Three Breaths
By Jo Moyes, LMT
The practice of Mindfulness is something that most of us have heard a lot about in the last decade or so. If the hype is to be believed, it’s the answer to practically every mental and emotional issue faced by modern society, and everyone should be doing it, all the time. Blogs and articles about Mindfulness are usually accompanied by an inspirational photo, often including a smoothly coiffed woman, usually wearing yoga clothes, sitting in a setting intended to inspire a feeling of peace like a beach or mountain top. It’s typically a sunrise, probably to give the viewer the impression of a new awakening she’s apparently experiencing.
Something like this
I don’t know about you guys, but that’s not what my life looks like. My life looks like dogs, chickens, work, dishes, fence repairs, and a thousand other things that contribute to the overall chaos of my existence. If I’m outside in yoga clothes, it’s usually because I’m behind on laundry. Also, because yoga clothes are just plain comfortable. Their pockets are severely lacking, though, so they’re not my go-to for practicality. I just don’t have time to regularly haul myself to an inspiring vista to explore the dark recesses of my mental landscape.
My life looks more like this
As it turns out, though, none of that stuff has anything to do with Mindfulness. And it’s not necessary to cultivate an hour-a-day habit where you keep your mind completely blank and think about a light or some such thing. Which is a good thing, because my Type-A, ADHD, overthinking brain cannot even conceive of being quiet for that long, let alone accomplish it. It turns out that Mindfulness can start with just pausing, closing my eyes, and taking three deep breaths. That’s it.
When my therapist told me this, I was, obviously, skeptical. I was also really bad at doing it. This process required me to, first, remember to do it and, second, to stop what I was doing instead of hurtling full-speed through my daily life like usual. But I was determined that if it didn’t work, it was going to be because the process was flawed, not me, so I gradually began forcing myself to pause during random moments of my life to take my three deep breaths. I didn’t do it with the intention of calming my anxiety or anything like that. I didn’t do it with the intention of doing anything, other than to stop and breathe (and maybe, just a little bit, show my therapist that she had been mistaken about how easy it was to work Mindfulness into my life). And to my utter shock, it started working.
My slide towards self-awareness was slow and kind of snuck up on me. I didn’t suddenly understand the true meaning of life or anything like that. What I did become aware of, though, were the moments when anxiety began to nibble at the edges of my mind and cortisol began to slip into my bloodstream, instead of only noticing after my body was in full-blown fight-or-flight. And it turns out that if you catch it early, it’s a lot easier to convince your brain that whatever disaster it’s contemplating isn’t all that big of a deal than it is after it’s in total panic mode, waiting for the world to straight-up explode. It may not sound like much, but this new ability of mine was, quite literally, life changing. As I started to see results, I increased my practice from three breaths to a timed session, starting with two minutes at a time. Mornings are when I traditionally set myself up to be prepared/overwhelmed by what I have to do for the day, so that’s when I do my meditation. I set my timer, close my eyes, sit still, and take a mental pause before I jump into my day.
The change wasn’t just the fact that I was noticing anxiety early, it was also that I was better able to figure out what was setting me off. It turns out that if I’m in a hurry, my brain interprets my rapid movements as a sign that I’m in trouble. Better crank out that cortisol so I can move faster! Do I have a lot to do that day? More cortisol! Better to be in an anxiety-induced-craze than be running behind!
As I began to figure out what set me off, the anxiety started to feel less like an enemy I had to conquer and more like an early warning sign, which is what it supposed to be. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still not something I enjoy, but it’s not something that regularly overwhelms my life like it did just a few months ago. The key component of Mindfulness is the ability to view your circumstances without judging them as essentially good or bad, just acknowledging that they exist. It sounds ridiculous—or at least, it did—but I’m slowly starting to understand what it means and how to apply it to my life.
And it all started with three breaths.
Jo Moyes is a valued team member at Jillian’s Healing Arts Center as a licensed massage therapist, animal lover, and dedicated friend. After a long career as a vet tech offering physical therapy to four legged friends she decided her skills could be transferred over to the human species. She is a Talented massage therapist with extensive knowledge on kinesiology, anatomy, and physiology. Her passions lie in offering therapeutic massage to those who have experienced long-term injuries, stress, tension, anxiety, and much more. She has a gift to find trigger points on clients and problem solving the trouble spot by treating alternative affected areas offering lasting relief. Her clients leave feeling relaxed, looser, lighter, and ready to go back out to continue to share their gifts with the world.
