AI art by me.

A title of many songs and a couple of thrillers, but my reason to use it is pretty simple. The origin story of this title, for me, and what I am writing about, goes back a few years to when I was getting some skin tags removed from my back and shoulders. There were a few of them, and the doctor was tying them off, then frying them with cold or whatever it was. I began to get dizzy, and she asked me why.

“Because I’m holding my breath while it hurts, then letting go,” I answered. It seemed logical to me.

She tut-tutted me and explained I had just one job to do during all of it – “Just breathe.” She quietly said.

This subject came up a few other times, and we would joke about it, but we understood that it put things back into their most basic form. My job is to breathe…and keep doing so. It may sound rudimentary, but it often gets lost or forgotten amid all the disorders, syndromes, diseases, and whatnot of life’s pressures.

Breathing techniques are among the most powerful ways to relieve stress. Articles, books, online lessons, and more are devoted to teaching people how to breathe better. It doesn’t matter how brilliant the mind, how strong or skilled the body, how adept the hands, fingers, and so forth are if there is no breathing. It all just stops.

Are you sure you remember how to breathe? It’s like, where is your tongue in your mouth as you relax? Suddenly, it feels unnatural, and it takes being distracted to get things back to normal. Just breathe.

We can be angry, joyful, terrified, or stressed, but before we do anything about any of that, we must… breathe. The common denominator of all our emotions, thoughts, and actions is breathing first, then doing something. It’s why we have so many idioms about getting our second breath or getting a breath of fresh air. Those are both symbolic of a calming or a reset based on getting oxygen into our lungs, blood, and then brain before anything else can happen.

I’ve been a choir director in my lifetime and joked I had the power of Life and Breath over those in my choir. Why is Breathe Play such a fetish? Gaspers? The importance and power of breathing are foundational to us.

When Life gives you adversity, complications, tragedy, stress, and problems, you remember to just stop and go back to your main job: Breathe. Just…Breathe.