Room to Breathe

This image is about 8 years old and is tucked nicely in my treasured art journal, but the message it carries is still close to my heart. I’m trying to figure out how to convey my fascination with breathing. It should seem obvious that I enjoy this part of life and do it quite often. But yet, I feel like I don’t remember breathing for much of my adult years. The rapid pace of life left me breathless and overwhelmed so that most of what I experienced physical tension and my mental spinning. In this regard, this post is not just for people trying to live despite chronic pain, but for people who are way too busy and can’t seem to slow down.

When I drew this image in 2017, I found myself drawn to white space behind the teal lines of the Celtic knot. Should I fill it up? Should I stuff the image with more ink-ish busyness? I could…but I could also choose to let that space be open and free. Looking back, this prayer picture shows my longing for open space and the beginning of a long journey of intentionally slowing down my life.

Sometimes people say, “It hurt so bad that it took my breath away!” This is not an exaggeration; it is true. Pain takes our breath, and chronic pain makes us forget how to breathe. Before I dive into my story of how I learned to breathe, I just want to give you the good news first:

There is room to breathe.

There is space.

An appropriate response to those profound statements would be to pause a few seconds, focus on your breath, and let your body relax. Maybe even pause a few minutes.

Pausing, being still, and breathing! What wonderful choices!

Ironically somewhere around 2019, I began this journey of learning to slow down when it was given to me as an assignment in a graduate class on spiritual formation. “Find a place to be still and observe the world around you for 15 minutes, three times each week.” Really? That’s all I have to do? Well, I guess that will be an easy A! Thankfully, I’ve come a long way since being required to pause my life in order to earn a good grade. Having stillness as an assignment opened the door for a reordering of my life and priorities. It felt great to be still, but I still wasn’t breathing freely. At least I was headed in the right direction!

The next step in my journey came through my SmartBody SmartMind[i] class in 2021. I started this online class in desperation because my pain was so high that the amount of function I was losing frightened me. I could barely get out of the house. I don’t want to live this way — I’m only in my 40’s! The future looked long and grim. SBSM helped me learn to pay compassionate attention to my body. It also required me to slow down, lay down on a mat, and feel back against the floor. It was an expensive 3-month course in grounding myself in my own reality, my own body. And I learned to pay attention to my breath…not necessarily control it, just pay attention and let it flow naturally. This invaluable lesson that took months to learn showed me how often I was not breathing freely. More often than not, my breath felt constricted. I learned that this constriction was normal. Bodies that have faced trauma hold extreme tension patterns, and my body was professional at this! I began the journey of unlocking the tension patterns (see The Body Jacket) along with the joy of breathing. More and more often I felt my body taking a big, spontaneous sigh of relief. It is like my body was saying, “Thank you for paying attention to me!”

I’m faithfully inserting dates in this article because I need you to understand the slow nature of recovery and transformation. At this point, I would pause often throughout the day and feel my breath. I wasn’t that consistent, but it seemed like a good thing, so I kept trying. This simple act brought me a sense of control. Bits of joy surfaced as I began to access the peace of God that passes all understanding.[ii] I no longer felt like I was crashing through life like a juggernaut pulled by crazed oxen! Okay, maybe that sounds a bit dramatic, but at that point in my life, pain was in control. Many of my conscious actions and unconscious reactions were geared toward pain relief.

Slowing down and breathing has provided an alternative reaction to life’s stressors. To continue to live well, I had to take my time to learn this because my normal reactions of stress, tension, control, and worry were destroying my ability to participate in life. Please understand that I’m still learning and have very far to go. When I’m standing, I can barely feel my breath because of pain in my legs. I have to remind myself to breathe. When I’m walking, I can’t seem to find my breath.

The difference is that now I’m not trapped by the pain. I have a way out.

Sit down and breathe, Sarah.

In my mind, a dilemma niggled and bothered me. I’m a very spiritual person. Even when my breath was not carrying me, my faith did. All the time spent breathing and relaxing my tension patterns left me with less time for daily devotions or prayer, especially with all my other responsibilities as a mother. These body activities didn’t feel spiritual. They felt physical. (Note that the previous two sentences clearly reveal our tendency in Christianity to separate our spirituality from our body – more on this topic in upcoming blogs.) I knew in my head that there must be a way around this dilemma. After all, God says that the body is good…and breathing surely feels good!

Slowing down and breathing has provided an alternative reaction to life’s stressors.

2024-25: Enter M. Basil Pennington with his book Centering Prayer: Renewing an Ancient Christian Prayer Form. Pennington teaches a very simple prayer that contemplative Christians have practiced for centuries. For me, it provided a way to connect my breathing practices with awareness of God’s presence with me, within me, with each breath. There are very few rules other than gently returning our thoughts to God’s presence through the use of a prayer word. I chose “Jesus.” A good one! To be honest, it is not like I practice this simple prayer for long chunks of time at once. My focus has been to return to quietness and rest as often as I can throughout the day. That said — I don’t count how often, I don’t try to increase, and I don’t make goals. All those seem to contradict the purpose of letting go and resting in God’s love.

Now it is time for a sigh of relief. Let’ it come!

There is plenty of room to breathe.

In this article, I’ve rushed through an 8-year journey. The mystery of it all is that I still feel like a beginner. I’m excited to practice more, pause more, breathe more, learn more. Now, I guess I’ve said enough about this. Hopefully I’ve tempted you to start your own adventure with breathing! Please share your thoughts or experiences in the comments section!

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[i] smartbodysmartmind.com

[ii] Philippians 4:7.

Some meditative music that has helped me in learning to slow down and be grounded comes from Porter’s Gate. Here are the links!

“Centering Prayer”  https://youtu.be/k-N5JBVBdzM?si=HcKsmY9EteEsuEzw

“Slow Me Down” https://youtu.be/06kxfswbA8A?si=zdJF_onIwF29Tyer