Ok, so this post title was for the hippies and designers among you. Readers (should there be any) who are not enthralled by my vivid astral dreamscapes, be warned as to the content of this post.
I had a second ‘breath’ session last week, with the woman I met serendipitously in a sauna and who has been helping my youngest to relax and breathe.
To cut a long story short, and to use a word that is not at all yogic, the way I breathe is Rubbish. We started out trying to get me to exhale through my nose for longer than my inhale, and I can’t. From here we discovered that I overuse my throat, do weird stuff with my abdomen (which is amazing since she told me I have almost no muscles there whatsoever) and when she tried to get me doing some diaphragm breathing I just couldn’t find the bloody thing at all. She asked if I often get out of breath (I do) and pointed out that I actually hold my breath when I speak (which explains some agonising public speaking experiences I have had). She said that years of not breathing correctly is affecting me at a cellular, emotional and physical level and can explain fatigue, anxiety, weight gain etc blah.
Now, despite my known ability to latch onto some stuff with the innocence of a baby, this really does make sense to me. I’ve been drawn to yoga and mindfulness since taking some time out, and the suggestion that my breathing is the fundamental thing that I need to do differently - the keystone to it all if you like (and more on that shortly) - yep, I can buy that. It’s no wonder that my Phoenix so often keeps her distance when I’d like to feel her settling inside me.
I was given some homework: to lie very still (NOT MOVE) and breath gently through my nose, just observing, making no noise and not letting my shoulder/neck/tummy muscles start tightening. (Also to speak more slowly. Hmmm.)
Fast forward a few hours and I was doing my homework in bed and worrying about getting it wrong. And I have mentioned in previous posts that I have been waking in the night anyway, panicking at the (intentional) freefall I feel my life is in. In fact I was woken the other night by my youngest shaking me. In irritation, not concern. ‘Mum, you’re spazzing like a retard’. (He still gets into my bed, sometimes, during the night and if I’m honest, I don’t really mind. But it does bother me somewhat, that as a pescatarian, linguist and musician (ish) who is into spiritual stuff and yoga, and who has a CV that reveals my long-standing commitment to local and global issues, as well as a reasonable ability to string a sentence together, neither of my kids seem to have particularly well-tuned antenna in any of these departments.) My eventual point being: I already have stuff giving me reason not to sleep too well.
I laid in bed trying to breathe gently. Trying not to panic. Trying to observe, not judge. Then I watched a couple more episodes of that thing on Netflix that is stealing my life away from me, on my iPad and, Bob’s my uncle (he is), I must have dropped off.
I found myself in my hallway downstairs. It was dark. I felt concerned. I could hear the boys talking upstairs, in quiet voices. Like they were on the other side of something dividing us. I turned the light on and off. Nothing. Like a power cut on a cloudy night. No light whatsoever.
I called for the boys. I could still hear their muffled chatter. I realised they were in the roof. They didn’t answer. I felt my way upstairs and couldn’t remember how to get to the attic space. I felt my way through my youngest’s room and opened the door to the old stairs up there. (New stairs have been put in to my loft conversion, and the old ones are now are storage space with a ceiling above them.) The insulation I used to suspend over the old stairwell was still there. I pushed my way through it, dusty, cobwebbed, hearing the boys get closer. To my horror, on the other side I met more darkness, exposed beams. More dust. Perhaps the ash of that burnt marriage certificate. My boys were up there, lost in the darkness. My loft wasn’t converted. I was rolling backwards in time.
The hugest of screams started to rise in my throat as I propelled myself upwards using an invisible force. I soared to the keystone of a pyramid structure that was hovering over my home, through the dust and the muck. (Imagine some kind of incredible banshee lioness superwoman type who was probably also quite sexy. And don’t start googling whether pyramids have keystones.) I pulled flaming orange wings of energy over the pyramid that was over my home; pushed all the old shit away, gathered my boys (who were much younger than they are now) about me, and landed the house, and us, on track. Back in the present that is moving towards the future.
Wow! You will understand why I woke with a thump in my bed, shaking and panting. In this nightmare of nightmares that brought so many latent fears under one metaphorical roof, I had OVERCOME. And there I was again, lying in my bed, trying to still my breath.
I rolled over onto one side and focussed on the space in the centre of my back, behind my heart, where I can feel so tense and blocked and unloved. Quietly, oh so quietly, I started to breathe into it. And as I exhaled, through my nose (more or less), I asked it to soften. To let go. To feel warmth and love. And as I did this, I felt a breath of what I can only describe as new life, start to creep back into places where light hasn’t shone for such a long time. And there, in that foetal position, within the nest of my duvet, I slept.
***
This morning, after a night of strong winds and rain, two leaks in my converted loft space that I was about to start decorating, have appeared. Ffs.
