All You Can Do is Breathe

Lately I’ve watched so many people experience something I know all too well from life with Bipolar II, though on a more condensed timeline than I’m used to:

You have a few days where you feel pretty okay. You’re productive, calm, can take most things in stride. The pandemic can’t last forever; there are good things to look forward to. You feel you’re adapting as well as can be expected. Life is weird as heck but you’re working with it.

Then you have one day (maybe two) where you can’t get out of bed. You don’t get anything done. You might just sleep. Everything is too much, especially the outside world…and the idea of ever leaving quarantine is almost as terrifying as the idea of it lasting a week longer. I saw someone on Twitter call these days the Hell Zone.

If this is happening to you, I am so sorry. Nobody should have to visit the Hell Zone, ever. It absolutely sucks that the one thing we can all do to make a positive impact out there – stay the heck home – is also a big contributing factor to depression!

If you pay any attention to the outside world at all the onslaught of uncertainty, outrage, and fear is relentless. Our poor neurotransmitters were not prepared for this. Fight-or-flight is one thing; “Scream impotently at the TV or cry on the toilet, repeat for three months” is another.

Some days, all you can do is breathe, and it turns out, that can be a huge help.

Breath work is almost instantly calming. Why? Well, think of how an animal breathes when she’s freaking out or just escaped a predator. Short breaths, shallow, high in the chest. Now think about how you breathe most of the time – for Americans it tends to be short breaths high in the chest. The way we breathe can put us in a constant low-level OMG-WTF-RUN! state.

The remedy is to breathe deep from your belly, getting your diaphragm involved, and let your chest be the last thing that fills up with air. Deep, slow breaths tell your body and brain that the threat has passed and you can let go of that pesky cortisol.

Working with my breath is fundamental to my spiritual practice. I learned the basic technique that I use courtesy of certified Zen badass Thich Nhat Hanh; in his writing he calls it “mindfulness verses.”

All you have to do is, as you inhale down to your belly, mentally recite “Breathing in, I…” followed by what you’d like to have happen or what you’re doing; then as you exhale at the same speed, think, “Breathing out, I…”

The simplest version:

“Breathing in, I know I am breathing in;
Breathing out, I know I am breathing out.”

Then you can up the stakes and invoke the state you want:

“Breathing in, I feel calm;
Breathing out, I feel safe.”

And so on. The important thing is that you’re bringing your attention to the act of breathing as well as the feeling you want to create within yourself. Timing chants or prayers with the breath is an easy way to intensify their effects on your mind and body as well as draw up more energy to put toward your goal.

I recently happened across a prayer that was a more Christianized version of Zen mindfulness verses; it was spoken to God, and it connected the in-breath with a positive attribute of the Almighty and the out-breath with something the practitioner wanted to give up to Him. I liked the idea, so I created one of my own, and I thought I would share it with you.

Take this idea and use it, adapt the wording to your own beliefs; take out “Your” if you’d rather not deal with personified Deity at all. But do give this kind of easy but powerful practice a try next time you feel unmoored, are having a Hell Zone Day, or just want to pause a moment and allow yourself to pause and reflect.

Stringing My Prayer Beads

Part 2 in my series about the spiritual toys and tools that have remained a part of my practice (or are part of it again, or have become important to me since I’ve started getting my groove back).

I love prayer beads. I love the ritual, of course, and I love coming up with repetitive prayers and chants to use with them. I love how tactile they are, how smooth and cool stone beads feel in my fingers. I feel like using beads links me up to hundreds of years of seekers and the devoted from all over the world.

At last count I had two sets. One was specifically dedicated to Persephone, so I wasn’t using them much once Winter came to an end. I found them on Etsy and they feel amazing! There’s something solid and comforting about them that I find instantly anchoring. They’re made with carnelian and rose quartz beads.

The other set I actually had customized by another Etsy shop, and it didn’t have a particular dedication but was more all-purpose. It’s primarily moss agate with a silver oak leaf on one end and a Tree of Life on the other.

I love using both, but as I said, the first set has a particular energy to it that I don’t feel called to use the whole year. In addition, the version of the Goddess I am currently drawn to has two faces, and right now I’m working with the lighter half, who is a Lunar and stellar goddess not based on any specific tradition’s deity but to whom, for now, I refer to simply as Theia.

I’ll have more to say about Them later on. For now, suffice it to say I decided I wanted a set of prayer beads for Theia, but weeks of shopping online came up with nothing that really felt right.

While it may be lacking in the pre-made strand I wanted, one thing Etsy does have is a metric buttload of beads.

Careful shopping came up with the ingredients you see in the wee bowls: Blue kyanite and dumortierite as the main beads; tiny fluted silver spacers; silver leafy ovals as section beads (I believe in a Rosary each section of beads is called a decade), and for the end pieces, a flowered, stylized pentacle for one end and the Moon phases for the other. Add to that some monofilament procured from my roommate (who makes awesome jewelry), and I was ready to go.

I’d kind of forgotten what a pain making prayer beads can be – the first 99% of the strand took about 20 minutes, but getting that last knot on the Moon phase pendant took an hour! It’s still not perfect, but perfection is an illusion anyway, right? Better to have a thing made and use it than to stare at an imperfectly made thing and never get it finished!

Yeah, we’ll go with that.

The result is, if I do say myself, gorgeous. The blue kyanite beads are translucent, and the dumortierite have swirls of blue and blue-black. All the silver gleams.

I’m keeping them in a wooden bowl my mom gave me years ago, which won’t break when the cats inevitably knock it off my bedside shelf. My other two strands each have a container on my altar – the tree beads are in a fluorite bowl and the Persephone beads are in a pomegranate-shaped box. I wanted my new ones to be safe and within easy reach.

What do I do with my beads, you ask? Well, they function basically like any other of their ilk whether a Rosary, Mala, or Misbaha. I have a rotating selection of four-line (or so) chants and prayers that I mentally recite while holding each bead with my right fingers while the other end of the strand rests in my left hand. I start with an invocation at one end – with these beads, the beginning is the Moon phase pendant.

At each oval-shaped “decade” bead, I pause and say a different prayer, usually something that I make up on the spot. Then I go back to the original prayer until the next oval bead. At the end, I finish with an expression of gratitude of some sort.

Sometimes I stop there, and sometimes I go back along the strand until I’m where I started. Sometimes I just think the words, sometimes I murmur them, sometimes I sing quietly. I frequently change things up as I go depending on what feels right, and sometimes I will use the same set of words for a set period of time (say a Lunar cycle) or for a specific purpose (soothing anxiety).

Here’s an example, just to show you how I do it. A lot of this is borrowed from other sources and varied traditions, some of which I don’t even remember, but I use phrases like these in most of my prayers. You’re welcome to use it if you like but please don’t repost it as I didn’t create every line. The sources I can recall are listed at the end of the post. Enjoy!

MOON PHASE PENDANT:
I call upon the Mystery of the Starlit night,
The beauty of the green Earth,
Mother of all things;
I call upon the radiant Queen of the heavens,
Heart’s light and soul’s longing,
Whose hands weave the tapestry of constellations.

INDIVIDUAL BEADS:
Hail, Star of the Sea;
Enfoldment of all enfoldments
whose love is poured out upon the Earth,
Be with me.

OVAL BEADS:
Goddess, tonight I am (however I’m feeling),
(reason for how I’m feeling if I know it);
I pray You will help me find (something I need) to sustain/guide/strengthen/etc me
And keep watch on your wandering child.

PENTACLE PENDANT:
Mother of all things, I give thanks
For the beauty of the Earth,
For the glory of the skies
For the love which from our birth
Over and around us lies; [yes I absolutely stole that]
I thank You for Your blessings
And for Your presence here tonight.
Blessed be.

Sources/Influences:
Doreen Valiente, “The Charge of the Goddess”
Gael Baudino, Strands of Starlight
Folliott S. Pierpoint, “For the Beauty of the Earth”