“Which of the five senses will help you calm down when you are stressed?” my counselor asked me at our first session recently.

As I flicked through the senses mentally, desperate to please her with an excellent answer, I struggled to come up with one that actually made sense (pun intended).

Sound

Definitely not sound. Sound makes my stress levels hit the roof, go through the roof, and explode in the sky like a firecracker. When my youngest is in the hospital, I’ve been known to turn off monitors that beep incessantly when we have nurses that are too busy to turn them off. It’s either turn the monitor off or punch it, so I choose the less terrible option. Once, Great Wolf Lodge, that dystopian hellscape where children run around a hotel as if they had no parents at all and enjoy a giant indoor waterpark where every shriek of delight reverberates off the metal ceiling for approximately 45 minutes, reduced me to a blubbering puddle of jello after mere hours. My husband came to find me perched on the edge of a lawn chair with my hands clapped over my ears, eyes closed, rocking back and forth, and muttering, “I’m fine. I’ll be okay. Everything is okay.”

So sound won’t work.

Taste

It would be hard to accomplish any relaxing taste or smell in the hospital, considering that we are often reduced to eating out of vending machines. Dry zebra cakes and bags of Chex Mix don’t really inspire the kind of culinary experience that relaxes you. Ditto for smells. There’s nothing relaxing about a stale hospital bathroom or the smell of your own breath after not brushing your teeth for 24 hours.

Sight

Sight might work. I’m always good for a beautiful sunset. Unfortunately, the last time we were in the hospital, we had a room that almost miraculously had a window that looked out onto an alcove full of dead pigeons and their poop. If I smushed my face against the side of the window, I could almost see real sunlight. I don’t even know how one designs a building like that, but kudos, architect. There’s nothing better than being trapped in a small misshapen hospital room with only the feces of pigeons to comfort you.

Alas, sight is unreliable.

Touch

I landed on touch because when I’m stressed, my bed, under my pile of blankets, is the best spot for me. But that might also be because I’m a mother and I’m perpetually tired and I would take a good night’s sleep over a million dollars at this point.

But now that I’m removed from the hot seat of a counseling chair, I’ll still say “touch” but I have a much better reason; coming up for air.

Then

Let me introduce myself first. My name is Beth and I’m a mother. We have two sons, both adopted, 12 and 2-and-a-half. Our youngest has Down Syndrome and while we thought we were prepared for all of the medical baggage that comes with that, we weren’t. Since Christmas, he’s been hospitalized three times. Every hospitalization means trying to coordinate work schedules, trying to have someone at the hospital at all times, and trying to keep our oldest in some semblance of a routine so he doesn’t go off the rails too. It’s terribly stressful and hospitalizations happen more often than I would like and there’s often very little warning. Even when he’s not hospitalized, I’m always tip-toeing around, waiting for the next shoe to drop, the next quick drive to the ER. It’s as if I’m living with an adorable ticking time bomb, who could turn my life upside down at any moment.

It has created a tremendous amount of chronic stress. Parenting right now is about 10% fun and 90% wanting to lay quietly under the pile of laundry that was dumped unceremoniously on the couch 3 days ago, hoping no one will find me there.

Now

So, fast forward to a counselor’s office and her asking me that question and me blogging about it now.

Touch is still my answer but here’s my better answer:

I live in my head a lot, especially when I’m stressed. Stress makes my Type A need-for-control go through the roof and so I constantly have lists of things that need to be done, therapists that need to be texted, doctors that need to be googled, crappy vending machine food that needs to be eaten. Stress makes the list of things that normally lives in my head a million miles long and a million times more important.

Being that I live with a considerable amount of stress on a day-to-day basis, I started doing yoga last summer. And by “doing yoga”, I mean giving all of it a fair shot, because, in the past, I always rolled my eyes during the meditation talk and the final pose, called Shavasana, where you lay on your mat for 10 minutes and breathe. So, this go-around I tried to do it all and I’ve actually ended up really appreciating the mindfulness part of yoga. Do you know what my favorite part is? Shavasana. It’s like adult nap time minus the cots. Until starting yoga, I didn’t realize what a luxury it was for me to be able to take a deep breath and actually feel it.

I’ll let that sink in.

American motherhood is so great that literally taking three seconds to feel yourself breathe is a luxury. What a time to be alive.

When I’m stressed and 100% in my head and thinking about all of the things that need to be done and aren’t being done (or aren’t being done to my exacting standards), taking a breath grounds me in my body. Feeling the air flow in and out of my lungs helps me to slow down a second and (maybe) even put some things in perspective. It gets me out of my head, even if it’s just for one moment. For one moment, my hair is not on fire and the world isn’t crashing down around me. And when you feel like your hair is on fire and the world is crashing down around you, even one moment of relief is sometimes enough to keep you going until you can get another moment, right?

Here’s the other neat thing about breath: it’s always with you. (Well, until it’s not, but if your breath isn’t with you right now and you’re reading this, then please know that I have my sharpened broom handle ready to stab you in the heart should you come for me. Also, zombies can read? I digress.) Our breath and gravity are the most consistent things in our lives. You could be naked in the middle of nowhere and still have your breath and gravity. Regardless of where we are, what we’re doing, who’s losing their mind because they can’t find their purple shirt, or how many dishes are piled in our sinks, those two things are always there. I find comfort in that consistency, especially when my life feels so inconsistent right now. I can always stop and listen to my breath. I can always feel the ground beneath me, pressing back against my feet or my back. They are almost boring in their steadiness. And I could use a little boredom right about now.

So, when my counselor, bless her little heart, suggests that I take time out of my day to “address my needs”, instead of rolling my eyes (does anyone else suffer from SFS, sassy face syndrome?), I can smile and assure her that I can take a moment to, come up for air, feel my lungs expand and contract and know that I’ll (probably) make it through the chaos.

(It’s well-documented that living at or below the poverty line produces chronic stress and unfortunately, yoga and mindfulness training aren’t often available or affordable in low-income areas. Ebony Smith, “The Ghetto Guru”, has started Yoga N Da Hood, a non-profit that is dedicated to making wellness accessible to everyone by using yoga as tool to develop compassionate, healthy, and mindful; individuals, families, organizations, and communities. You can get more info about Yoga N Da Hood here.  If you have access to counseling and yoga, maybe you can consider making a donation so that more kids, families, and communities can have access to those same stress-busting tools.)

Contact The Montfort Group in Plano today to see how we can help you catch your breath.