get me through those attacks.

I do Thai Chi and one of the main components to it is breathing. It is a discipline to control your breathing, but erratic breathing does not help in focusing. As I take a step into a Thai Chi stance, I am slowly breathing in, this is called “fill”, and moving out from one position to another, I exhale just as slowly as I move, this is “empty” Thai Chi is an elaborate martial arts where empty and fill are it’s main points. You begin to master your body though waves of empty and fill. (It’s a great practice for mindfulness) If your breathing is fast, your movements will be too fast as well, holding your breath you will find it is difficult to move from one stance to another.

Breathing during a crisis is important. Once the brain recognizes threat, it signals the rest of the body to respond, heart rate and blood pressure raise. In response to the heart, the lungs work harder to supply the brain and the body with oxygen. Your lungs start to hyperventilate, short quick burst of oxygen is introduce into your body, your body works hard to sustain itself in crisis. The greater the threat or tension (whether it is real or imagine) the shallow your breathing becomes. The less oxygen is in your blood, Your body works harder but oxygen levels drop.

No one can avoid threat, fears, anxiety, and panic, it happens to the best of us. But we can work at reducing our physical reactions to those emotions. Breathe.

Meditation breathing, helps slow everything inside us down- if we focus our mind and thought on the particular task of breathing in crisis, it will also slow down uncontrollable thoughts. I used to think this type of breathing as a hippie, new age thinking. Once I started to learn how to breathe in crisis, I don’t know how I lived without it.

In the beginning, I actually had to sit myself down, find a quiet spot, get as far away from distraction as possible. The whole process of calming myself down could take up to an hour, if things were bad. But now, I can be sitting in my car at a stop light, and I can take a few deep breaths and almost calm myself down immediately.

Learning to breath through crisis, is a coping skill, a good one too. You don’t need any other contraption but yourself to do this. I strongly suggest learning to breathe!!!!!

~Jenn