As Natural As Breathing: Rethinking How We Handle Stress

What if we considered breathing to be a problem? Just for fun, let’s play it out.

We would celebrate those at the top of their inhales, holding their breath. Five seconds into it, the breath holders might be teaching workshops about having overcome this great dilemma. It used to plague them, but no more! And indeed, they’d look great, quite confident even. Who’d be we not to believe them?

Of course, if they stayed with it longer than a minute, maybe five or even ten if they were genetically gifted — and karmically blessed of course — what would happen to these gurus? They might not give up their seats, and quietly sneak in a few soft inhale-exhale cycles, then get back on track to the breath transcendence lecturing. It was just a moment, why make a bother about it? Besides, no one even knows.

But better yet, they may bottom out, fall apart, the great pressure cooker of a face right before the organism is fully defeated, fully laid out, then lying on the floor, quietly, fresh with the gift of no agenda, taking a long, sweet breath, at last.

(And of course then, why would we treat our sadnesses, our griefs and sorrows, any differently?)