My kids do this thing, where they think that their numbers, I have four kids, qualify them for an attack on Dad. One kind of starts it and then solicits the other for the attack. I think that their goal is just to pin me to the ground and if they ever get me there, I'm not so sure they have a plan as to what they would do next. My best defense is to attack back individually before they collaborate their attack at the same time. Now I don't want to hurt my kids even though they may use some pretty aggressive measures. I tickle them and that does all that is needed to thwart their plan. Some times this results in a falling to the floor in laughter as was the case with my daughter recently. When that happens, I feel the need to prove that Daddy's got them and continue to attack with tickles! So much so that in this one instance my daughter is laughing so hard that she sputters out in segments between laughter "... I ... Can't ... Breathe!" I know that when this happens, I can let it go one of two ways. I can continue with my tickling and soon to follow will be tears, no longer of laughter but of crying and fear. Or I can stop for a moment, let her catch her breath, which I did, and shortly after she joins right back into the game!
I have been running recently. Well, I guess you can call it running. It looks a bit more like a seizure with my legs moving and I only do that for like a minute and a half then I walk for two minutes. I do this on and off ... until I reach the refrigerator! LOL! No, I actually do it on the walkway by the river near my house in town, but it is a run/walk program to help train me to run three miles straight ... eventually. My problem right now isn't that my body forgets how to run, but more like it has forgotten how to breathe. When I start running I have this image of myself, like the advertisements I see with this well trained runner looking like its so easy. So my head starts up, my shoulders back and my stride long! I feel like I look good! Then, my body forgets how to breathe with in a few steps and my posture hunches, my arms whale a bit and I can't keep my head up as it bobs around gasping for a new breath. I no longer feel like the attractive runner that I started out with as the image in my head. All I can focus on is when I can walk again and catch my breath.
We take breathing for granted. It is an involuntary act that our body does and therefore we forget about it. It happens as we sleep even without us intentionally making ourselves take each breath. We don't really realize the importance of pausing and focusing on breathing until we can't. We lose our breath, we gasp for air and we panic. Once that air comes back, we stop, gather ourselves, slow our breathing down and compose ourselves relieved and grateful for the returned passage of air.
Ancient cultures could see the importance of breathing and with how important this invisible mass entering and exiting your body seemed to be, they even spiritualized it, giving it a supernatural or more important quality than many other things in life.
We run our lives crazy and busy. We have so much to do with so little time. Kids to deliver, feed, discipline. Finances to keep track of. Friends, family and spouse to make sure have our attention and are shown love and support. And of course a million other bits of nonsense that we never count but still take so much time. So many times, we forget to breathe. We forget to stop, enjoy and be grateful. The kids grow up fast and we spend out lives in panic, stress and high blood pressure. With just a bit of a pause each day, we can breathe, refocus, love, be thankful and release. A few seconds or a few minutes can transform your whole life. Take a few deep breaths and re-calibrate.
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