Breathe

Breathing.

It's an everyday activity.  Natural.  You aren't even aware that you're doing it.  But you are. Right now. and now. and now. and again. and again.

Now stop.  Try and hold it for 55 seconds.

ok breathe.  It's when you don't breathe that you all the sudden become aware of how important a breath of air is.  It sustains you, gives you life.

Have you ever been so upset to the point you can't breathe? It sounds impossible.  How can you not breathe because of an emotion?  You aren't drowning, you're not inhaling smoke; you're in a perfectly good oxygen filled room, the only thing keeping you from breathing is your emotional state, but an emotional state can quickly transcend into a physical one.  You're broken, so emotionally broken that your mind begins quickly to loose focus on normal habitual activities, like breathing.  Your brain is only thinking about your emotional distress, your thoughts are going a hundred miles an hour, replaying conversations, watching memories dance hauntingly in your mind.  Your emotional pain becomes the only focus.  You gasp for air but you can't find it, you can't calm yourself down enough to catch a breath.  You, or a friend, has to physically say, "Breathe.  Take a deep breath."  Often your friend will actually have to mimic the art of breathing until you remember how to do it again.

And then all of the sudden, things become clearer.  The world isn't spinning.  You are breathing.

Life.

It's easy to see why the act of breathing translates into a soothing activity.  Going through a heartache you're often told to take each day at a time and breathe.  A simple direction: to breathe.  Close your eyes, cover your ears, and breathe.  Do you hear that?  The slow intake of breath, followed by a slow release; its soothing. You can actually hear yourself, alive, and breathing.

So stop what you're doing and breathe.