Breathe Through Your Toes

As of late, I’ve been feeling a bit stressed out. Ironically, the stress I am feeling is not related to work. Actually, these days, work is where I felt the most relaxed and the safest.

Interestingly, I really wanted this to be a year of loss. Unlike other years in which I actually lost people to cancer, I really wanted to intentionally remove particular living people and certain situations from my life. Between trying to sell a house fraught with issues, which were both emotional and economic, on a island, living a life I didn’t want to, which was both economic and emotional, for that past two years, and worrying that if I mentioned “kick” and “cat” in the same sentence in my blog that someone would accuse me of advocating the kicking of cats, well, I was really stressed out.

When I was at work, I was so busy trying to catch up (that is, writing two books in 9 weeks when the original writer had 9 months) and enjoying using all my brain cells, well, the ones that weren’t sacrificed on wine every now and then that I didn’t have time to fret from 9am to 5pm. Work wasn’t emotional, so I guess work had the unfair advantage over island house and home life.

It’s funny how stress manifests itself from person to person. When Iz gets stressed, she sucks her thumb. When Nathan’s paternal grandfather was dying a few years ago, he developed this head tick; the day after his grandfather died, it was gone. My stress didn’t let me sleep very well; the minute my head hit the pillow, I was wishing that an earthquake submerged Nantucket Island into the Atlantic (of course, harming no people, animals, or yachts lest anyone think I was advocating a deadly natural and nautical disaster) and that I had realized a while ago that it’s okay to be alone.

Anyway, I run every day at work. I run with my BFFs Amrit and Tom; though, Tom’s faster, so Amrit and I usually end up running together.

It’s funny, because most of the people at work think I’m odd for running every day. I don’t know if they think I have OCD, am an exercise fanatic, or I’m training to do a “Forrest Gump” and run across America. I do know that while I like to run, it’s not my favorite thing to do; I do it because physical activity calms me in general.

I have always been a person with a tremendous amount of energy. (Post-it Note to Heaven: Yes, Mom, I can hear you laughing!) If my body isn’t moving, my mouth is; I don’t exhaust myself, but I usually need to do something physical to switch myself out of fifth gear, so I can cruise along in third.

Last week, when I entered the locker room, Amrit greeted me. She said that I looked tired, and I mentioned I hadn’t been sleeping well. I told her how I got all keyed up at night when I went to go to bed, and she suggested that I try some relaxation techniques.

She explained one technique to me. You first concentrated on your breathing. Then she said, “Then you try to breathe through your toes.”

I thought about it for a minute, and no matter how odd it sounded, I said, “I’ll try that.” I knew that it was going to be really difficult to pick up and move an elephant with a feather. But, I was desperate to sleep like I did when I was Iz's age.

I really respected Amrit, and one thing I liked about her was that she was always so calm and collected. We were such opposites in terms of looks, emotions, and backgrounds; Amrit was 34, 5’ 3”, and Indian, and I was 48, 5’10”, and Polish. The funny thing was that we were so different, yet we seemed to have a friendship that made us both 40, 5’8”, and girlfriends.

Today, we had made an appointment at the gym for a weight training consultation. I had fought it, even though I was the one who said I’d like to do some weight training. Once at the gym, it appeared that the appointment was for 11:30am instead of 11:00am; I told Amrit she could take the appointment, and I’d go run in the interim.

She rolled her eyes at me, knowing I was trying to squirm out of weight training yet again. She asked, “What are you going to do if you can’t run or bike? It’s good to be able to do weights.” I said, “I know. I know,” and I laughed.

She then said, "If I am pushing this too much, you should let me know. I said, “No! You’re right.” She said, “Well, if you’re friends, you should be able to tell your friend things like this, right?” I wanted to hug her just then, but I didn’t.

After using eight machines, I was hooked. When Amrit and I drove back to work, we decided that Weight Training Was 4 Us. On Tuesdays and Thursday each week, we’d be pumping iron.

When we got back to the locker room, Amrit said, “You look tired again.” I told her that I was still not sleeping well. She asked if I had tried the meditation, and I said I hadn’t tried breathing through my toes yet.

She looked at me strangely and said, “What?” I repeated, “I haven’t been breathing through my toes.” She laughed and said, “No, no, no! You concentrate on your breathing, and then you try to think about feeling your toes.”

I laughed and said, “I thought you said I concentrate and try to breathe through my toes.” She laughed again and said, “No!!!!” I said, “Okay, I thought it might be quite hard to try and breathe through my toes, but then again, trying to breath through my toes would probably take my mind off of most things in my life!”

She said, “You’d have to be supernatural to breathe through your toes.” I looked at my toes. They were painted fire engine red, and I thought, “Jeez, how can my toes even breathe because they’re suffocating under all that OPI Keys to My Karma!”

Amrit shook her head. I laughed again; then she laughed again. I can tell you that the next time I’m lying in bed trying to meditate that I will probably laugh and think of Amrit, which really wouldn’t be a bad thing at all. I’ll think of her encouraging me to lift weights, me encouraging her to have something pink in her black and brown wardrobe, and how we laughed about breathing through our toes.

As I drove home today, I thought about the year, which was already half over. I had gained a wonderful thing, a job I loved. I realized that sleeping well at night was totally in my control, but it would take loss, loss that was difficult but was well within my control. It was time to be brave, let it all go, and do what seemed impossible only a few months ago; it was time to breathe through my toes. ♥