Drastic measures in devastating times. This is my first COVID-19 commentary. I went over it carefully with a Clorox wipe before sending, so please keep your distance and we’ll be fine.
Practice Breathing and You’ll Feel Calmer and Safer. It’s All About Protection.
First, let’s talk protection. My mask is by my friend Miriam, a neighborhood saint who is making them for anyone who wants one.
My maple pod necklace—all the women in my family have one—is also for protection. I put it on the first day I started to shelter at home and here I am, still at home, feeling protected for the moment, and deeply grateful.
(No data whatsoever supports this pod necklace prevention practice. I don’t care. In Bhutan, they protect their houses with wildly-painted penises. Go figure.)
And behind me in this photo, a protection painting that fills me with light and hope for reasons I don’t entirely understand.
So much suffering all around, and still, I keep thinking, All is Well. This is not a cheesy plug for my book. It’s how I really think. Somehow, we’ll get through this time of deep hardship and stunning sadness and our planet, our world, will be better off for it.
Oh really?
My father always told me: Make A Notation
See this sweet little Post-It I made for myself, and put on a table I have to pass everyday on my way to the potato chips: Meditate!
It’s reminder of what I aspire to do on a daily basis, to protect my body and mind by letting it become calm and relaxed. CALM AND RELAXED! In these times? Are you crazy?
That said, I suggest you make up your own post-it notes and leave them around the house to remind yourself of what you want to be doing to boost your personal well-being these days. It’s up to you. Some examples: How can I be more loving, more kind? Remember the neti pot! Or this one, Do I really need another bowl of delicious ice cream?
Limp Lungs Won’t Save You! Breathing Exercises Might!
“We are alive. Our lungs perform many important functions including detoxification and tissue repair. It is also our link to consciousness.”
Confession: I’ve become obsessed with breathing, breathing exercises, and specifically the power of nasal breathing. My friends wish I would shut up about it, some of them. But I can’t. It’s too important.
Why am I studying the physiology of breathing so many hours a day? Because I’m of a certain age, and I had a very bad pneumonia last October. Endless coughing night and day, a fever, choking amounts of phlegm.
It was a frightening and awful experience then and it could be much worse now, if the COVID-19 virus found its way into my less-than-perfect lungs.
So protecting my lungs is important to me . . .and I hope it becomes important to you . . .but unless you’re dealing with COPD or asthma, you’ve probably never heard much about why breathing exercises are so vital.
Any respiratory therapist can tell you. Our doctors and health officials should be doing the same.
The lungs have no muscles, We move them with our breath, our diaphragm, our front, back and side muscles, and more. In other words, inhalators r us.
And breathing exercises are important because they make your lungs stronger, better oxygenated, more resilient.
They’re important because nasal breathing dilates lung tissue, and calms your parasympathetic nervous system, and helps your lungs stay energized and clear of little beasties that cause problems, including death.
I’ll stop now except to say there’s a ton of science behind all of this. Are breathing exercises 100% effective against getting sick from the corona virus or anything else? Of course not. Nothing is.
Are they worth a try? 10 minutes a day, no sweat, no strain, just breathing? Absolutely.
So I want to introduce you to a remarkable teacher of breathing (and other things) named Sienna Smith, founder of the Yoga Mountain Studio in Fairfax Ca.
Starting this coming Monday, April 20, Sienna is doing a 7-day Breathing Boot Camp, streaming live via Zoom. It will continue for seven mornings in a row, and at the end, you’ll have a 10 minute (more is better) breathing practice that can change your life.
I’ll be there, remotely, and I am inviting everyone to join in. That’s what journalists do, right? They tell you stuff you need to know.
Here’s the link. It’s $45 for the whole thing and if you can’t be there live, the sessions will be recorded and you can access them after class.
I know Sienna and what a gifted yoga teacher she is but in these teachings, her focus is on breathing, pure and simple. You don’t have to know a Down Dog from a Tuna On Rye to benefit.
Here are two more (of many!) reliable sources I’ve found for breathing exercise information: Breathing coach Ed Harrold on his website www.EdHarrold.com and YouTube videos from Patrick McKeown, and Butekyo Breathing.
It all goes back to Pranayama, and 5,000 years of yoga teachings, so start where you are and open up to whatever methods you like.
Okay! Take care. Be well. Stay calm. . .and keep breathing in and out of your nose, slowly, gently, as much as you can, making the sound of the ocean, until your brain gets rewired and you suddenly find yourself feeling calmer, steadier, saner and safer, even in this horrifying time of the pandemic.
(I told you I was obsessed, didn’t I?)
© Energy Express