THE WAY THINGS ARE

I often find myself saying to stressed, overworked, younger friends, ‘Take a breath; take time for yourself.’ It’s an old saying – take a breather, and it’s one of the most sensible self-therapies we can offer a tired life and mind.

Most of us take the air we breathe for granted, but asthma sufferers know that terrifying blockage in the chest when air won’t flow. People with a bad allergic reaction that affects lungs and chest know the panic of apparent asphyxiation. Or like me, perhaps you grew up near the sea, and knew people who had a near-death experience when they almost drowned.

Athletes and gym enthusiasts know you can’t keep going forever, when breathing becomes ragged, it’s time to catch a breath. Air is the unseen fuel driving our bodies we don’t even think about until we fear its loss.

Anyone who knows Yoga, Tai Chi, Qi Gong may smile when a new ‘How to breathe properly’ programme appears. So many are based on these ancient arts, and the fact that body and mind are connected is ancient knowledge. In my past, initially there was only the master’s voice instructing then, when a group advanced, movement was performed in perfect silence, the body engaged with embedded rhythm, the mind concentrating on breathing, both in harmony.

Now, when noise of all kinds intrudes with intense velocity into the lives of our young, a school period of Tai Chi or learning to breathe for serenity would have a positive effect, particularly on children of a nervous disposition. Older children approaching stressful exams would benefit greatly from knowing a few simple breathing techniques and movements to ease that rigid spine or the headache from too much screen/book study.

We live in a time of such rushed expression on phones or social media, we’ve forgotten the value of silence and how to simply be quiet. However, silence has different forms. A popular Country and Western song tells of Sonny, a lad who lives on an isolated farm with his mother, his father has deserted them. The mother pleads with Sonny don’t go away ‘Nights are so long and the silence goes on…’

Some select solitary silence. Sonny’s mother’s silence is imposed, that silence of loneliness is a vacuum that detrimentally envelops the mind. Silent space and time have to be chosen to be beneficial.

As an early-teen growing up in a wild, lovely place, I had family, friends, a great community, yet some of my best memories are of climbing a high rocky hill, sitting alone, absorbing a panoramic vista of land, sea and sky, in sensory touch with nature, the only sound the breeze and my breath.

People still seek new ways to use breath. Sheila Wayman (The Irish Times) interviewed conscious connected breathwork (CCB) coach Paul Reynolds, introduced to the method by Nadia Haugh, whose techniques include “You are looking to shift the CO2-O2 balance in the blood, which can help people enter … a non-ordinary state of consciousness, or an altered state.”

These are exercises to allow access to the unconscious parts of the mind normally swamped by our thinking consciousness, Haugh says. Meditation, I was taught, can also bring a sense of an altered state in which one mentally lessens the weight of the body before clearing the mind as far as possible. This sense of weightlessness is helpful when old bones ache.

Some religions look badly on meditation. For me, it’s letting silence still the demands of the body while telling the mind to allow itself a break from the rush of constant pressure the over thinking present world demands of us. The ancients knew the therapeutic power of correct breathing, we need to regain it.