I have learned to breathe! Breathing that works for me and gets me through the pain. Yay!!

Yes!  There has been improvement in my back pain.  I was told by my beloved Pilates instructor to ‘practice breathing so that it becomes second nature’.   But why do I need to be so aware of my breathing when it is meant to be the most natural thing in the world?

When we are busy, stressed, in pain, concentrating on a particular important thing other than breathing, we tend to tense up and subconsciously choose many different ways of breathing that are not always good for us.  For me, when I am in pain, or trying to avoid pain, which has been the case this last month or so, the last thing I am thinking about is to breathe, and breathe ‘properly’.  It just happens, right? At least it’s something you don’t have to focus on, worry about, with everything else going on! Except it is …

For me, when I tense up I stop breathing, even hold my breath, and that is when things go haywire internally, when the work starts, to get by in the next moments, protecting that painful sensation and doing my utmost to make it stop.  What I was doing, before I was enlightened, was the opposite of what I should have been doing.  To breathe.  Every day activities can cause a tensing up, for no particular reason, like speaking on the phone, and breathing through them is helpful.

I now am aware, so much more, about my breathing, and I have discovered that I do have to practice at it.  Breathing in deeply for a few seconds and out for a few seconds, so that the air reaches more parts of my body that count, and I am not just breathing to survive.

I remember an exercise in relaxation when I was about 10, lying down in the school hall, and the teacher coming round and lifting our arms  and we were supposed to let them drop naturally.  I was one of the ones who rigidly dropped my arm, concentrating, over-thinking, rather than just abandoning it to gravity.  And I remember watching as many of the others let their arms go and how their joints did their own thing, folding easily one way or the other as they fell without any fear with a flop to the floor.  And I thought, maybe I can be like that one day.  One day is now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recently I returned from a wonderful two-week holiday on the East coast of Barbados.  One of my family’s favourite places, it is only 20 minutes drive from our home, yet everything is different there.  The salt air and breeze invitingly puts you in holiday mode immediately, the smell and sound of the Atlantic ocean, just steps away from our basic rented cottage.  It was a treat to be there.   Dry sand always underfoot, and never growing tired of watching the waves from the balcony.  The massive ’round rock’ a few hundred yards away from our house, sitting comfortably on the beach, providing shade and a bench at the top for those who were adventurous enough to climb to the top to survey the magnificent view of crashing waves all the way to Africa and coastal scenery as far as the eye could see.

One of my favourite things to do is snorkel.  There are many rock pools that come out at low tide on the East coast, when swimming is not dangerous.  A well-known pool among the locals is the ‘Barbados Pool’ as it is in the shape of Barbados.  It is only about 12 by 21 feet, but it is deep enough to cover a person standing to their necks, and it is one of the largest of this depth.  There is always enough and more to see, even though only a modest aquarium size.

About 10 feet from the shore I put my first steps in to the pool, being careful not to touch the sides which are adorned with prickly white sea urchins.  My body adjusts to the cool water and I quickly feel refreshed and ready for my adventure, with snorkel and mask adorned.  A stunning bright orange sea centipede can’t help but catch my eye immediately.  Six inches in length, it glides and arches its way through the sand and around the rocks at the bottom effortlessly.  Her mate is not far away, smaller and ugly, but carrying out his important duties before moving back to join her.  Made with the most perfect hands, no detail is overlooked, this sea creature senses danger of a shadow overhead (me) and responds by extending her built-in white daggers all over her body.  I wonder if her sting is as intense as a land centipede?

The white sea eggs of all sizes that surround the walls of the pool have each caught something different in their spikes: leaves, little pebbles, shells, string, biscuit wrapper … A small rock lobster is hinged on a large sea egg, but its insides are gone, delicious flesh eaten by a fortunate prey, part of its shell sits on another nearby ball of spikes.  Fish, varieties of aquarium size, brightest yellow, purple spotted, stripes of orange and black, inside and outside of rocks, holes, the rock formations a playground or an intricate water maize.  Tiny Soldier crabs on the move on the sand and other crustaceans that I wish I knew the names of.

Surges of water enter my haven with larger waves – the tide is coming in, I have been lost in time.  I don’t want to leave.  I position myself more securely so that my body parts avoid the white waiting spikes and continue to explore through my mask for a few more minutes, getting up close with the reef in all its glory.

I am

soon forced to climb out of the pool and wait for another low tide, another day, and I feel exhilarated, thankful for this natural aquarium at my fingertips, always different, always waiting for me.

Deborah (Debbie) Buckmaster has been sporadically blogging for a year, and loves to share her heart, her journey, and hopes to touch lives in the process.  She enjoys praying in her different groups and longs to share in book form all that God has done in her life and the lives of others.

 

 

 

 

 

I don’t remember the day I tasted chocolate for the first time, although I should, as it has been such a big part of my life.  I remember being given a large tube of Smarties at around aged 6, and shaking them up after taking one or two out, as I was convinced that this increased the number of brightly coloured edible gems in the tube.  I wanted them to last forever.

I grew up in a chocolate loving home, and most evenings while watching the TV together as a family, a box or bar of something would be brought out and enjoyed.  From those pecan caramel turtles, Cadbury’s milk, Black Magic, Charles Chocolate, Devon Milk, and countless other temptations.

When I went away to UK boarding school I was fortunate enough to have one of the old-fashioned corner sweet shops in close proximity, and with my weekly allowance in hand I would request my quota of a quarter pound of vanilla fudge and savour every nibble on those magical Saturdays.

As an adult I became free to buy and eat chocolate to my heart’s content.  My tastes have changed as my mood does, but it has tended to be milk, as opposed to the dark that is better for you.  Mars Bars and Quality Street used to be some of the big names, moving  to Terry’s milk chocolate orange segments, fudge sticks, Minstrels, mint smoothies and Cadbury’s mini eggs, when in season.  My current passions are milk chocolate buttons with orange wedges coming a close second.

The problem is that while I was fortunate in my youth to not put on weight easily that has changed as I near the mid fifty mark.  That, coupled with the rumour that sweets are not good for you, has caused a gear shift, that guilt element and occasional purging.

I returned from holiday towards the end of June, having had an amazing two weeks visiting family in the UK, and squeezed in between was a week’s cruise, which meant, along with all the great sightseeing, I did a lot of eating when not hungry because that’s what you do on cruises.

I am still trying to get off those many pounds.  The British chocolate I had stocked up on and brought home to enjoy, I had managed to gather up and take to my sister’s freezer, where it was kept safely for more than a month.  Then, in a moment of weakness the chocolate thief collected and devoured it in a few days.

So I am trying again to not eat chocolate.  To not succumb to tempting bars right at the supermarket check out, not choose desserts at restaurants, not eat the goods I bake..  Regrettably I am not like my husband, who, deciding to go on a diet, sticks to everything he should eat, never deviating for a moment.  If I know there is a chocolate button somewhere in the house I will find it.  I will find that needle in a haystack and it will end up in my salivating mouth.

So the fridge is empty of sweets again.  It is boring, but necessary, and so begins the cheerless journey without my comfortable companions.

 

 

 

 

Do you know the crickets that come out at dusk?  The ones you don’t know are there until you hear a high-pitched chirp or buzz?  One of these just followed me on a Caribbean cruise for a week.  It was always in the same approximate spot, on the second deck, under the steps, or behind the heavy steel door.  I couldn’t actually see it, but it was always there.

Crickets are the size of small thumb nails.  Was this one afraid, so far from its home, with salt air and sun beating down, in a strange environment, in a new place every day?  Did it know that it might get picked up by a Booby Bird looking for a snack, or get squeezed in the door or sprayed with insecticide?

Cricket fears have to be massive compared to human fears.  My first memory of fear was losing sight of my mother in the supermarket, a 3 minute separation seeming like hours.  Other fears surfaced, as they do.  Fear of the unknown, fear of getting into trouble (yet still doing the trouble), getting hurt, learning to swim by being glued to the edge of the pool, raising an arm to answer a question in class, asking for help …

I recently heard at church the definition of fear: When I believe that apart from my best efforts something undesirable is going to happen and I can’t stop it.  The roots of it are conditioning (born into it), concealing and spirit of control.  Hmmm!

Fear or worry can be grouped in many stages of my life to date, such as those teenage fears of being ridiculed, stammering (so better not speak at all), talking to boys which was worse than not having a boyfriend at all, then fearing being left a spinster …  The stage of having children can bring many fears, but I am lucky to have had my children in the nineties, before the Internet and T.M.I.   The fear of getting sick, yet after a diagnosis of stage 4 Melanoma over 20 years ago it takes a lot to scare me where my health is concerned.

There is one unseen illness that caught me off guard and caused a major turn around in my life.  The path of depression has allowed me great things: empathy, dependence on the person of Jesus, to stop holding on to control and having to be strong all the time.  Does that mean I am never afraid now?  Of course not, but instead of concealing it and struggling on my own,  I try to remember to reestablish visual contact with Jesus and gain a little more freedom from the big ‘F’ each time.

Eventually that fear will become the size of that chirping cricket.

 

Deborah has procrastinated long enough from writing and is finally taking the plunge.  You can find out more about her story by visiting the archives of this blog (specifically early October of Prison Break of Thoughts).