I must come clean up front with this post. The ideas and thoughts arose during a fabulous conversation with my collaborative partner and wonderful friend, Courtney Hess. We meet every Thursday morning to witness and support each other’s lives. This morning, there was a grander inspiration and collaboration. I’m sure we are not original in this, but it is not something either of us hears much in the ‘just breathe’ movement.
The Just Breathe movement is important and is born out of largely eastern somatic and spiritual practices. We all breathe, true. But to do so consciously is a practice. Anyone anywhere can utilize the principals. For free. For impacting results.
Basically, we breathe in fully, with awareness, bringing the breath deep into the belly. We breathe out to let go of what is no longer needed. Most of the world spiritual practices have words for breath; prana, nephesh, pneuma, and more. Our breath is life, and in the Song of Songs the word nephesh, associated with the throat and breathing, is used as a sense of identity and self knowing.
In my meditation practice, I hear my Buddhist teacher’s voice guiding my breath in and out, right at the tip of the nose, total awareness to the life and energy that flows in a circular motion. It is how I move myself out of panic attacks. It is how I go to center. It is a joining of my own life force with the life force of the whole universe.
With Qi Gong, I’ve experienced the inhale of two substances; air and qi. The air fills my lungs to expansion down deep. Qi continues to flow through into the whole of the body. They are simultaneous but the qi remains and is not exhaled. Discipline and practice offers this extraordinary experience.
But today. Courtney began by saying that we are often told to breathe and to pay attention to where the stress is, where the emotion is in our body. We pin point it in our throats or left shoulder or the pit in our stomach. It can be so profound we feel 100% overtaken. What he has started to do is to simultaneously pinpoint where it is not.
The negative space. The somatic space where the stress is not.
I’m calling it the Courtney Principal. For now. I’ll find a better term for it, and there is likely already a Sanskrit or Pali word for it.
Where our fast-paced, coffee-fueled wide-eyed wonder went with this is to two places.
As we do the important work of noticing what is rising, following the emotion or stress, acknowledging when it has peaked and then enter the diminishment of it, we know nothing is permanent. We can move through the hardest things becuase they always diminish. Sometimes in minutes, sometimes much longer. We’re talking about the acute phase and awareness. Where it is felt in the body gives us somatic information to see what it has to teach us. Our bodies are always teaching us. We look at these body parts as metaphor to know the teaching. When we add to this where we are NOT feeling the stress, the emotions, the overwhelm, we can draw on that part of the body to assist the process of self-care. For example: if the election upheaval is causing stress in the pit of your stomach, it will feel like it is everywhere. But it likely isn’t. Where isn’t it? Not in your knees, then go walking. Not in your shoulders, then loosen with arm stretches. Not in your throat, then sing/shout/cry out. We utilize a wholeness in the moment of overwhelm.
The other thought we collaborated around-toward, is that our emotions and stress and yes, even the overwhelm are not for rushing through. They are organic aspects of something real, and we are better off to sit with, feel fully, and watch our breath return. So, to name where the stress is located in the body, and then name where it is not, is to remind yourself that you have strengths beyond the turmoil, and you become your best resource. You draw from your own strength that already is present. And you see that while the overwhelm may be 100% in the pit of your stomach it is not in 100% of your being.
My belief system understands God/Creator is the ground of our being. That is the point of sacred resource within.
We recognize that this presumes relative mental health. For our beloveds who deal with true overwhelm and psycho/spiritual/mental struggle, these ideas might just be enough to get you to the resources of counselors, therapists, and perhaps even time away in the hands of professionals.
Know your body and breath. Know yourself. know your stress. You are always your best resource.
Believing in you,
Amy
(Thanks Courtney!!!!!)