Almost a year ago, the BBEA annual conference tore the roof off of the way that I had been teaching breathing re-training. It was great! Since being trained in 2009, I had been frustrated by the model I had been taught, because it was often hard for students to follow through with the exercises. They had to be really motivated. When they were, the results were awesome. When they weren’t, and didn’t do the exercises, their conditions didn’t improve. It upset me a lot that people would pay me money to transform their lives and then simply not do it. The question: how to make it more fun so that people would functionally reduce their breathing?
First, of course, I had to figure it out for myself. I had been dutifully and resentfully doing my exercises for four years, sometimes falling off of the wagon but always getting back on and building my carbon dioxide reserves the traditional way. Of course, I wanted to be systematic. Of course. But was I? You guess… nope! At the conference, my CP (control pause, also known as the measure of how high one’s carbon dioxide saturation is in the blood that flows through the medulla oblongata - through the brain) was 54. Pretty good. I thought, OK. How can I maintain this in an unconventional way?
How can I teach people to functionally engage with the ideas? I need to offer multiple methods, not just one.
Fast forward to one month ago.
I had been stressed. I had been sick. My CP was… 36. That was 18 lower than it had been at the conference! A new friend invited me on a 4-day backpacking trip, with her and another woman, both 10-15 years younger than I. And I was in pretty poor shape! Although I spent my young adulthood as a dancing yogini mountain maniac, time has gone by! I wondered just how badly I would slow them down. After a life where fitness was foremost, with dance, yoga, hiking and snow sports, I had slipped (over the past ten years) into the appalling inactivity of motherhood, a job, and being in school. Should I go and embarrass myself?
So I set myself a new challenge: go on this trip, keep my mouth shut AND keep up with the young gals! This could evolve into something…
and it is evolving. Keep reading.
First, of course, I had to figure it out for myself. I had been dutifully and resentfully doing my exercises for four years, sometimes falling off of the wagon but always getting back on and building my carbon dioxide reserves the traditional way. Of course, I wanted to be systematic. Of course. But was I? You guess… nope! At the conference, my CP (control pause, also known as the measure of how high one’s carbon dioxide saturation is in the blood that flows through the medulla oblongata - through the brain) was 54. Pretty good. I thought, OK. How can I maintain this in an unconventional way?
How can I teach people to functionally engage with the ideas? I need to offer multiple methods, not just one.
Fast forward to one month ago.
I had been stressed. I had been sick. My CP was… 36. That was 18 lower than it had been at the conference! A new friend invited me on a 4-day backpacking trip, with her and another woman, both 10-15 years younger than I. And I was in pretty poor shape! Although I spent my young adulthood as a dancing yogini mountain maniac, time has gone by! I wondered just how badly I would slow them down. After a life where fitness was foremost, with dance, yoga, hiking and snow sports, I had slipped (over the past ten years) into the appalling inactivity of motherhood, a job, and being in school. Should I go and embarrass myself?
So I set myself a new challenge: go on this trip, keep my mouth shut AND keep up with the young gals! This could evolve into something…
and it is evolving. Keep reading.
RSS Feed