Tuesday, April 23, 2019

COME FLY WITH ME

Do you take breathing for granted?  Well, I sure hope so!  If we had to think about literally every breath we take, we'd have no time for any other thought!  Our body has a brilliant apparatus for giving us a break from being in charge of every minute of keeping us alive.  Wikipedia puts it this way:

"The autonomic nervous system is a control system that acts largely unconsciously and regulates bodily functions such as the heart rate, digestion, respiratory rate, pupillary response, urination, and sexual arousal."

Whew!  Glad I don't have to consciously regulate all that.  My TV viewing would have to fall to maybe second on the list of daily priorities and with Game of Thrones in the final season, I really can't afford any distraction.

Still, thinking about breathing has surprising advantages.  Breath awareness really does bring us into the "now" of the moment.  In yoga classes we are often directed to become aware of the breath, to feel the air enter and exit the nostrils, to link breath with movement when doing asana practice.  While the poses help our bodies feel terrific at the end of practice, the attention to breath is also to thank for that aura of calm.

We are often told we can influence emotions with our breath.  If you are angry, anxious, excited, or stressed in any way, you may find yourself taking short, shallow breaths, moving air mostly in the upper chest.  This is because your sympathetic nervous system is getting ready for you to address whatever is stressing you -- the fight or flight (or freeze) response has kicked in.  Rapid breathing, rapid heart rate, bumped up blood pressure -- all that is good for short-term attention on survival.  It's not so good for long-term health and living a normal life.  For that we want our parasympathetic nervous system to come on board and calm the whole mess down.

To activate the parasympathetic nervous system we learn to take full, deep, "belly" breaths moving the diaphragm in a controlled manner to allow for a longer exhale than inhale.  If you are feeling stressed and turn your attention purposely to this type of breathing, before very long your stress will lessen and you will feel yourself calming, even happy.  Your heart rate will slow, your blood pressure will drop.  You will feel pretty chill.

Given that my life is thankfully pretty de-stressed overall, now that I'm retired, my kids grown, and things are going pretty well in general,  I tend to think I have little reason to spend much time in fight or flight mode.  But....

I am not a happy flyer.  I'm not so much afraid of crashing (although those thoughts do fleetingly enter my mind) as I'm afraid of the discomforts of air travel.  The whole experience is stressful for me:  getting to the airport on time, through TSA, onto the plane and into my (too cramped) seat.  The doors close and my claustrophobia kicks in, and I feel my heart rate jump, my breathing quicken, and my tummy roil as the anxiety-fueled nausea comes in waves.  I open my Kindle, put on my earphones, and try to block everything out.  I'm a mute seat partner, with every ounce of concentration going to keeping myself from freaking out.  (I bet you are just dying at this point to take a trip with me!  Imagine how my husband feels!)

On a recent trip home from Hawaii it was with some dismay that I heard the captain announce right after take-off that we could expect some significant turbulence over the Pacific about 2 hours out.  I immediately downed a Dramamine, pulled on my motion sickness wrist bands, and starting eating candied ginger to ward off any motion-induced nausea.  Sure enough at about that time in the flight the bumpiness started, then got worse, and worse, and worse....for about 30 minutes we rose and fell and swayed side to side.  It was NOT fun.  But here's what saved me:

I breathed.  I closed my eyes, gently laid my hands on my tray table, and breathed.  I breathed long belly-bulging inhales and much longer core-tightening exhales.  Over and over.  I breathed in....out....in....out...while distracting myself with a podcast playing in my ears, I breathed.  When I felt my shoulders tensing, I relaxed them.  Instead of fighting the motion, I just made my body as relaxed as I could and went with the flow of the turbulence.  Eventually we smoothed out and it was over.

After we landed a couple hours later, I thought back on the experience and could scarcely recall it, or at least didn't recall it as horrible.  It was as if I'd hypnotized myself in some way.  It was an odd realization, to have nurtured myself through what normally would have been a horrific experience just by breathing consciously.

We learn many things by practicing yoga.  I'm grateful breathing is one of them.©

Namaste,  donnajurene
Photo Credit:  www.pixabay.com