Learning to Breathe

Learning to breathe

I'm learning to crawl

I'm finding that You and You alone can break my fall

I'm living again, awake and alive

I'm dying to breathe in these abundant skies

- Switchfoot, "Learning to Breathe"

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My doctor told me recently that I have been "unconsciously dysfunctional."

Thank you, doc.  And welcome to thirty, Courtney.

In all fairness, he said it with much graciousness, gentleness and compassion.  And what he was really saying was that I have been very much unaware of how my physical body does not work properly, especially when it comes to things like stability and breathing.  I continue to have troubles with my back and it's become a source of great discouragement and frustration.  He suspects that over the course of time, and probably due to my years spent riding, I picked up a few bad habits along the way when it comes to how I physically move and function.  I had been blissfully unaware of such issues.  And now I'm paying the price.

He went on to say that we need to move me from unconsciously dysfunctional to consciously dysfunctional to consciously functional to unconsciously functional.

Story of my life summed up in one single statement, the constant migration between awareness and ignorance, functionality and dysfunctionality.

One of the key things he's been emphasizing is the necessity of learning to breathe properly.  I apparently breathe a lot through my chest and the upper half of my lungs instead of really learning to breathe through my belly.  The domino effect this creates is wreaking havoc on the rest of my body.

Sometimes I wonder if my whole life I've been inhaling and exhaling all wrong, both literally and figuratively.

Because maybe here - on the eve of turning thirty - I'll finally start learning what it really looks like to breathe.