Author: Bev

“Ouch, that hurts!” We’ve all been there, done that; some of us more than others.  But I think it’s surely universal that sometimes you hurt. 

There’s something about hurts, that highlight their opposite in the ordinary functioning of our lives.  Occasionally we become acutely aware of the value of all our body parts, when one of them hurts.  It reminds me of the 1988 Tim Keifer song, “don’t know what you got till it’s gone.”

For example, most of us pay no attention to our digestive system until or unless it acts up, acts out, or acts wrong in some way.  Unless you’re a chronic dieter, you probably aren’t terribly preoccupied with the contributions you make to your digestive system.

Do you notice how awesome your bones are unless you break one?  There are from 206-213 bones in the adult body, not to mention all the supportive ligaments, joints and muscles that work together to assist our movements.  Can you give your miraculous skeleton a hearty hurrah for doing its job without much thanks from you?

What about your heart muscle and all its accessories?  I’ll bet you don’t think you’re a muscle builder until that vital muscle gives you some sort of warning, screaming, “I’m here!”   Or in the case of a broken heart, do we appreciate our feelings?  The whole array of emotions that enhance the color of our lives, escape our attention unless we’ve had hurt feelings.

And our skin, the biggest organ of our bodies, aside from slathering it with lotions, potions, and creams, do we really fuss with it in accordance with its importance unless it’s burned (hello, Jay Leno), scabbed, blistered, cut, wrinkled, bruised, or bleeding?

What about our eyes?  Most of us grow up thinking if our vision is impaired, we get glasses and all is good.  Then as we age, we become aware that there is something else, called eye disease.  We learn that we have a macula, an optic nerve, vitreous fluid, a retina, and so much more that can rebel in the form of hardening, cracking, glaucoma, cataracts, and all manner of fitting that we never considered, until now.

Beginning in the teenage years, when loud noise was a cool thing to enjoy, you didn’t once consider that one day, instead of a kitschy cell phone reception advertisement, someone would routinely ask you, “can you hear me now?”  Does anyone really want to wear hearing aids?

Who knew that hearing acuity affects brain function?  “Use it or lose it,” coined by American tennis player, Jimmy Connors, was never a truer statement than when applied to our precious brain.  I’m not sure we can appreciate our mind enough.  Our very loquacious brain tells us how to walk, talk, listen, digest, ruminate, emote; well, it tells us to “live and breathe and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

Leg cramps that can be way more than a simple Charlie horse because you didn’t warm up before swimming, and effect you excruciatingly from feet to groin, make you value your legs.  Way beyond their shape and size, as revealed when wearing shorts, our legs give us the liberty of crutch-free mobility.  Appreciate them.

A splinter-free finger makes you appreciate your digits like nothing else.  Well, unless you have arthritis and rings are no longer your favorite jewelry.  A blister-free foot, ankle, toe, or heel makes you grateful for your feet; not to mention, freedom from bunions.

After a shot in the arm, you begin to see the merits of pain-free limbs.  After a C-section or other abdominal surgery, you realize no matter how paltry these muscles may have been, for example, a great distance from a six pack, they’re vital to movement from sitting to standing to the taken for granted, bowel movement.  Sorry, it may be indelicate to say, but it’s a fact.

Here’s a double negative for you, don’t be one who “don’t know what you got till it’s gone.”  If you’ve encountered near-death, I imagine that you have little trouble appreciating every single one of your body’s miraculous systems.  This includes, their ability to “heal thyself.”

What do you say we try to appreciate what we’ve got, in all its imperfect glory, here and now?  Don’t wait until it hurts to say thank you to your hard-working limbs, heart, liver, stomach, mind, reproductive and sex organs, feet, pancreas, emotions, nose and throat, joints, back, muscles, and so much more.

Maybe instead of crying, when it hurts, we should have a happy dance in celebration of all the other stuff that works according to plan. We could have an appreciation festival for all our physiological systems that work so hard for us every day.

Here’s a thought: “Optimism won’t change the situation.  But optimism will change how the situation feels.”  Maybe our hurts wouldn’t hurt so much if we injected a shot of optimism into our bum’s.

I don’t know when it started, at the Christmas Eve anticipation of Santa’s arrival way back when, or after giving birth to a lovely child who didn’t think much of sleep, accompanied by my trained alertness and vigilance to every sound in the house.  Oh well, it happened.

I get discouraged after I’m proud of myself for eking out five hours of sleep and then I read some flippant comment in some article about health, that five hours isn’t enough.  Oh, and they tell me that I’m more susceptible to this disease and that malady in the future if I don’t get my sleeping act together, and soon.

And then there’s the nonsense comment uttered by those who have no problem sleeping, to “go home and get some sleep.”  Like one can “get” sleep, like we “get” toilet tissue or a new toaster, at the store.

Because I like to sleep as much as the next guy or gal, if I could get some sleep at will, don’t you think I would do so?  “I think I’ll just run home and pick up some sleep after I pick up dinner at the takeout.”

Kudos to all ya all who sleep eight hours, really.  It truly must be nice to be congratulated for ticking off one of the requirements of healthy living, just by doing what comes naturally to you.  Just know, that it doesn’t happen at will for some of us.

Insomniacs encounter a fair amount of blow-back in the form of blame, for not sleeping enough.  Often, it’s assumed that we have “bad sleep habits” that self-sabotage our nocturnal rest schedule.  I can make myself exercise, and eat a disciplined diet, if I try hard and set my attitude right.  However, it’s not always possible, with sleep.

I’m no snowflake nor so woke that I can’t take a joke or some lighthearted ridicule for having insomnia.  However, I believe that all the experts out there could slow down a tad on quick judgements.  Sleep is more complicated than a convenient arm-chair stereotype can address.

Experts on some narrow subjects are famous for making blanket statements which wipe out the legitimate experience of vast numbers of people who don’t fit into their mold.  With the World Wide Web, otherwise known as the Internet, we are a world chock-full of experts on subjects as diverse as makeup, business, fashion, food, finance, health, sex, God, politics, cats, plants, décor, and whatnot.

It truly boggles the mind, how many contrary opinions appear about any subject you can pick out of a hat, if you consult the Internet.  For example, “how much is enough sleep?”  Depending upon the expert, it’s anywhere from five to nine hours with the traditional eight, being the favorite.

If I sleep five hours, it’s inconvenient but is it the end of the world?  Speaking of experts, Oprah said back in 2015 that it’s okay to sleep as much or as little as you sleep.  I took some comfort in that thought; after all, if Oprah says it, it’s as good as true, right?  But, sorry Oprah, sleep research contradicts your advice, concluding that five hours isn’t enough.  Ugh.

Then there’s the customary advice about going to sleep and staying asleep which focuses primarily on scheduling, reducing screen time, anti-stress and meditation techniques, and exercise during the day, natural or herbal tinctures; and common-sense environmental things like using soothing music, white or brown noise and light reduction, temperature control, pillow and mattress selection, and lavender, lavender, lavender.  Of course, there is the “sleeping pill,” if all else fails.

Oh, and don’t sleep during the day, granddad, and grandma.  But never fear if you do, as there are experts who swear by a rejuvenating short nap for folks of all ages, as a boon for productivity and brain health.

For those of us susceptible to the opinions of sleep experts who say we’re doomed to either a silly or serious malady down the road if we don’t get our prescribed hours of sleep, some familiar night time thoughts are: “if I go to sleep within the next fifteen minutes, I’ll get six hours of sleep before I have to get up.”

Or, “oh well, I may not sleep but I’m resting my body – as you lay prone in that dastardly bed, refusing to get up and do something because the experts said, “no screen time.”  But after you’ve given yourself a talking-to like, “I’m relaxed, I’m going to sleep, (there’s a yawn, yay I might be going to sleep), I love sleeping…” and your eyes pop open like a well-wound Jack-in-a-box, you get up and do something.

Seriously, if I’m sleepy I might go to bed and get either nine hours of sleep, or two; you never know which.  I can fall asleep during an entertaining television show or movie, quickly go to bed to catch the wave and not five minutes in bed, sit up wide awake.  At which time, I usually just get up and do stuff.  There’s always something to do.

Sweet dreams, if you can get ‘em.

We are embarking on the best holiday of the year, in my humble opinion, Thanksgiving.  This holiday centers on gratitude, yet more specifically thanksgiving for our blessings of food.  We express this thankfulness by sharing our bounty of food with family and friends.

Many people pray over their food.  Most Christians thank God for their food.  Part of the famous Psalm 23 includes, “give us this day, our daily bread.”

Do you remember the song, “Let us break bread together…?”  An African American spiritual from the 1920s, this simple little hymn was included in our United Methodist hymnal and traditionally sung during communion services.

Many social interactions are cemented over a meal, food buying rituals, or snacking on some sort of food.  And we all have keen food memories.  For example, I associate my dad with sardines, fig bars, olives, and sandwich cookies.  My mom baked bread when I was growing up, so I think of her every time I enter a bakery.  She also made homemade French fries, tapioca pudding, and “glorified rice;” for all of which I will always remember her.

We all have engaged in one or more dysfunctional relationships in our lifetime.  Some of them we can get out of and others we must work through.

I think it’s bad, however, that the dysfunctional relationship that I am currently embroiled in is with one of the necessities of life: food.  It’s complicated.

Flannery O’Connor said, “the truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”  Ain’t that something.

I’m having difficulty “stomaching” some recent changes to my diet.  I have what probably could be termed a common sense, atop a reasonably informed understanding of nutrition.  I’ve been forced, however, by a digestive malady to throw out my long-held knowledge of “what’s healthy” to eat.  What once did the trick in keeping my health in check, came back to bite me in the you know what.

Grocery shopping became a conundrum.  I pretty much bypassed the most familiar aisle to me over the last twenty years, the produce aisle, my favorite.  Vegetables and fruit have comprised a massive portion of our household food consumption, with a little bit of protein, a few carbs, and a fair number of grains, on the side.

A Mediterranean diet, chock-full of fresh fruit and vegetables, has been the basis of our household diet for decades. We all know that the sugar, salt, and texture of snack foods attract us like bees to nectar and gnats to our eyes.  Do you remember the Lays potato chip ad from years ago, that you “can’t eat just one?”

My Mediterranean diet gets skewered with the first bite of snack food.  Few of us can resist that attraction forever.  It nearly requires the discipline and support of a twelve-step program to resist an addiction to junk food.

Some mornings I have awakened to the day saying to myself, “I’m just eating food today, no snacks, no sweets, just food.”  That’s a silly statement, I know, but it’s my way of heading back into the reality of healthy eating.

I recall an old Saturday night live skit where Belushi and Murray or one of the other originals from the cast, broke down a Snickers bar via the good groups, claiming the Candy bar met all the nutritional categories for healthy eating.  I wish.

We all know the basics of the food groups to be protein, vegetables, cheese/milk/yogurt, fats, fruit, and grains.  But then there are “food groups” like vegan, vegetarian, no-carbs, low-carbs, Mediterranean, gluten-free, no-fat, keto, Atkins, low-calorie, and my new category: bland!

When you love the flavor of good food, bland is a horror like no other, when it comes to food enjoyment.  There’s no way to “bon apetit,” with bland food.  I can take eliminating some foods.  In fact, I once read a little book called, “French Women Don’t Get fat,” that suggested, “corn is for cows and potatoes are for pigs,” so I’ve avoided but haven’t completely cut out these starches.  Until now, with a bland diet.

Forget bland for now, let’s talk food.  Food can be a lot of things. We each form opinions and make food choices based on only God knows what.

Food can be funny.  Remember the Griswold’s from the movie, “Christmas Vacation?”  Their Christmas meal included crunchy turkey; a lime jello mold garnished with cat litter; it was funny food.

Food can be fast.  Welcome to America.  There are food trends, and there is traditional, or classic food.  You decide which of this kind of food pertains to the “farm-to-table craze.”  It’s kind of funny to us rural dwellers who have eaten farm-to-table for as long as we can remember.

Food can be categorized.  Surely, you’ve heard of the Food Pyramid and how many servings of various categories of food we should consume in a day.

Food can be picked at, picked up, and picked apart.  Food can be annoying, and we get fed up.

Food can unite us and bond us together.  Food can also separate us.  For example, you’ve heard, “yuck, how can you eat that?”  Or, “I can’t eat thus and such.”

Food can make us sick and it can equally make us well.  We can eat too much food or too little food; but food cannot be avoided as it is a necessity of life.  We all consume food and we waste food too.

Apparently, there are right foods and wrong foods.  Food can be fancy or it can be plain.  Food can be bland or it can be caliente.

Food is primarily fuel.  It doesn’t matter what foodies, food critics, or food writers tell us.  We will eat what we eat and most of us are thankful for our food.  Bon apetit and Happy Thanksgiving.

Is it my imagination or has impatience run rampant?  If it’s not some lady running a shopping cart up my you know what, at the grocery store checkout line, it’s some dude rushing another guy out of his parking spot at the hardware store.

Everybody’s in a hurry these days, and common courtesy seems to have gone with the wind.  I just can’t.

Are people ruder than they used to be?  Have we taken “looking out for number one,” way too far?

I understand that we should all “take care.”  We should all learn to love ourselves, such as the Bible says, as we love our neighbor.  But loving yourself more than your neighbor, then that’s taking the precept too far, I believe.

A few weeks ago, I literally fell in a crosswalk because an impatient driver, stopped to wait for me to cross frantically waving like a flag in the wind, to get me to hurry up.  So flustered, I trotted toward the crossing line and tripped over my own rubber soled shoes.

What’s wrong with this picture?  I haven’t totally lost faith in people because of their impatience.  That trip and fall incident was accompanied by my dropping my bank card at the crime scene.  Don’t you know that a Good Samaritan turned it in at the grocery store customer service desk.  I would not have dreamed of a more honest, caring and truly loving your neighbor type human being to have concluded that stunning experience.

It could’ve been worse.  Don’t you know, it could always be worse?

I don’t know about you, but I feel rushed all the time, whether it’s spouses pushing each other to do something or another, or it’s just the speed of culture.  Could you just “hold your horses,” a little bit?

Put the kettle on, and chill out.  Mind you, I don’t think I’m a particularly slow person.  In fact, my usual walking gait is by habit timed close to my fitness walking regime, which is kind of fast.

I’m also quick off the draw in business and technology, or so I’m told by more than a few professionals younger and savvier than am I.  So, it is just a theory that this “hurry-up” culture is based purely on self-centered “me-centric” selfishness.

I’m pretty sure that the driver’s manual in every state of the United States restricts the use of sounding one’s horn to very purposeful things.  And I’m equally sure that people are honking their horn out of impatience, not because they love Jesus. (Please know I’m not mocking Jesus, but to clarify, there used to be a bumper sticker, which said “honk if you love Jesus.”)

It’s just plain road rage if you honk your horn out of frustration with other driver’s reaction time.  Typically, you will hear a honk if you delay a fraction of a second after the traffic light turns green or risk a rear-ending.

And forget the yellow light as a caution light or prepare-to-stop indication.  If you don’t go through a yellow light, again you risk being rear-ended by the guy behind you who wants to get through the light.

Sensible driving calls for sounding your horn only to alert another driver with whom you might collide, i.e., the blind spot, or their temporary lack of attention to their surroundings, which include you in them.

“Hold on!”  I know I’m not the only human being who takes five seconds to get her cards back in the right place in my wallet or hand bag before leaving the checkout line at the grocery store.  Oh, my goodness you would think you were holding up a person late for an appointment at the White House, but it’s just one granny on her way to the next store on her list.

Leave it to a 19^th century monarch to genially tell us all to “back off,” and save ourselves some stress.  Supposedly it was the U.K.’s Queen Victoria who said “Let time slow down so that one breathes freedom and peace, making one forget the world and it’s sad turmoil.” 

Then, there’s “sick as a dog,” or “not feeling so hot.”  Have you been there, done that a time or two in your life?

I think it’s kind of ironic that the idiom, “under the weather,” is directly related to seasickness.  I’ve certainly not had every kind of sickness, but I can say from experience that seasickness is real, my friends.

It’s been many years now since we traveled by major ocean liner across the Atlantic to Europe.  With all the planning and preparation and packing light and smart, I didn’t once consider seasickness pills.  I was convinced I wouldn’t need them.

I arrogantly, or maybe naively thought that I had the whole seasickness thing whipped as we cruised out of New York harbor along the Hudson River toward the Atlantic.  “This is quite lovely,” I thought as we gazed out of some windows in one of many casual dining rooms aboard the QEII, at the diminishing lights of New York City.

So much for my cocky thoughts that “this is a modern ocean liner with ballasts to beat the band.”  Or, “I have a sturdy constitution, I never get sick.”  After all, this was the 21^st century and I wouldn’t be huddled amongst my fellow sojourners, packed like sardines in the hull or sole or whatever the “floor” is called on The Mayflower.

Incidentally, I didn’t see one “angry” wave either to or fro on our cruise.  It was a smooth trip.  In fact, I spent quite a bit of time assuaging the potential effects of gargantuan food offerings aboard the ship, in my Jackie Kennedy headscarf, walking the outer decks, never spotting nasty weather.

But as memory serves, it was about ten o’clock, the first night out, when “sick as a dog” hit me in a freakishly sudden way.  It caught me totally off guard.  I may have vomited twice in my entire life.  However, I have felt like throwing up countless times and personally I think that counts.  Vertigo counts too; you know it if you’ve ever experienced it.

Supposedly back in the day, when a sailor was feeling seasick, he would be sent below deck so he could get away from being “under the harsh weather.”  First noted in print in 1835, the phrase, “under the weather,” refers more specifically to being “under the weather bow,” the bow being the part of the boat where all the nasty weather blows.

In my experience, there was nowhere on that boat where I could get away from being under the weather.  I wanted, not a rescue boat, a doctor, a pill, or any human being.  I wanted a helicopter, now!

“Sick as a dog,” comes from the 1700s when dogs as well as rats were identified as having spread the plague, so dogs were associated with anything undesirable.  Thankfully we’re not living in the 18^th century anymore, Dorothy.

Nonetheless, I’ve been “sick as a dog,” from stuff that is not even close to the plague.  But under the weight of certain sicknesses, it felt to me that death would be a relief.

I haven’t experienced much sickness in my life, for which I’m exceedingly grateful.  And, feeling “under the weather,” doesn’t really rate when you have that all-over feeling of sweeping nausea, queasiness, and total inability to function associated with discomfort in any and every bodily position.

Laying down feels like you might drown in your own brain.  Standing up is near-impossible.  If you think walking on a moving train is rough, try walking or moving, or sleeping, or resting, while under the influence of seasickness-like symptoms.

You’ve surely heard the saying, “misery loves company?”  In a state of seasickness, stomach flu, gallbladder pain, various forms of vertigo, and likely many other conditions with which I have no personal experience, misery doesn’t even come close to loving company.  Can you say, “leave me alone.”    

If someone says, “I’m feeling under the weather today, I think I’ll take a sick day,” you figure, oh well, they’re feeling a little off or not up to par.  You don’t concern yourself too much when somebody says they’re “under the weather,” because it’s minor and recoverable in a minute’s time.

I’m told that “par,” is the score that is expected in a golf game.  Under par, in golf means exceptionally good; but in life, it’s not so much.  But since par is associated with a game and is not as serious as the game of life, “feeling under par” is a nuisance more than anything, right?     

Who among us in today’s tech world hasn’t consulted “Dr. Google,” when we’ve noticed something amiss in our bodies?   It might not be big as in the line, “it’s not a tumor,” from “Kindergarten Cop,” but neither is it right or normal, for us.

We all feel “under the weather” at times.  Remember that an ingrown toenail hurts.  An unusual spot on our skin is concerning.  A headache is distracting.  A sharp, dull, lingering pain in this whatsit or that thingamajig can be distressing.  Let’s all exercise some compassion for the folks around us who might be sitting under the weather bow of the boat.      

I, for one, am nearly ecstatic about this extended Autumn we’ve been enjoying.  I know, I know, hunters are probably starting to get tense.

Professional and amateur climate-watchers in Pennsylvania are most likely lamenting that we need the cold weather for this ecological and that conservation issue that I have no need to overly concern myself with.  But for a regular Karen who loves Fall the best of all the seasons, I’m happy as a clam with this weather.

Officially Autumn, which most of us around here call Fall, begins around September and ends with the winter solstice in December.  However, the temperate feel of this transition season, which is also known as sweater-weather, customarily ends long before Christmas when jacket-weather has given way to coat, scarf, hat, and glove-weather.

So, that we are beginning November with highs near seventy degrees, is a bit remarkable.  I’m not complaining.  Autumn, it seems is the favorite season of many.  We aren’t unhappy that due to climate-change or whatever, the season seems to be longer than usual, which is of course a relative concept.  My heating-oil budget is also grateful for this extended temperate weather.

Fall, so named from the phrase, “the fall of the leaf,” has been more commonly used to denote the season in the U.S. since the 1800s.  Deciduous trees shed their leaves this time of year in a vast area of the Northern Hemisphere.

Fall’s seasonal counterpart, Spring, is so named from the phrase, “the spring of the leaf.” Come Spring, everything is blossoming and springing back to life after a long winter’s nap.

Most of us remember daylight saving time’s rules from the saying, “fall back, spring forward.”  It seems to me I read a while back that the House of Representatives passed a bill to banish daylight saving time, but it fell dead in the Senate as some state in the northwest couldn’t cope.  Right when I had hope that there might be more chances to walk outdoors in the winter, before dark, at 5 p.m.!

If your curious which name came first, as in the chicken or egg conundrum, it seems that the word Autumn was used in the 1300s, and the word, Fall was used commonly by the 1500s.  An even earlier name for the season, is “harvest.”

In fact, my favorite greeting for the season, displayed on our front door, is Happy Harvest.  Many people in these parts celebrate harvest with the familiar display of corn stalks, hay bales, pumpkins, gourds, fall berries and vines, and leaves.

Leaves of every color and hue are everywhere this season.  Leaves are controversial – imagine that.  Some say leave the leaves lie, to house all manner of organism over the winter.  Others of a more fastidious nature, wish that every single leaf were picked up and disposed of.  Our household lies somewhere in the middle of the controversy, having nearly every manner of tree, deciduous as well as coniferous, somewhere on our property.

Leaves are a public phenomenon.  Leaves blow from one property to another.  They litter woodland paths.  Wet by dew, leaves become a slippery surface on pavement.  They also color the season with the warmest of glows.

Leaves are the reason for the season, in my book; and the smell of pumpkin spice, cinnamon, gingerbread, and all that stuff.  Hot tea and hot chocolate are drinks de rigueur of Fall; even hot apple cider.

I grew up jumping into massive piles of dead and dying leaves. Don’t tell me I’m too old to jump into a pile of leaves. Tell me I’m too wise to do so.  I’m not as young as I feel or look, I’m as old as I think and behave.

If you’re a hugger, not a “don’t touch me,” kind of person, you’ve probably noticed at least once that when you hugged someone, they emitted a big exhale.  You know when this happens, they’ve been holding perhaps a bunch of stuff in.

Isn’t it about time to exhale?  The term, “bated breath” was first used by Shakespeare in his 1605 Merchant of Venice, and it refers to abating your breathing, stopping it or reducing it, in short, holding one’s breath in excitement, anticipation, or trepidation for what’s next.

Do you recognize any of these instances when you’ve held your breath:  Anything involving a timer; Under water, either literally or figuratively; Against the clock; Holding back your temper/anger; Concentrating on an intricate task; Passenger in a vehicle; Medical procedures; Rushing from one thing to another; Number two – enough said; Awaiting an outcome; Birthing a baby or a project; Waiting for anything; Afraid of something…?

Prior to about the last twenty years, I erroneously thought that when you’re out of breath, say when you’re exercising, it was the inhale that gave you more steam.  However, contrary to my common sense and the fact that inhaling when out of breath never worked, it’s the exhale that renews your energy.

It was from Leslie Sansone, the exercise guru, that I first heard, “if you’re feeling out of breath, blow it out.  That’ll give you more energy.” Or, “don’t hold your breath, ever!”  So, who knew that to exhale is the ticket to better fitness.

About fitness, are you aware that, at least in television and movies, the Brits call good looking, well-toned folks, “fit.”  As in glancing at a muscled man or woman, “they’re really fit.”  And we expect that fit people are healthy people.

Does it follow, in a blanket cause-effect way, that good-looking people are healthier than those less fortunate in the looks department?  I have a pet peeve with people who say things like, “why would he cheat on her, she’s beautiful,” or “why would she leave him, he’s gorgeous?”  Like it’s reasonable to cheat on a homely person.  Don’t get me started.

Back to the exhale.  I think our body’s natural reaction to exertion, or any kind of stressor to the mind which is reflected in the body, is to hold your breath.  One would think that breathing the way that is most beneficial to your health would be an instinct.

Au contraire, when our bodies are in flight or fight mode, while stressed, we tend to not breathe according to the original schematic.  And if fight or flight has become your usual modus operandi, you’ve taught yourself to breathe shallowly and to rarely exhale sharply.

It seems that learning to breathe properly when under stress or exertion, takes as much discipline as training our muscles, including the heart muscle, to work at their maximum potential for strength and endurance.

The feel-good chemicals such as dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins which are released during exercise, kick in big time when we exhale.  These puppies make us feel so good, we might be tempted to exhale constantly instead of going back to the rhythm of, breathe in through the nose, breathe out through the nose.

It takes discipline to learn to exhale sharply, once through the mouth, and then begin to breathe in and out as usual while we exercise.  I guess like any feel-good chemical, we want more of it, including the endorphins that our body produces when we exercise.  Some of us, then exhale, exhale, exhale – perpetual mouth-breathers, as we can’t get enough of that good thing.

It seems that the exhale is potentially an all or nothing kind of thing.  Either we are addicted to exhaling and that’s all we want to do because of how it makes us feel. or, we live with bated breath, holding our breath for eons.  When forced to exhale, the relief of it makes us realize “oh my, I should’ve done that a long time ago.”

Have you ever noticed that when you’re stressed you find, or hear, yourself “blowing it out,” sort of constantly.  I think your body is practicing the exhale, stirring up endorphins, dopamine, and serotonin, to get your mind back to feeling good.  So maybe instinct plays a part in the exhale, after all.

I’m no expert on all this physical stuff, but I am an observer of human behavior.  I’ve noticed an awful lot of people walking around with bated breath because I surmise that they feel if they exhale, they’ll explode, lose control, or die because there is so much pent up inside their vulnerable vessel of a body.

Given the stress of our current times, I’ve written these thoughts to encourage us all to just breathe, including the nice cleansing breath known to every birthing woman; and to exhale, letting all that bottled up stuff find a way of escape.  I’m reminded of a favorite Scripture, “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (1 Corinthians 10:13).