Remember to just breathe

Dear reader,

there are all sorts of relaxing techniques, courses, therapies and what not, to get relaxed again, thinking more straight and/or to just calm down again. The simplest and most obvious is often overlooked: just breathe. In a stressful situation or when we're nervous, we react far too often with shallow breathing or even holding our breath all together, instead of taking a deep breath or at least keep on breathing normally.

Many starting with ventriloquism will probably notice that the way of breathing they use for that makes them aware of their belly muscles suddenly. Especially those we don't use that often usually. Often you can read about neglected diaphragmatic breathing. As if we ever really could breathe without our diaphragm. It's true that we do breathe rather shallow and not consciously deep in and out of the belly. The intestines are often called the second brain. So just like we yawn sometimes to air our brains in our head out, it feels just as well good to relax the belly by breathing consciously. It's free!

In busy times like this, we could all do with calming down more. You don't even have to meditate as such. Many in fact have difficulties not thinking for a while. I know people, who say that they work better time pressure. Some suddenly feel bored when they don't have another five things to do at least on their “to-do list”. Some day they'll have a burnout. For those who don't want to stop thinking completely in a time of quiet, they might, as an alternative, for example count from 1 to 10 and when they reached 10 start again at 1. Repeat a few times, without taking note how many times you reached 10.

Might be a good thing to “think first, then speak” in any case. Especially in conflict situations. In Noel Coward's “Privat Lives” two couples are on their honeymoon in a hotel. As luck would have it, the husband of one was once with the wife of the other. They meet now again with rooms next to each other and bicker again, too. But they don't want to bicker. They make an agreement: when one notices they start bickering again, that person is to say a catchphrase. After that they're both not to speak for two minutes. Two minutes with the option of renewal. I like that idea a lot.

Until next blog,

sarah