School of Pax: Just Breathe

Posted on 01 Apr 2015 @ 4:03am by Chief Petty Officer Pax Inyo

793 words; about a 4 minute read

A blurred image of two nostrils fills the frame. They come into focus. The nostrils are not entirely human. They grow larger and smaller with an inhale and an exhale before the camera suddenly draws back, or the individual draws away from the lens and it refocuses on Pax, standing on a black mat in the empty brig. She's peeled down to her undershirt and wearing drawstring sweats. Her feet are bare, the two broad toes cloven.

"Hey Kids, I'm gonna start you off straight." She tells the camera. She walks back towards it to make sure it's on. It is, so she resumes her place at the mat, circling slowly as she talks.

"The best thing you got going for yourself in a fight is your cool. You lose your cool then you lose right outta the gate. Talking to you from experience here. But you can't just call up a cool head when you need it and go running around all fruit loopy the rest of the time. You gotta develop it, practice it. So if you got a religion or a kind of practice that teaches you to focus, that's where you wanna start. Sitting still was never my strong suit, so if I can learn it, so can you. If you practice being still a few minutes a day, concentrating on your breathing, does wonders, it really does. If you're ever faced with confrontation and you don't know how to be in control of yourself, you can't ever hope to overcome anyone or anything else. So lemme just show you how to breathe."

She chuckles. " Okay, I guess if you haven't figured that out yet you're either dead or something that doesn't got lungs like most of us. But you can breathe your whole life on involuntary mode and never really do it on purpose like."

She plops down center on the mat and crosses her legs so her neatly trimmed hooves stick up. Her four fingered hands are holding her own ankles.

"We'll just start off real basic. So just get real quiet like, how ever long that takes you. Sometimes you can have some music going but something that's soothing like and not real loud. You should be quiet enough to discern your own heart beating. Then you're ready. When you're not distracted, you take one big deep inhale nice and slow. No hunching, man, sit up straight like your mamma always told you. Fill up your belly first, then your chest and back, just one big old balloon of air. Maybe like, five or six heartbeats just breathing in. So something like this-"

She breathes in, her chest raising a little and her posture tall. It's a long slow six count.

"Great, so now you're gonna just hang on to that breath, maybe longer than you inhaled by a second or two. Again, no need to watch any clocks or get real exact about it. You got your own ticker for the count, just seven heartbeats."

She repeats the long slow inhale, then the viewer is treated to seven seconds of the CPO doing nothing but sitting with her eyes closed.

She starts to exhale. It takes a while until she opens her eyes and looks into the camera. "The exhale is longest and slowest, because that's where you're relaxing and letting go of all that crap in your head that gets you in knots, you know? Just let that bull go. If you're going to be analytical about it, the exhale is like a 9 or 10 count on your heatbeat. If you want to know how much air flows when you're on the exhale, imagine you're softly blowing on a little flame, enough to move it but not to snuff the poor little guy. And you're good to go again."

She demonstrates a few more times.

"Super easy right? You wouldn't believe how many people don't have a clue how to just breathe, but you know better now. There's a whole tonnage of great techniques for breathing and meditating. If you practice some of 'em daily, you'll start to have a lot less stress and begin to gain more self awareness and concentration. Some advanced techniques even give you some control over your body heat, heart rate, and other organs and processes, including my personal favorite: getting a great night's sleep. Hit me up if you want to learn some more complex inhale exhale skills, maybe I can make another vid. Just remember, don't make this academic, make it a habit. Later Kids."

She gets up, walks out of view and there is what seems like a brief struggle with the camera swirling around and then gazing up at the ceiling before the screen blanks out.

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