into the woods

ways of breathing, pictures to hold

Here’s something you can try: breathe in a sine wave, letting your in-breath slow as it reaches its peak, then gradually collect speed as it descends into your out-breath, and vice-versa. Like box breathing, but rounded at the corners, circle breathing. One thin stream folding into itself in a single continuous gesture.

My anxiety manifests itself as a clenching around my mouth, throat, and upper chest. I get anxious whenever I feel a feeling too big, which is all the time, because I have chronically huge feelings. Being as I was born in the year of the horse, I keep them on a tight rein, skilled at disciplining them into acceptable motion. Here’s something else you can try: hold a flower in your mind. On your in-breath, let the flower petals curl up as is their natural inclination, and on your out-breath, picture smoothing them down, just so, just for the duration of that breath.

So I was in yoga today, playing with imagining this flower, and on my out-breath, I let the picture of the open petals bring that anxious throat clenching open, like a shackle falling unlocked. I spent an hour thinking over and over again: it’s OK if the shackle comes closed again on the next in-breath—that’s not my concern right now. All that matters is that I’m breathing and the power of my breath loosens that anxious grip. And each time, for those five, ten seconds, I felt my deeper feelings more clearly. The nausous concern that slinks about my gut, the prickling heat of tears collecting in my sinuses, the thrum of arousal in my groin and lower abdomen, the shifty spreading hot-cold ink bleed of fear in my chest, the bright buoyancy of delight in my cheeks and ears… Today in particular I felt the stale edge of my fear giving way to its softer, red-blooded center, and it felt huge, like I was just barely able to see its curvature; I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to see anywhere close to all of it today, and that that was OK.

I’m better at thinking on the time scale of months or years now. I can leave things unfinished at the end of the day and trust myself to pick them up again. I can let moments lie, let them be only themselves, because there will be other moments. Sometimes I sit for half an hour on the verge of tears and they won’t fall, and that’s OK, too. It’s like my grief is a little kid with performance anxiety. And I’m sort of looking at him, and going like, it’s OK, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. We can try again tomorrow if you’d like. I do things very slowly. I’m always the last one out of the yoga studio, aware that I can only pick myself up from the mat so quickly.

I’ve spent most of my life going very fast and taking small things very seriously: and what for? Seriously, what was the point? I’ve spent most of my life running away from my feelings, and now I’m realizing they’re scary, but not insurmountable. I can withstand a lot. I was terribly stuck, and then I changed my life. All it took was feeling my feelings, over and over again, reaching what I thought was the end of them only to discover an impossible next depth, like clockwork. Sondheim was right when he said into the woods, each time you go, there's more to learn of what you know. It’s also true that everything you learn there will help when you return there.