November 8 – Day 52

I have forgotten how to breathe. I literally don’t know how to do it anymore. I spent years (and lots of my parents’ money) doing nothing but learning to breathe and now after years of living in Los Angeles and the last year of discontent I did something so incredibly wrong to my body that I no longer know how to breathe right. I wondered aloud if it might be a result of unhappiness and Stephanie posed the idea that such emotion is the result not the cause of an inability to breathe - but I am getting ahead of myself. Today I had my singing lesson with Marina and while I knew I felt tense, I could not pin-point its origin or how to alleviate it. I tried to sing but I just felt as thought I was suffocating. I couldn’t get out the notes and the more I struggled the more stifled my breath became. By the end of the lesson I was gasping for air. Marina punched me in the stomach while I tried to sing with no success except for perhaps a brief stress relief for her. She suggested I go for a massage as my shoulders were rows upon rows of knots. I spent the rest of the day checking in with my breath and I began to notice that I no longer breathe like a performer. My breath has gone shallow and I can’t feel how to breathe into my diaphragm. This might not seem like a huge deal but it made me realize how long it has been since I really had to utilize my breath. In day to day life you can get by, speeding through existence without taking in the moments fully, without breathing into your emotional core. As an artist this is an impossibility. Your mind and emotions are tied so tightly with the breath that I wonder how much my discontent had to do with living this unactualized existence. Stephanie stayed after class and worked with me for hours but I think it is going to take a while longer to undo whatever damage I have done. How did I forget an essential part of being? How did I let it get this far? This was one of those moments of epiphany that puts so much in perspective. I know now that I need this outlet, any outlet, the way I need the air I breathe. It is essential for my livelihood. It is the part that makes me whole, that makes me free and expands my soul like the air flowing the deepest part of me.