Episode 55: Breathing Lesson

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Nahanni Rous: Hey, we're back with the spring season of Can We Talk?, the podcast of the Jewish Women's Archive, where gender history and Jewish culture meet. I’m Nahanni Rous.

Judith Rosenbaum: And I’m Judith Rosenbaum. It's good to be with you again, and we're here just in time to mark a year of living with the pandemic. 

Nahanni: It's been a rough ride and rough on all of us for different reasons. Judith and I are both working parents with kids who have been in and out of school for the past year.

Judith: My family got Covid in August, and seven months later, I’m still dealing with long Covid symptoms. 

Nahanni: So many people have lost so much—health, work, human contact. Not to mention the millions of lives that have been lost to this disease worldwide.

Judith: We’re not only marking a year of the pandemic, but also preparing for a second Covid Passover. It’s a holiday that celebrates liberation and rebirth, and right now those things feel both resonant and also out of reach. We’re all a mix of hopeful and deeply exhausted.

Nahanni: I don’t know about you Judith, but I could really use some TLC. Let’s do something we’ve never done before on this podcast—and frankly, we don’t do enough in general—let’s spend the next 20 minutes taking care of ourselves!

Judith: That sounds great! We invite you our listeners to take a moment wherever you are, whatever you're in the middle of and breathe with us. 

Nahanni: To help us do that, we've invited Janice Stieber Rous, the founder of body dialogue and my aunt, to join us. Welcome, Aunt Janice!

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Janice Stieber Rous: Hello, Nahanni and Judith. What a joy to be here today. 

Nahanni: Thank you so much for being with us. Well, your approach to bodywork integrates so many different kinds of approaches: breathing, yoga, Alexander technique, centered in the way that our bodies physically hold all those stresses. And you and I have talked a lot about the way our life experiences sit in our bodies. And we've collectively been through so much in the past year. I mean, personally, I'm pretty exhausted and depleted. Can you talk about what anxiety and exhaustion does to us specifically to our breath? 

Janice: Yeah, it would be, I really would be glad to do that. Whether you're aware of it or not, you're telling your stuff to your body all the time and your body's talking to you, it's a two way street. So when you're exhausted and you say to yourself, "wow, I'm really exhausted, how am I going to do this?" We're already set up for exhaustion, right? But physiologically the diaphragm, literally, which is your main breathing muscle, the diaphragm literally cannot work properly when you're too tired. You're trying to get a breath and you're not getting it. So even if you sit down and say, well, how I really need a breath, the inclination is to take a breath. And actually what we need to do is let out the exhaustion and let out the air so that the air can come in. The more we can let air out the more you'll have capacity to let air in. So if we wanted to do a practice together, it's important to actually feel what it means to exhale. Believe it or not, most of us are holding our breath so much of our day and even night. 

Judith: It's not really surprising. I mean, if you even just think about the phrase, "holding your breath" and all the ways that we use it figuratively, right? It's like, it's what we do when we're not sure what's coming next. And that, I feel like we've just been in that mode all year. Um, and, and I've been thinking also about how COVID is, uh, is a virus that affects breath also. Right? So thinking about the ways in which this maybe I'm thinking too metaphorically and, the idea of the shortness of breath being the actual nature of this virus.

Janice: But that’s the point Judith. It isn't a metaphor. When you feel brokenhearted, your body actually experiences the exhaustion of that. So the experience of actually inviting yourself to exhale means to really let go. Which, when you're frightened is very hard to do. So that's the double bind of this disease is that it attacks our fear as well as attacking our nervous system. So it's not that you're thinking too metaphorically. The metaphor actually is the message. And it's actually physiologically impacting you. When you're thinking to yourself, "I can't do this. When is this going to be over? I cannot keep all these balls in the air and keep my children healthy and make sure that I get the house clean for Pesach," you're actually experiencing that in your body. That's not a metaphor.  So when I say to you sit back and feel the ground, I am literally talking about, can you let go enough to exhale all that worry, to exhale all that anxiety. And I'm being very literal here. I want you to literally think of everything in your body, releasing into the ground and noticing as you feel your feet in the ground, and you feel your sit bones going into the chair and you feel your back being supported, try to imagine that you're being held. So quiet, if you can, your mind. And if you have a lot of judgment right now, just let it go because it won't help. So just be open-hearted and open-minded to this moment and feel your feet on the floor and your spine supported in a chair. And take a moment. If you're driving, please don't close your eyes, but if you're not, you can close your eyes and just go internal and just notice, what are you doing? Are you holding your breath? The first piece is to just let it go. And I'm going to suggest you just have to really sigh it out. [breath] And I'm going to invite you in this moment, you and Judith to just say to yourself, you're okay right now. And you're going to open your mouth and you're just going to literally go [breath]. And as you do that, So, if you can imagine some of this worry, some of this pressure, some of this tension and narrowness that we've been feeling squeezed, can you release it in your toes and in your throat and your tongue, the back of your eyes and in your palms, can you just let all that constriction and tightness and notice that if you can let it go, the air will also come in. So you don't have to take in a breath. It will come in. I promise you. It's like a wave in the ocean. It will go out, it will come in. And tune into the sensation in your body. tune into, I can let everything go, but my mind, my mind is busy. Or I can let go of my mind, but I'm clenching my toes. So see if you can do both letting go of in your brain as well as letting go in your body, and as if you're just witnessing this, imagine that you're just surfing the breath. And I'm not asking you, if your brain is very noisy with fear, to be angry at your brain. I'm saying if the fear is there, let yourself feel the fear. If the grief is there, allow yourself to feel the grief. And if it brings up tears, you will stop crying. And just notice if you say "I'm welcoming this, I'm welcoming it. I'm inviting the release. I'm inviting the letting go." notice what happens to your body. You might feel a quivering in your jaw. If you've been holding on tight in your jaw, you might feel self wanting to yawn, whatever you do. It's okay. Your body is trying to find a way back in to this organic knowing, which is inhale and exhale. And as you continue to do this, track very gently with your hands what's happening just below your belly button. I'm not saying push your stomach out. Just notice what's happening down there. See if there's any movement. And if you want to put attention into your feet and into your pelvis, you can rest. Rest in this moment. It's the opposite of leaning in. I want you to lean back. And notice, as you leaned back, does anything change? And now we're going to emphasize the awareness of when the breath is out. What happens when you go to get in the air? Does anything change in terms of the tension pattern? Are you gasping for air or are you tightening to get the air out so you can get more air in. Just notice that. And just move on and your seat a little bit and see if there's a place in your shoulders or your neck or your head that wants to move that you've all of a sudden become aware of as very tight. And just stretch your arms up towards the ceiling and grab wrists and stretch from side to side to get more air in those lungs and in the rib cage. Cause all of that has potential to give you a fuller breath.

Janice: Now, as we come back together to do a little bit of a debrief, just notice after these few minutes of giving yourself some attention. And for each person on this call, you're going to have a unique experience because we have a breath pattern that's like a finger pin print. It's unique to you. There's no one size fits all for this. So you notice, I didn't say breathe to four, hold for four, let out for six, that wouldn't work because your diaphragms are all different. Every single one of you. That's why this is not a breathing exercise. This is an awareness practice. And the awareness is in this moment, what's going on. What's going on with my body. What's going on with my breath. And what kind of thoughts am I tracking? So that we're actually having a little witness outside ourself, just noticing, noticing, noticing the whole time. So would you both like to share a little bit about what that experience was like for you?

Judith: It's funny how hard it can be just to breathe and to feel, and to get into a natural rhythm. When I pay attention to it, it's like my body forgets what to do for a minute and then I have to relearn the rhythm. But, um, I definitely noticed some tears springing to my eyes, just a sense of, you know, a wave of emotion. 

Janice: I'm gonna respond, Judith, to the word “it's hard to get into the rhythm.” There isn't a rhythm that you can get into when you've been holding your breath, the rhythm has been disrupted. That's why we're doing this. In other words, you have an expectation that there is such a thing called the breathing rhythm, but actually there is no rhythm when we've been holding our breath. 

Judith: I'm thinking also so much about, um, what it takes to trust our bodies or to learn, to trust our bodies, you know, as women in particular. And one of the things I've learned during this time is just how much work it takes to learn to listen to my body, to learn to trust that my body knows what to do or to pay attention to it and be more in sync with it, rather than what I think many of us, particularly women, have learned to do, which is just push through, right, just kind of, you know, say, well, I'm just gonna focus on what I need to do out there. The things I need to get done, the people I need to take care of and my own needs come way at the end of that. 

Janice: So I've been at this question that you're talking about. How do you trust, listen, pay attention and respond in a culture that actually has no room for the body. So that's the grief I feel when I listen to you, Judith. So Nahanni, I'm curious to know what the experience was like for you. 

Nahanni: Um, well, it's funny because. You know, I'm still the podcast producer. So like when you say, let go and, lean back, like I'm still conscious that, uh, that the record button should still be going and everybody's level should be fine, but that was actually an important reminder to me that I still want to breathe through my work and that I still have a body, even when I'm sitting at the computer working. I realized that so much of my time is spent sort of flattened, like on a screen. and I really want to bring my full self everywhere, which includes being in this body, even if I'm sitting at a computer.

Janice: So I don't know if you can hear, Nahanni the amazing, this is a true metaphor, the metaphor that, you know, can you trust that the recording's going to go on, even if you're not holding the airplane, winds up, you know, people who fly thinking that if they worry enough, they'll hold the airplane wings up and when they get to Israel, you know, they can that exhale, right? There are lots of people like that. They're holding their breath every day because the whole concept of trust and safety has been so radically altered from for a long time now, pre pandemic. And the concept of gritting your teeth and bearing with it doesn’t work.

Nahanni: I guess the question is, are we listening to our, to our bodies and attending to our bodies so that we can keep ourselves going at the [00:29:00] pace that we're going? Or are we listening to our bodies because our bodies are telling us to slow down and make changes to that.

Janice: So, Nahanni, it's so important. That question. I mean, I think we could just stop and repeat that question. You know, what are we listening for? And what is it that we, what is our end goal is our end goal so that we can go back to the old way, or are we going to have the courage to actually change business as usual?

Judith: I've been thinking so much about how on the one hand we're all, you know, so exhausted by this year. And also, I think many of us are experiencing an enormous amount of anxiety about coming out of this various levels of lockdown that we've been in. I know I certainly do because the way we live now is not sustainable, but the pace of my life before was also not sustainable, which I knew before I'd thought a lot about, but, um, it's different to kind of be forced to take that break.

Janice: that word sustainability is exactly, exactly the true experience of the diaphragm. The diaphragm sustains you, and if you have it tight, tightened up like a girdle, you're making your sustainability that much more difficult. And I'm very excited. The world has caught on to the fact that we need to breathe. But what I'm seeing in the collective is this frantic idea of, okay, let’s get busy and get breathing now, right? But breathing through this time is going to be a mind body awareness practice. This pandemic has affected us on so many levels. And I think it's really symbolic that we're beginning Pesach. And we've been in this narrow place, which is a kind of Mitzrayim, all year. Granted, it's not slavery like someone's got a whip over you. I'm not saying that. But how many things have you noticed that you are oppressed to this year? So unplugging, emotionally and spiritually and mentally for these days of Pesach could be really liberating if we understood that if we're going to find liberation, we're going to have to start using our breath as an indicator to tell us whether or not we're pushing beyond our capacity. 

Judith: So I’m thinking about, you know, one of the challenges I always feel thanks to capitalism is that, you know, we measure ourselves by productivity all the time. I think people are learning more about the ways in which we need to listen to our bodies and attend to sensation and feeling in our bodies more. And I think at the same time self-care has become yet another commodity. And it becomes just another thing that we feel like we have to do. And then if we don't do it or don't do it well, we somehow judge ourselves negatively with it. How do you recommend resisting some of that, which is so hard.

Janice: I love, love, love that you asked that you can't resist it. You just have to notice it and say, do I choose this? Or don't I choose it. And if you say to me, Judith, but Janice, I have so many deadlines. What I would say to you is, and I say this to all my hyper, hyper creative clients, your imagination outstrips your sustainability. So you have to scale back your imagination to your capacity. This is about choice. It's not about resistance. Resistance will never work, but you can be aware. Oh, wow. Look at that pattern. And if you decide to take what I'm saying seriously, it will totally, totally upturn your life and you will be miserable for a while because you'll be aware of all these ways that you're in the tyranny of your, of your expectation of yourself. And you're going to have to change that expectation to live with what's sustainable. 

Nahanni: Judith, I was thinking about how much we talk about storytelling on the podcast and resilience and how storytelling is a tool for healing and for action and organizing. And Janice, this work that you're doing with us really reminds us that our body is telling us a story, and we have to listen, and as you say, be in dialogue with that story.

Janice: And I'm going to actually add to that Nahanni that our bodies are actually writing the story with us, because the story that we create has everything to do with our consciousness. So if we're really in present time, which is what I think true liberation is. We are writing the story we're in co-creation and that's why I think choosing, choosing awareness can allow you to choose where you put your attention. And are you going to be in the old story or are you going to create a new story?

Nahanni: Thank you so much for doing this with us, Janice. 

Judith: This was beautiful. Thank you so much. 

Janice: It’s really my joy.

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Nahanni: Janice Steiber Rous is the founder of Body Dialogue. You can find Janice, and lots of free breathing and movement videos, online at bodydialogues.com.

Judith: Thank you for joining us for Can We Talk?, the podcast of the Jewish Women’s Archive.

Nahanni: We had help on this episode from Asal Ehsanipour. Our team also includes Becky Long and Ariella Markowitz. Our theme music is by Girls in Trouble. 

Judith: Find us online at jwa.org/canwetalk, and anywhere you get your podcasts. I’m Judith Rosenbaum.

Nahanni: And I’m Nahanni Rous. Until next time, Happy Passover… and remember... to breathe. 

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