Sound Sigh

 

 

Parking her well-traveled Toyota Corolla in the handicapped spot in front of us, Violet jumps out of the front seat. Her eyes are bright and excited behind her wire-rimmed granny glasses as she heads over toward me and LS.

            “I just had to come over and tell you guys something,” she says, breathless.

            “We can see that,” LS says, smiling.

            We had watched the Toyota drive past us and then change its mind, backing up and then pulling into the vacant spot.   We’d been chatting in our usual post swim way, talking about bats and creeps and movies. Most recently, we'd watched the film, Columbus, about an architect's son and a fan of this architect, touring the modernist buildings in Columbus Indiana. We had found the film provocative on one level, but ponderous and slow on another. "What makes a movie pretentious and ponderous?" LS was asking when Violet interrupted us. 

              “What have we got here?” I’d asked LS, as I watched Violet hurrying toward us. She had some message of great import. Or so it seemed.

              “I guess we’re gonna find out,” LS said.

            “I’ve been studying with this guru" Violet began, "and he told me how if you want to get rid of the stress and anxiety that we all hold on to, I have a lot of pain in my shoulders and neck, so this works for that too, you can try these deep breathing exercises for 15 minutes….”

            “15 minutes!” LS exclaims. “That’s a long time!”

            “Yes, well, whatever….” Violet grins at us. “But anyway, here’s the secret. When you breathe in deeply and hold it, 1…2….3…..4…..5…..6….7….and then release it, you have to sigh out loud!”

            She demonstrates for us with a dramatic lyrical sigh. “Aaaaaahhhhhh!” she spouts.  “The key is you have to make the actual sigh noise!”

            “Okay,” LS and I say. “We’ll give it a try.”   

            And we do, breathing in and then releasing with a loud, sing song sigh.

            “You know, I think that works,” LS says. “I feel better!”

            Violet beams, nodding in affirmation, her thick grey hair floating around her earnest expression in the breeze. “Right? I just thought that I had to tell you two. We were talking last week about anxiety and sleeplessness and aches and pains. We all get those! And since I’ve been practicing this out loud sighing, well, I have to tell you, I feel so much more relaxed.”

            “I had a colleague that I worked with at JFK in the library who would make these long-exasperated sighs," I said.  "The library was always dead in the afternoon between classes. The silence was thick.  I’d be in my office to the side of the library, reviewing a paper or reading an article, and all of a sudden, I’d hear this loud, and I mean, loud, sigh from K behind the desk, breaking the silence with a sudden crashing rupture.  The first time I heard her do this, I thought there was something wrong with her. ‘K! Are you okay?’ And she’d call back, ‘Yeah, I’m fine. Just bored.’ It was the funniest thing.”

            Violet laughs softly. “That sounds a little different than this practice, but it’s the same idea. The sound is key. You can’t exhale silently; you have to make the noise!”

            I try this during the week. There is so much to sigh about. All the anxiety over Ian and his treatments, the rush to make appointments, the sitting around in the infusion center while the chemo drips into his port, the state of the climate with no rain in sight and the snow drought making headlines, not to mention the hell that ICE has put the city of Minneapolis through by murdering two protesters, both US citizens, both white folks, now gone gone gone.

            I need to breathe. Sometimes I find myself forgetting. I’m driving to pick up Ian at the BART and I’m running late and sitting at the signal at San Pablo and Potrero I realize that I’m holding my breath. Damn! I need to breathe.

            And so, I’m practicing the Sound Sigh Breath that Violet showed us that day after our swim, another source of anxiety and stress since the El Cerrito pool has been closed and all of its swimmers have flooded our Kennedy High pool here in Richmond. The lanes are packed and the people are rude.

            Breathe!

            It does help. The more I practice this, the better I feel. Of course, I often forget to do this. But then I remember, when the stress gets to be too much and I’m not breathing.

            Carol. Breathe in….1….2….3….4….5…

            Breathe out. And SIGH! Noisily! Satisfyingly. A release of all that energy inside that is just making me crazy.

            Give it a try. It really works. Sure, you may feel a little silly at first. But who cares? Who’s listening?

Ready?

1…2….3….AHHHHHHHHH!