JUST A THOUGHT: To Breathe Is To Feel & Why We Are Addicted to Being Busy


If you don't breathe, you can't feel.

That's something I've noticed in myself - that when I don't take deep breaths, it's so much easier not to feel anything.

I've been living most of my life in fight or flight, because of my abusive past.

I've learned to always be vigilant, always be on guard, because a very real physical attack might come.

Fight or flight doesn't allow for deep breaths; it's all about shallow, hurried breathing.

I've noticed that when I'm multi-tasking on the computer, I tend to hold my breath through the task, and then to only take the occasional quick shallow breath before holding my breath again.

Holding my breath until the completion of the next task.

I realized this because I downloaded a meditation app recently and started listening to guided meditations.

As soon as I sat down to take deep breaths, I was overwhelmed by feelings, and because of the specific guided mediation I was listening to (something about letting go of the past) I started to cry.

Is that why we as a society are addicted to being busy? Because when we're rushing around in over drive (aka fight or flight) we're unable to feel all of the feelings that there's no space for or way to deal with in our productivity obsessed culture?

Our society says feelings are bad.

Feelings are inconveniences that get in the way of our productivity and must therefore be avoided.

So we don't slow down - we don't breathe - because to breathe is to feel, and to feel is to slow down our productivity.

(And we don't know what to do with our feelings anyhow, so best to just avoid them.)

Until we can't anymore.

Until our lives fall apart.

Until all of those trapped feelings manifest into acute or chronic illness that must be dealt with.

We are humans and we feel all the time.

I'm aware of the fact that I feel all the time and I've been made to feel wrong for feeling so much.

But I've asked myself the question "Am I feeling an unusual amount of feelings, or are most people just so cut off from what they feel that they don't know that they're feeling something ALL THE TIME?"

I can't answer that question because I only inhabit my particular consciousness, but I don't think I'm abnormal for all of my feelings; I know that feeling is part of being human, and I won't be made to feel broken for refusing to deny my humanity.

Life is breath; where there is no breath, there is no life.

So...breathe.



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