Tag: breath practice

When to NOT Try New Things
chi running · Crossfit · Fear

When to NOT Try New Things

Mina6 Comments

I’ve been TNT’ing (Try New Things) a lot in the past couple of years. In addition to the fact that much of my current life is new and definitively not new things I wanted to try—such as, my breakup, my fear-provoking financial situation (which I wrote about here), my new (and only temporary) home, my cat-less-ness and my auto-immune challenge (induced by all the stress of these new things and which I wrote about here)—I’ve also been voluntarily, even enthusiastically, trying quite a number of other new things. In an earlier version of my life, I was a regular TNT-er. I’m an expert on being a beginner. TNT-ing stokes my enthusiastic nature. Plus, they say, that great, amorphous they consisting of experts, influencers, ordinary people and basically everyone who is not me (oh, and also me, here) … they say that trying new things keeps us young (in outlook) and/or sharp and/or curious. So sure, I’ll have what she’s having. Maybe it will nourish new shoots in the devastated territories of my life.

Yet, I hit my TNT limit a few weeks ago. A brick wall of I-can’t-do-this-and-I-don’t-have-to-or-want-to. I’ll come back to that in a moment.

Here’s a short list of new things I’ve been trying:

Trying a new running technique. After 30 years of serious running, I’m going back to basics. Deconstructing my running style, to then reconstruct a more sustainable and efficient technique. Or at least that is the promise of chi running. Yes, I am exceedingly late to the chi running party. The book first came out in 2004. It turns out that now is just the right time to refresh my relationship with running. I listened to the book once through and now each time I go out running I listen again to the two guided runs, in which Danny Dreyer moves through a series of what he calls focuses. My favourite focus is the instruction to imagine that my stride begins partway up my spine at my T12L1 vertebra. This is the last vertebra on the thoracic spine and sits just above the lumbar spinal column. T12L1 is the spot that Chinese medicine calls the Gate of Destiny (or Center of Vitality or Gate of Life, among other things). He instructs me to run from the Gate of Destiny. How beautiful is that image? Prosaically, he means for me to bring my attention to the gate, without intentionally twisting my back to initiate my leg swing. To notice the origin source of my legs’ impulse to move. I love tuning into the channel of that electrical twitch of desire that lifts me from my bed and accompanies me out the door. The image of running through the Gate of Destiny has a gone a long way to renewing my love of running. It’s also possible that my running is more easeful.

Trying a new breathing technique. About two months ago, I listened to James Nestor’s book, Breath, which has inspired me to focus on breathing through my nose as much as possible. I mainly focus on this when I’m running (to which I’ve also added the chi running focuses). In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been experimenting with taping my lips closed while I sleep, to force myself to breath exclusively through my nose. So far quite interesting. I’m not sleeping worse and possibly better. I wake up less thirsty. I may go to the bathroom less during the night. At first, it seemed like my dreams were more vivid, though as time has passed, I’m not noticing that effect anymore. I had an amorphous hope that the new breathing technique might have a positive effect on my Addison’s, but sadly my blood test last week showed that the extreme breakup stress I’ve been under this last month has boosted my potassium and renin up past the high ends of the healthy range again. Thankfully, so far, I still feel okay, though I may need yet another dose increase and the diet restrictions are unjoyful.

Trying CrossFit. In mid-December I tried a CrossFit-like class for the first time. Prior to that moment, I had never lifted a barbell in my life, nor a dumbbell (DB, in XFit acronymic lingo). Unless a 5lb weight counts as a DB (there aren’t any on the rack at the gym). I thought I wouldn’t like the classes. I thought I’d find them macho or meathead-ish. Instead, I was inspired by the intensity. I think it helps that the gym I’m going to is pretty low key. I don’t mean the classes aren’t hard. They crush me. Every time. And the music is loud. And the coach claps and encourages us in a loud voice. Yet, in the midst of all the loudness and crushing-ness, the vibe is friendly and non-competitive. Everyone seems to be focused on their own thing. To be transparent, I’m not totally focused on my own thing, because I have noticed that my DBs are the lightest weight of anyone else in the class. I’m okay with that. A couple times I’ve felt discouraged at the end of a class. Mostly, I feel vivified and I notice that I’m getting stronger. Slow but steady.

15lb dumbbells (my kind of weight) Delaney Van on unsplash

Trying Capoeira. Here’s the brick wall … Picture me at the base of that wall in Game of Thrones. Impossibly high and thick. Capoeira is an Afro-Brazilian combination of martial arts and dance. In its original conception, it was developed by slaves who wanted to train in the martial arts, without giving away that’s what they were doing to the malevolent outsider watching. It’s quick, elaborately choreographed, acrobatic, intensely aerobic and beautiful to watch. And totally incomprehensible from the outside. I realized early that my fitness was not enough of an advantage, not even close. The speed is dizzying, not to mention the cartwheels, handstand-like moves and near constant level changes (from standing to crouched to a push up posture and back up again). The complexity is confronting for a beginner, especially with no dance or martial arts background. I was overwhelmed. As much as I wanted to learn (or did I just not want to give up?), I recognized that the psychological and time investment, not to mention the financial commitment, was not where I wanted to put my resources. Psychologically, I didn’t feel good about myself in the few classes I went to. I felt like a total incompetent with no hope of improvement. Time wise, I understood that, if I was to have any hope of improving, I would need to make room for a twice a week commitment, which would mean giving up other sports and activities I loved. Financially, that frequency would have been an expensive proposition. Did I want to commit time and money to a pursuit that was massively discouraging? Instead of coming to the obvious conclusion, a voice in my head doubled down on my discouragement, criticizing me for not being tough enough to take on the challenge. A week-long wrestling match took place inside my head. One voice trying to shame me into going back, taunting me for not being intrepid enough, for wallowing in a rut of breakup self-pity. There was another voice though. She invited me to focus my attention on things that give me pleasure. In the end, that second voice prevailed. She pointed out how much else on my plate was new. She forgave me my lack of go-get-em-ness, acknowledging that my self-esteem is not at an all-time high and that it is perfectly okay to be easier on myself.

The depth of my relief when I canceled the booking that I’d made for my fourth capoeira class was profound. A huge weight lifted off my chest and I could breathe easier. After all the self-criticism and shaming that my inner voices had rained down on me, once I made the decision, every single one of them quieted. No second thoughts. No shame.

I feel surprisingly easy with my choice. Even weirdly proud. In a period when I’ve been having some self-compassion gaps, this was a rare moment of solicitude for my current condition. I still believe that TNT is a worthwhile beacon. And, it is not always what’s needed.    

Sex and Breath Can Fuel Our Sports
femalestrength · sex · skiing

Sex and Breath Can Fuel Our Sports

Mina

Some mornings I wake up with a buzz of desire fluttering around my nerve endings. When our enthusiasm matches up and time allows, my partner and I indulge our pleasure. Inevitably though, there are mornings when that is just not possible. Until very recently, my response would be to shelve the buzz in corner, so that I could focus on the practical to-do list for the day.

Or, less productively, I’d be grumpy.

Until three weeks ago. That’s when I started taking an online course on the history and practices of tantric sexuality from the Centre Summum. I’ve been intrigued by tantra practices for more than a decade, but could never work up the courage to actually sign up for anything.

A brief and necessarily incomplete description is that tantra is a spiritual practice (across many traditions) of gathering and harmonizing our feminine and masculine energy. So, yes, tantra is about so much more than sex. And, it’s about sex.

Thanks to the pandemic, the class about sex is online. Thank you zoom for the ability to enroll in classes that would be logistically complicated or psychologically daunting, if they were in person. How much easier is it to show up from home? No one can really see when I blush, nor are there those awkward moments before and after class where we talk about … our sex lives?      

We get homework. The first and second week (the third class is tonight, after this piece posts) one of our assignments was to notice those buzzy moments that I mentioned earlier (the class is in French and I love the French word for the buzz—frissons). Instead of setting the frissons aside, as I used to do, we learned to pause and simply savor the sensation of our life force energy. That’s what tantrism calls our sexual energy—our life force, the root flame of our vitality. Well, that was fun homework. Enlivening.

neon sign reading “and breathe” against leafy background, .by Valeriia Bugaiova on Unsplash

Another delightful assignment is practicing Kumbhaka breathing to cultivate our vital energy. Breath practices are key in tantra. As explained in the class, Kumbhaka breath is to cultivate our life force energy. It goes like this:

Ideally (but not necessarily!) done in seated meditation position. Take a deep breath in, moving the breath down from your heart into your pelvic floor. Hold the in-breath for a moment and then breathe out, moving the breath through your root chakra at the base of your spine. Allow the out-breath to continue up your spine, flow over the crown of your head and back down to rejoin the in-breath at your heart. Hold your breath at empty until you feel the urge to breathe. Repeat the breath pattern. Repeat again. You may set yourself a breath count or an amount of time, or you may just do it until your vitality is buzzing.

An online search yields a variety of slightly different descriptions, with prescriptive advice on when and how long to do the breathing. Our teacher, Stéphane, has a permissive spirit, much more about flow than structure. My personal approach is to try out different ways of doing the breath and feel into what works for me. In that spirit, I have a visualization that manifested with the practice. The in-breath is to anchor my life force (my power). The out-breath straightens my spine and as the breath flows over my head and past my face, I imagine putting on a warrior’s helmet. That’s my courage. Finally, as the breath reaches my heart, I tap into love. I’ve been doing Kumbhaka during my meditation, where it feels energizing and helps me focus (not on sex, but on what I need to focus on for the day).

Where I’ve really noticed a difference is when I do the breathing in bed, as I’m waking up on those buzzy mornings when I have to get up and start the day, no time for dalliance. When I go for my workout, which is cross-country skiing these days, I feel extra strong. The first time I felt this abundant energy during my ski, I just chalked it up to feeling happy.  After all, spending a few extra moments to breathe into the frissons is happiness-inducing. The second and third times I felt the kick of vitality on my skis, I thought—hey, there’s a pattern. First, I searched around online to see if there was anything specific about my experience. While there is lots about tantric yoga and about other breathing practices and sports performance, there wasn’t anything specific about the particular connection I am experiencing. So, I asked Stéphane, if I was imagining the connection or if the Special K-effect (as I think of it, a reference to the breakfast cereal, not the drug) was a known result? He wrote me back (oh, right; because I did not have the courage to ask the question in class, live on zoom, I waited to ask in writing!): “Yes, whenever we channel our sexual energy there will be a tendency to increase all of our internal energies. It (*our sexual energy) is the source of all our strength.”

Yes! I’ll have what she’s having. Oh wait, I’m the she who is already having. That sentence may have been nonsense, but you get the picture. I’m grooving to this class, even on my skis.

Interestingly, at the risk of over-sharing, but hey, I’m already in pretty deep here: when I actually have sex in the morning, that does not make me feel stronger for my workout. The more likely result is that I am more at ease with however the workout goes. That’s an equally great outcome, since I can get caught up in performance-busting narratives in my head.

And, in case it isn’t super obvious, these practices are intended for all people with sexual energy, whether or not you are in a relationship or solo and whatever gender creates the sparks.

There’s more personal, anecdotal research to be done on this front. I plan to be very diligent about my homework. And if you’ve been wanting a new kick of energy to supplement your morning coffee, check out the Special K-effect for yourself. You can’t fake the deliciousness.