Politics and the Psychotherapist

The world has changed drastically since the results of the November 8^th election, and with it the psychotherapist’s task. The focus on our personal lives has been subsumed by the political climate.  Triggered by Donald Trump’s extremism, many of us are struggling with the intense emotions of:

Anger/Rage

Hate

Confusion

Doubt

Fear

Hopelessness

Inertia

We’ve been taught to refrain from saying bad things about people, to abhor bullying, to resist the tendency to ostracize people based on their skin color or religious beliefs. Trump flaunts these rules.  In addition, he seems inconsistent and intent on overturning policies that we have regarded as progress in our democratic society. More unsettling, he inspires hate crimes and causes rifts in our country and within friendships and families. He remains popular in spite of his divisiveness, seeming to get away with “bad” behavior.

As a result, people’s responses range from fear of bullying, to a dread of a Nazi Germany-style dictatorship, to concerns of a nuclear event, or destruction of the Earth from global warming.

We therapists respond to our clients in various ways—from a neutral stance to explore an individual’s particular concerns and fears to personal sharing. Both approaches have proved to be helpful.

Ms. P. spoke spontaneously about her deep-seated beliefs in the integrity of the government, and her present concerns about corruption. By contrast, Mr. W. hesitated to share the details of his distress until I shared my own unease. Then he chimed in, sighing in relief, “Then I’m not crazy.”

Here are a few tactics that some have found helpful:

Focus on what we can control. For example, deep breathing into the base of our lungs can reduce anxiety.

Find a  reliable companion. Therapy dogs have helped to calm students, and we pet owners experience the soothing power of our animals on a daily basis.

Draw limits. Many people find that limiting their exposure to the media helpful in reducing their anxieties.

Avoid fruitless talk. Friends and family members, divided on their opinions, have agreed to avoid political conversations.

A wonderful poem by the poet John Godfrey Sax (1816-1887) relates how each man creates his own version of reality from limited experience and perspective.

Blind Men and the Elephant

It was six men of Indostan,

To learning much inclined,

Who went to see the Elephant

(Though all of them were blind),

That each by observation

Might satisfy his mind

The First approach’d the Elephant,

And happening to fall

Against his broad and sturdy side,

At once began to bawl:

“God bless me! but the Elephant

is very like a wall!”

The Second feeling of the tusk,

Cried,-“Ho! What have we here

So very round and smooth and sharp?

To me ‘tis mighty clear,

This wonder of an Elephant

Is very like a spear!”

The Third approach’d the animal,

And happening to take

The squirming trunk within his hands,

Thus boldly up and spake:

“I see,”quoth he “the Elephant

Is very like a snake!”

The Fourth reached out an eager hand,

And felt about the knee:

“What most this wondrous beast is like

Is mighty plain,” –quoth he,

“This clear enough the Elephant

Is very like a tree!”

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,

Said “E’en the blindest man

Can tell what this resembles most;

Deny the fact who can,

This marvel of an Elephant

Is very like a fan!”

The Sixth no sooner had begun

About the beast to grope,

Then, seizing on the swinging tail

That fell within his scope,

“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant

Is very like a rope!”

And so these men of Indostan

Disputed loud and long,

Each in his own opinion

Exceeding stiff and strong,

Though each was partly in the right,

And all were in the wrong!

MORAL,

So, oft in theologic wars

The disputants, I ween,

Rail on in utter ignorance

Of what each other mean;

And prate about an Elephant

Not one of them has seen!

Each person perceives a different part of the elephant, which at this point in time, seems   impossible to piece together into a whole animal.

The philosophical parable warns us against promoting an absolute truth or making exclusive religious claims.

The theological truth instructs that although each blind man has a limited perspective, that doesn’t mean that an objective truth doesn’t exist; instead, we should be spurred on to search for and define truth in its entirety.

Conclusion: In the present political climate, psychotherapists must be sensitive and aware to respond to each individual. Some clients want to ventilate without a therapist’s intervention, but in my experience, many welcome the therapist’s personal reaction. In these troubling times, the psychotherapist’s goal remains to encourage dialogue.

Dear Reader: Your opinions are welcome.

Jsimon145@gmail.com

The Power and Impotence of Denial

Psychoanalyst Anna Freud wrote in her 1937 classic, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense, that we all need defenses to function in our daily lives. These keep our ego intact, protect us from undue anxiety, and prevent psychic disintegration.  In other words, defenses help us  “hold it together.”

Some defenses are more constructive than others. For example,

intellectualization uses reason to cope, attempting to make sense of  an aspect of reality. By contrast, the defense of denial may distort and prevent an individual from facing a fact.

The recent film Denial, based on the screenplay by the British playwright David Hare, relates the true event of a 1996 libel suit brought by a discredited British historian, David Irving, against the American scholar of the Holocaust Deborah Lipstadt. Ultimately, the judge in the case, Charles Gray, concluded that Irving was “an active Holocaust denier...anti-Semitic and racist.”

Oddly, Irving did not seem perturbed by his loss in the courthouse. He seemed to relish the attention that he had gained. He also persisted in his denial, seeming to have a psychological need to maintain his image of Hitler as a hero.

 Another person who has openly denied a fact is Donald Trump. He insisted for years  (2011 to 2013)  that President Barack Obama had not been born in the United States. When he was finally convinced of Obama’s natural-born-citizen status and asked about the matter, Trump stated, “I don’t think I went overboard. Actually, I think it made me very popular.”

Like Irving, Trump seemed to thrive on the attention. Sometimes a façade of bravado hides what lurks beneath: a fragile ego and the need to distort reality.

Although we can’t know what motivated Trump, we can speculate that his goal may have been to challenge reality in order to  grab attention. Or perhaps, the distortion of truth was used as a technique to distract and throw others off balance. Or perhaps Trump suffered from a temporary delusion—that is, an idea that is not readily altered by facts.

What to do when confronted with a person who must distort the truth in order to function? In treating people who live in the grip of delusions, psychiatrists know that to directly confront their patients is likely to alienate them. Instead, our goal is to form a relationship, create a safe environment in which they gain courage to examine their perceptions. For example, I accept that Ms. S. hears voices telling her to get back to work. I empathize with the suffering of her tedious life. I hope that medication will lessen her anxiety and fear that lie behind the delusion, often a result of a combination of environmental and neuro-chemical factors.

Hypothetically, in a psychotherapeutic setting, Irving would realize that he had elevated Hitler in his mind to compensate for the lack of a (or an inadequate) father figure in childhood.

Conclusion: Denial is a defense or unconscious mechanism that serves to assure psychic survival. Dealing with the problem of denial in a psychiatric office may be easier than confronting a public figure.  In the world we need to confront the denier with the facts.

Denial is a defense dangerous enough to lead us into war. (Please refer to my blog of October 17, How We Defend Against Death (from Ebenezer Scrooge to Eleanor Roosevelt).    

Dear Reader, I welcome your responses. Jsimon145@gmail.com

Our Personal Laws of Nature

Scientists have come to the conclusion that an unexplainable force is behind our existence. The atheist- physicist Fred Hoyle was forced by his observations to conclude that “a super- intellect has monkey-ed with physics” to cause the Big Bang, a miracle that created the universe.

Other scientists like Galileo, Newton, Mendel and Einstein spurred on by their belief in an order, have tried to explain the laws of nature, or how God manifests in nature. (For more details please refer to my blog of October 31).

Each of us can discover fundamental rules in our own lives. Here’s what I’ve garnered:  Participating in yoga classes instructed me about the power of balance, flexibility, and strength. I realized that these same principles can be applied to any life situation.

When I slipped on the ice several years ago and fractured my wrist,  (the only bone I’ve ever broken) I realized the fall was proceeded by a negative thought. I vowed never to place myself in a precarious position without consciously thinking positively (and continuously advise everyone to do the same). In other words, negative thinking throws us off balance. Positive thoughts serve to balance, heal, and help us problem-solve. Conversely, negative thinking is akin to being stuck in the mud and digging ourselves in deeper.

At this confusing time in our history, thinking positively, working toward solutions and maintaining hope (as well as praying—which I see as an extension of optimism and hope) can be especially important in caring for ourselves and others.

Dear Reader, I welcome your thoughts. jsimon145@gmail.com

Miracles and Why We’re Reluctant to Own them

A miracle suggests divine intervention in human affairs.

Many of us tend to think that believing in miracles is unscientific. But it is science that has proved the existence of miracles, and it is because of a miracle, that we humans live and breathe on planet Earth

Fred Hoyle (2015-2001), the atheist-turned-agnostic astronomer, is responsible for coining the term the Big Bang, the explosion that created the universe.  Hoyle’s data revealed that the highly ordered event could not have occurred by random chance. His atheism was “greatly shaken” at these developments and he said, “A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkey-ed with physics.”  In spite of his observations, he remained an agnostic, a skeptic, who resisted the idea that the entire universe had been created de novo; instead he held on to a limited notion that only stars had been created from nothing.

Other scientists, according to an article by Eric Metaxas in the Wall Street Journal,  believe that the evidence of God’s existence may be irrefutable. The theoretical physicist Paul Davies has said that “the appearance of design is overwhelming,” and Oxford professor Dr. John Lennox said “the more we get to know about our universe, the more the hypothesis that there is a Creator . . . gains in credibility as the best explanation of why we are here.”

The writer C.S. Lewis, who, influenced by his friend  J.R.R.Tolkien, changed from an atheist to a Christian, explained that a miracle is something unique that breaks a pattern so expected and established we hardly consider that it could be broken.  In his 1947 Miracles, he wrote, “Men became scientific because they expected law in nature and they expected law in nature because they believed in a lawgiver.” That is why most of the great founding fathers of modern science believed in an order. Scientists, a few of which include Galileo (astronomy), Newton (calculus), Mendel (genetics) and Einstein (physics), were convinced that an order existed and pursued the search for it.   In essence, science is the discovery or clarification of an order that reveals God in nature.

In a New York Times article, Dr. Jacalyn Duffin, a physician and author of Medical Miracles andMedical Saints, summarized her experience with miracles. As a physician, she was asked by an ecclesiastical tribunal to review a slide of a blood sample. Only after she read the slide was she told that the specimen belonged to a woman she had treated many years ago for a fatal illness. The patient had recovered after praying to Marie-Marguerite d’Youville (1701-77),  the founder of the Order of Sisters of Charity of Montreal and a candidate to become the first Canadian-born saint. When  Duffin affirmed that the patient’s recovery could not be explained by science, but indeed transcended scientific understanding, it was declared a miracle and d’Youville achieved sainthood.

Curious about miracles after this experience, Dr. Duffin spent hours in the Vatican archives, examining more than 1400 miracle investigations from 1588 and 1999. She discovered that opinions of doctors detailing treatment and testimony was a critical part of the canonization process. Medicine is regarded as a manifestation of God’s work on earth. To be declared a miracle, a person has to be sick and dying in spite of having received treatment.

Dr. Duffin notes the parallels between medicine and religion. Both systems are based on evolving beliefs. Medicine is rooted in natural explanations and causes while religion is defined by the supernatural and the possibility of transcendence. Both address our plight as suffering mortals. Medicine helps to postpone death and relieve symptoms, while religion attempts to console us and reconcile us to pain and loss.

Given that miracles exist then, why are many of us skeptical or resistant? I think we fear that we have something to loose-- that we’ll be judged or have to give up a sense of control or power or free will. In actual fact, as Dr. Duffin substantiates, we have something to gain-two avenues instead of one- to heal and ease pain and suffering.  If we open ourselves to the healing of medicine, prayer and miracles, we may be more likely to be healed.

In my next blog, I’ll discuss how by observing nature’s laws in our daily lives, we can open ourselves to miracles.

Conclusion:  Although miracles may not be an everyday occurrence, we benefit from keeping an open mind toward the phenomenon of the mysterious, inexplicable aspect of human reality.

Dear Reader, I welcome your comments. jsimon145@gmail.com

How We Defend Against Death (from Ebenezer Scrooge to Eleanor Roosevelt)

Nature is cruel indeed.  We’re created with the capacity to develop huge egos and accomplish great feats. Then ultimately we lose our entire being. In spite of our capacity to alter nature (test-tube babies are now common), we are subject to some of Nature’s eternal laws. Bodily deterioration is one, immutable reality. Walt Disney may have hoped to have his cryo-frozen body return to life when technology advanced.  But as of this date, no one has come back from the apparently final, inert state.  

About the clutches of the grim reaper, the comedian George Carlin joked, “It’s definitely on your schedule.” Humor is one good defense. Some defenses against death, like humor are helpful, while others, like denial, have been portrayed as destructive. According to cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker,  denial culminates in wars. In his 1973 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Denial of Death, Becker describes how dualism (the division between body and symbol), coupled with our refusal to accept the body’s demise, causes us to concoct heroic belief systems. He proposes that the conflict between one belief system and another leads to wars.

In this election cycle, it’s important to note that we are vulnerable to leaders who motivate by means of harnessing belief systems to fight for a cause.

Becker suggested that creative people manage to integrate the dualism through means of their creative projects. In essence, life can be viewed as a creative project in which each of us has the potential to participate.  In other words, heroism is embodied in everyday life. Through our good deeds to help others, we make the world a better place and create positive memories. Memories are the symbol through which we live on (in others’ minds) after we die.

In A Christmas Carol, the 1843 novella by Charles Dickens, Scrooge is haunted by the Ghosts of Christmas (past, present and future). These spirits awaken in him an awareness of death that transforms him from a bitter and miserly man into a generous one. By giving to others, he experiences the joy that had been missing in his life. After his death he will be remembered for enhancing others’ lives.

In her 1940 book, The Moral Basis of Democracy, Eleanor Roosevelt encourages us to prioritize the well-being of others and to choose love and faith over hatred and fear. Living by her tenets creates positive memories of our lives.

If we follow Becker’s thinking, an awareness of death, coupled with the idea that we live on in symbols of good memories, can help us accept death and create peace in our world.

Conclusion: Acknowledging the dualism between body and symbol in an awareness of death motivates us to live life to its fullest and to heal the world.

Dear Reader, I welcome your thoughts.

jsimon145@gmail.com

Identity in A Hall of Mirrors

Mirror neurons were discovered by the Italian neurophysiologist- researcher Dr. Rizzolatti in the 1980’s. Regarded as one of the most important findings in the last few decades, the mirror neurons confer the ability to recognize our reflections in the mirror, and are integral to our sense of self.

The finding explains much of early child development and good-enough parenting.  When children’s interests and talents are perceived accurately and ‘mirrored’ with encouragement and support, they develop a positive sense of real self.

The child psychiatrist Dr. Daniel Stern, observed and wrote about the dynamics of the parent-child interaction in his classic text, The Interpersonal World ofthe Infant. He describes the process occurs in which parents or primary care-takers reflect back to the developing child their perceptions of him, similar to an image in the mirror. When the caretakers’ reflections are in tune with the child, he develops a genuine or real sense of self.

 A mother who is tuned into her child night say,

“You seem sad today.  Perhaps it’s because you can’t visit your friend?”

A parent who fails to mirror, dismisses the importance of his feelings, and might say,

“Oh don’t be silly. You’ll see your friend another time. “

In essence each of us walks through a Hall of Mirrors in life. People reflect various images/pictures of how they perceive us. When we possess a genuine sense of ourselves, we (unconsciously) integrate these diverse perceptions and absorb the positive, realistic images.

Maestro, a play currently running at 59E59th Street theatre is a musical rendition of the life of genius composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein. His childhood was wrought with difficulty, because his father failed to recognize his son’s musical gifts. Instead, the older Bernstein projected his own fears of financial disaster upon young Leonard.

 As a result, Leonard was forced to fend for himself, work at an early age to earn money to pursue his training.  Lacking  paternal understanding, Bernstein searched for acceptance and love, first from mentors, and later through a series of  (indiscriminate) relationships with men.

Performer Hersey Felder brilliantly portrays Leonard, who in later life, regretted that he didn’t invest more time and energy to composing.

We can hypothesize that if Bernstein’s father had been able to mirror, to perceive his son’s gifts instead of projecting his own personal fears, the composer would have been able to focus more attention on composing.

Conclusion: To the extent that we are mirrored, encouraged and acknowledged for our achievements and our creative pursuits, we are unified within ourselves. To the degree that we are perceived through a distorted mirror, we are torn asunder and may search for approval at a cost to our real self and creativity.

Dear Reader, I look forward to your responses.

Friendship and Our Vagus Nerve

We don’t often think that the nature of our friendships has a profound  or major impact on our health and well-being. But a recent New York Times, article by journalist Kate Murphy cites recent research to support that loneliness is detrimental to our health. As we know, the antidote to loneliness lies in the bonds of friendship.

Research links friendship with the tenth cranial nerve, the longest one, known as the ‘vagus’ (“wandering” in Latin) for its meandering course through the body—from the brain, through the chest and abdomen. This nerve is largely responsible for our behavior to fight or take flight or freeze in response to stress, which in turn, affects the rate of respirations and heart beats per minute and the amount of gastric juice secreted by the stomach.

  

Research shows that the tone of the vagus nerve has been connected to longevity. If we don’t relax, the tenth nerve loses its tone. Authentic friendship keeps the wanderer in shape, while loneliness has been equated with effects as detrimental to our health as obesity or an addiction to alcohol or cigarettes. Therefore, working on obstacles to friendship may be as important as exercising in the gym.

In this day of Facebook a person puts forth a public image. Real friends accept us beneath the image, for our genuine self. But friendship isn’t always easy, especially if we’re not good enough friends to ourselves. If we’ve grown up in an abusive environment of any kind, physical or psychological, we may find people who, in some way, replicate this maltreatment. We have to learn to view and accept ourselves as well as our friends for foibles and vulnerabilities.

Friendship is a two-way street.  A solid relationship creates a safe space for both people. Friends are open to learning about each other, but also open to learning about themselves. They’re able to accept criticism offered in a constructive and caring way and be open to changing their behaviors.

We may assume that friendship flows like water, but like boulders in a natural spring, friendship can hit tough spots. These require effort to navigate. Sometimes a therapist’s tools come in handy.

 

A favorite therapeutic tool is the “holding environment.” In this situation, a therapist  listens with acceptance, sympathy and empathy. Other times confrontation (in a caring way) is indicated to communicate that a person’s words or actions impact negatively on another.  For example, many years ago my brother Bob pulled me aside at a family gathering and said, “Do you realize you always go for a person’s Achilles heel?” Because I knew he cared, I was able to hear his criticism and to change my behavior.

Conclusion: Friendship is linked to the vagus nerve, which innervates many organs, and is vital to our health and sense of well-being.

Dear Reader, I look forward to hearing your response.

  jsimon145@gmail.com

The Gift of Grit (with Gratitude to Angela Duckworth)

When she was a school teacher, Angela Duckworth observed that some of her students performed better than would have been expected based on the results of their IQ test. She noted that they were motivated, passionate and persevered to achieve a goal in spite of difficulties,

Spurred on by her observations, she became a psychologist and devoted her studies to the subject of grit—a term that refers to an individual’s effort, passion and perseverance in achieving a long term goal.

(Duckworth credits her predecessors, including William James, Erik Erikson, and Aristotle, who recognized the value of tenacity.)

Duckworth presented a TED talk, received a MacArthur fellowship in 2013, and her book , GRIT: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, was published this year.  This New York Times best seller details her studies that extend from West Point Cadets to salespeople to students to show that grit supersedes IQ and the Big Five personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism) in explaining who accomplishes their goals and derives satisfaction from their lives.

She concludes that aptitude tests can get a lot wrong and intelligence leaves a lot unexplained. Some smart people aren’t high achievers, and some achieve a lot without having the highest test scores.

Unlike the relatively stable measure of IQ, grit isn’t a fixed trait but, when nurtured like tomatoes in a well-tended garden, can flourish.

In other words, we can benefit (enhance human potential) by shifting the  (educational) focus from IQ and talent to grit.

Duckworth suggests several ways to increase grit, first from the inside. Following your passion, practicing it, discovering purpose and maintaining hope all enhance grit. Ways to increase grit from the outside include:

1.     Wise parenting—demanding performance within a supportive environment

2.     Finding the playing fields of grit—activities that require discipline and offer support—such as ballet or marathon running.

3.     Finding a gritty culture—a group of people that support grit.  As an example, Duckworth quotes the psychologist, Dan Chambliss, who studied professional swimmers. “The real way to become a great swimmer is to join a great team.”

In my experience, good-enough parents and psychotherapists know how to increase grit in others. It can be summed up simply in one sentence (rephrased from my blog of June 13, 2016). Simple in its dictim and highly intricate in its execution, the goal is to nurture with an open and curious mind and to avoid negative criticism, while homing in and encouraging the individual’s interests and attributes.

We psychotherapists work to uncover the obstacles that interfere with a person’s grit. For example, Ms. O. was raised in a well-meaning family that didn’t understand a child’s needs. She had passion for writing, but her parents demanded she earn a living. Tragically, the emotional pain of  criticism and rejection caused her to turn to drug abuse. In a supportive psychotherapeutic relationship,  she accessed her grit, learned how to stand up to her parents, stop drug use, pursue her writing career, and join a gritty writing group.

In summary, the passion and persistence of grit motivates and carries us over rough seas like a well-made surfboard. We can think of an absence of effort like a crack in our surfboard that needs repair.

Conclusion: Grit predicts performance better than IQ and talent.

Dear Reader, I look forward to your comments. jsimon145@gmail.com

Derailment: What it is and How to Manage it

In the world of psychology, derailment describes thought processes that veer off track, go awry, stray from the thought. Like a car that has skidded off the road, the ideas fail to arrive at their destination. In the realm of politics, derailment refers to a tactic by those in power that deflects attention away from complaints about abuse or wrongdoing by introducing an alternative topic. This blog explores derailment as a diversion from a life goal, and how it’s possible to get back on course.

In his journal, the writer John Cheever alluded to a loss of continuity at a critical point in his life. “It seems that in my coming of age I missed a year—perhaps a day or an hour....The consecutiveness of growth has been damaged. But how can I go back and find this moment that was lost?” Although the impact of Cheever’s derailment extends beyond the scope of this blog, his expression highlights the common problem.

In the newly released movie, Florence Foster Jenkins, the heroine, Florence, contracted syphilis from her first husband. As a result, she didn’t bear children and was deprived of a fulfilling family life. That derailment led her to devote her life to singing and supporting the musical world with the fortune she inherited from her father.

We assume an extreme diversion is equivalent to a disaster, but the event may actually represent a chance to recover a “lost” direction or passion. The classic story of The Little Prince (recently made into a popular movie) can be viewed as a metaphorical derailment in the realm of literature. As a young boy, the protagonist of the story drew a boa constrictor swallowing an elephant. But the adults insisted that the drawing resembled a hat. Unimpressed with the child’s skill, the grown-ups redirected him from artistic to practical studies— geography, history, arithmetic, and grammar. “That is why I abandoned, at the age of six, a magnificent career as an artist,” the protagonist says, justifying his profession as a pilot. Years later, his plane crashed in the middle of the desert, and he was visited by a little prince who commanded him to draw. The little prince may well represent the pilot’s imagination or alter ego that harbored his desire to become an artist.

In real life, a patient of mine, Ms. W., experienced a serious depression, a kind of psychological crash. During her hospitalization, she recalled that in her youth, she had aspired to become a singer. In the hospital, she had the opportunity to connect her depression with the long-forgotten ambition. Upon her recovery, she studied voice and became a successful musician.

Conclusion: Although we can’t undo the past, we can recognize a derailment and take action to get back on track.

Dear Reader, I welcome your input. jsimon145@gmail.com

Our Curative Breath

“For breath is life, and if you breathe well you will live long on earth.”      Sanskrit proverb.

With the opening of the Olympics in Brazil this week, focusing on the breath is timely.  Without proper use and training their respirations, athletes wouldn’t be able to accomplish their amazing physical feats. On a perhaps less ambitious but no less vital scale, we can become a kind of athlete by paying attention to our everyday breathing.

By the end of reading this blog, you will understand why literally everything depends on the breath. Of course without it, we don’t have life. But we rarely think of the extent to which proper breathing affects our health.

First, a bit about the anatomy of the respiratory system: It consists of the nose (nasal passages), trachea, diaphragm, bronchi and bronchioles all the way down to the tiny air sacs at the base of the lungs. Good-enough breathing depends on using muscles that include the diaphragm, intercostal muscles (between the ribs) and the abdominal muscles.   When we don’t breathe fully we don’t circulate the air down to the alveoli or tiny air sacs.

The two main types of breathing are superficial or chest breathing, which involves the expansion of the chest, and deep or abdominal breathing., which engages the abdomen.

For the most part, breathing is automatic. If it weren’t, the attention we’d have to pay to it would detract from our daily activities. But if breathing is automatic, how can we forget? Yet when the coach asks, “Are you breathing?” we realize that we haven’t been breathing. Instead, we had focused on the exercise and held our breath, a counterproductive, but not uncommon, behavior.

Not infrequently, we hear in the course of an exercise class, the instructor remind us to breathe,  “ Breathe to the bottom of the lobes; she might advise. “That’s where the calmness is.” Obviously good breathing doesn’t come naturally.

Ignoring the mechanics of breathing handicaps us. Disorders of breathing cause physical symptoms. and we rarely realize how simple it is to correct these symptoms. Under stress we tend to hold our breath, which may compromise our body’s ability to stave off disease, helping to explain our tendency to become ill under stressful circumstances.  Common sense suggests that deep breathing enhances the flow of air that prevents bacteria, viruses and fungi from settling in our lungs.

Failure to use our abdominal muscles can cause health problems like poor posture, which leads to problems with balance and the potential to fall.

Abdominal breathing helps us to become aware of the muscles that support our frame.  In addition, we burn more calories when we put our muscles to use. Abdominal breathing involves the large muscles that support the abdominal cavity and utilizes more calories than the shallow breathing that involves the smaller intercostal muscles located between the ribs. One fitness instructor, Jill Johnson, even invented a weight-loss regimen called Oxycise based on breathing from the stomach.

The added benefit for using the breath as exercise is that we don’t need a gym, i a change of clothes or even additional time. We can perform deep breathing while remaining in our seats in a classroom or an office by focusing on our respirations.

We can wake ourselves up by increasing our oxygen level by breathing deeply.  Or conversely, we can put ourselves to sleep with a kind of meditation of shallow breathing, and repeating silently the words to the rhythmic “in” and “out” like a mantra.

When we feel out of control, remembering that we can modulate the breathing has the power to give us an immediate sense of control. Mr. G. treated his flying phobia by focusing on his inhales and exhales. Ms. K. treated her panic attacks, exacerbated by light-headedness resulting from breathing too quickly and over-oxygenating the blood, by breathing in and out of a paper bag.

We may not be aware of our anxious state, but experience chest pain or pressure caused by holding our breath.  If so, inhaling deeply will give relief. (Of course, if the cause is more serious, the discomfort won’t disappear.)

Conclusion: A focus on the breath grants everyone the power to become an athlete and a self-healer.

Dear Reader, I look forward to your comments. jsimon145@gmail.com