Discovering the space in one minute.

Find somewhere you wont be disturbed for 60 seconds or so. Close the door. Turn your devices to silent. Set a timer for 60 seconds. A vibrate alert on a phone is ideal.

Now get in a comfortable, seated position. You can do this anywhere. Even the toilet!

Close your eyes, and breath slowly in through your nostrils, and slowly out through your nostrils. Slowly.

Slower.

That’s one breath.

Continue in this slow, measured manner, really noticing the breath, and counting each one.

Continue until the alert on your timer goes off.

What did you discover?

At the end of the minute – how many breaths did you count?

What happened to time? Did it feel like a long time? Did it pass quickly? What did you notice?

Were you paying attention to the breath? Or was your mind naturally wondering?

Consider all these questions, and ask yourself how you are feeling – paying special attention to any differences in breathing rates. Note any sensations in your muscles.

Taking it further.

This is going to sound crazy, but in order to get the most out of the time you set aside for this activity, you will need to forget about trying to achieve a goal.

Simply observe your breathing. Try not to be judgmental. Be curious.

Explore.

Imagine you don’t know exactly where you’re going, and you’ve got plenty of time get there.

Why not set the timer, and try it again?

FAQs.

Q. I tried it, and I just kept thinking about what I was having for dinner, about a current project, or about my kids. What went wrong?

A. Nothing. That’s normal. Don’t get annoyed with your thoughts, that’s all they are – thoughts. The trick is to notice them, and just gently push them to one side. Thoughts, like sheep, aren’t always the brightest things, they go running about, bumping into each other and getting confused. So like sheep, gently herd them away, so you can get along with just counting the breath…one…two…

Q. Wow. That was cool! It went really slowly and felt like ages. I breathed slowly, and I feel calmer. What’s next?

A. Great! That’s the first stage of reclaiming your body. Every time we breath into to our lungs we stretch our ribs. This in turn creates movement that eases pain and promotes a healthy, functioning torso. Our shoulders are perched on top of our ribs, so guess what? Yep, it can even stretch our shoulders too. We have also began to develop our proprioception. But more about that soon – in the meantime; enjoy a minute out during your day.

Q. Is this meditation, or mindfulness as it’s often known?

A. Yes! It’s practices like this that are well established in more than 250 hospitals in the USA, teaching natural, pain and stress relief techniques.

Conclusion.

By giving yourself this space – just a minute – you can reconnect with the breath. One minute is not generally considered a long time, yet it can make all the difference to a stressed-out day. And this is the foundation of pain-free living.

Try it!

Pro Tips.

Watch your breath entering and leaving your body. If it helps, imagine you are breathing in white, positive, energising light, and breathing out black, negative smoke. Or make up your own colours – be creative, and enjoy focusing on just the breath.

Notice how it feels. Do your muscles feel soft, or hard? Try to release the muscles on the ‘out’ breath.

Enjoy any feelings of calm. You created them!

© Jon Gee 2011

To read more about the way we combine deep-tissue massage with mindfulness – Stay tuned!

Jon Gee is the founder of City Sports Massage, a team of massage therapists in London who combine deep-tissue massage therapy with stress-reduction and body-awareness techniques.

The role of the breath.

From the first breath we took as a baby, our bodies stay alive by using our breathing to provide oxygen to our brains, organs and muscles.

But the role of the breath goes much deeper than that. It directly affects the mobility of many of our muscles. It is inherently intertwined with our body’s emotional responses and stress levels.

When we understand the functionality of the breath, we can form a connection with our bodies and our emotions, and begin an excitingly empowering path to self-healing.

Fight, flight or freeze – an easy explanation.

The breath forms an intrinsic part of a chain of events that occur during the ‘fight, flight or freeze’ response. In this article, it is the activity of the breath during the ‘freeze’ response that we are most interested, as is directly responsible for stress-related muscular pain.

Let’s just imagine you are sitting in your cave, eating your dinner, and minding your own business. A Sabre tooth tiger strolls past the mouth of the cave, and you have 3 choices;

1. Run up, and punch him on the nose (fight)
2. Try to run past him and escape (flight)
3. Or sit very, very still, and hope he doesn’t notice you (freeze)

Now there has been much talked about the fight, or flight responses – blood flowing to the limbs and heart racing, as you get ready to meet a potential grisly death. But what is less talked about is the freeze response. Which, ironically, is the most common one experienced in the modern day workplace.

The freeze response

Let’s imagine it’s late afternoon on a Friday. You’ve only got a couple of hours left to work, before you’re due to head out for pre-planned, romantic date. Without warning your boss comes along, dumps a huge file on your desk, and asks for it to be dealt with before you leave.

What do you do?

1. Stand up, and without a single word, proceed to punch them in the head? (fight)
2. Grab your coat, and run out the door? (flight)
3. Or sit very still, and try to suppress the stress you have just been placed under? (freeze)

If you are the sort of person who took one of the first two options, you’re probably reading this whilst watching Daytime TV, and weighing up your recently-narrowed career options.

Most of us however, would have plumped for the last option. We freeze, and hope that we will survive this incredibly stressful situation.

So what’s happening to our body’s when we ‘freeze’?

Our breathing becomes shallow.
Our ribs barely move.
Muscles become extremely tense.

We are ‘playing dead’ – remember the Sabre tooth tiger? If he doesn’t see us in his peripheral vision we might survive!

When this is repeated day after day in our workplace, our muscles become semi-permanently locked in the same pattern, leading to pain and dysfunction. Typical complaints are tight, sore, frozen shoulders, stiff necks, tight chest and sore backs. Sound familiar?

At the core of this frozen movement is one factor. Its the very thing that is suppressing a basic movement that will give us away as being ‘alive’.

Our breathing.

NEXT

Find pain relief with breathing. Part 2. Exploring the breath; and the how mindfulness and deep tissue massage can work together.

© Jon Gee 2011

Jon Gee is the founder of City Sports Massage, a team of massage therapists in London who combine deep-tissue massage therapy with stress-reduction and body-awareness techniques.

How can massage help?
By facilitating release of the chest using breathing and gentle yet powerful movements, shoulders can be worked on, tight tissues made to melt away, and very easy-to-follow exercises given to strengthen posture.

2. It’s difficult to move my neck.
Can’t turn your head around? Feel like you’ve ‘wrenched’ your neck? Often a gradual tightening of the muscles precedes a muscle tear; which in turn leads to a ‘spasm’ – where the muscles ‘lock’, and seem reluctant to let go.

How can massage help?
By focusing on releasing the muscles slowly the spasm can be eased, and muscles restored to a healthier range of motion. With a competent therapist, you should feel it happening quite quickly!

3. After I run/exercise I get a pain in my muscles.
Hamstrings feel tight or restrictive? Glutes (buttocks) painful? A knee feels like it’s being pulled off-centre? Often when we train hard the body responds the only way it knows – by yelping in pain! Good, hard training inevitably leads to an accumulation of natural toxic waste – the by-products of muscle activity. Whilst warm-downs, hot showers and stretching after activity can help shift these troublesome particles, sometimes the build up becomes too much, and intervention is needed.

How can massage help?
Massage ‘flushes’ out the muscles, and overworked, torn and knotted muscles can be ‘persuaded’ to go back to their original, healthy, functioning pain – free state!

4. I feel very stiff in the mornings, but it gets better throughout the day.
This is possibly because your body has been moving very little for several hours. Our bodies are made for MOVEMENT, and will ‘grumble’ at us if we hold them in static positions for too long.

How can massage help?
When investigating the source of the discomfort, we often find it is within tissues that are already tight from our daily routines. The long periods of static sleep are usually ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back’. A good massage therapist can help review your daily routines, and look at the possible causes. This is in addition to manual deep-tissue, or sports massage, which will unlock tight tissues, and should provide a rapid and measurable amount of pain relief.

5. I can’t sleep at night, and it’s getting worse.
Thoughts rushing through your head? About today? About tomorrow? Chances are you’re breathing is shallow, and you’re exhibiting all the signs of the ‘fight or flight’ stress response.

How can massage help?
Breathing is the key in this scenario, along with exercises in mindfulness. A well trained, advanced massage therapist should be able to help you in this regard. It’s quite a specialist subject, so make sure you ask your therapist if they have experience in this area (all of the City Sports Massage team do). The idea is, by teaching our muscles when they are ‘on’ and when they are ‘off’, even the most stressed-out of us can learn to take back control of our sleep patterns. This is ironically achieved by initially relinquishing control of our muscles, and allowing ourselves to gain a knowledge of what soft, relaxed, loose muscles actually feel like.

COMING NEXT…

“I’d love to come and visit City Sports Massage, but I don’t live in London – so how do I choose the right massage therapist in my locality?”

**Please note that you should consult your GP if you are in any doubt of your health condition**

Article © Jon Gee 2011

Jon Gee is the founder of City Sports Massage, a team of massage therapists in London who combine deep-tissue massage therapy with stress-reduction and body-awareness techniques.

I appreciate Jon’s honesty and if I need work on something, such as a particular area, he will tell me, and equally if I don’t, he will also tell me.”

Stephanie Weekes
Project Manager

“I had a sports massage appointment with you last Thursday in order to help prepare me for my jujitsu grading. I would just like to say that I passed the grading, and to say thank you. My body felt incredibly relaxed and I was able to breath in the same natural manner that you advised during my appointment. It made a world of difference.”

Sean Adjei
Jujitsu practitioner

And on a more general treatment;

“You gave me the best massage I’ve ever had in 2006. sadly I left for nyc that year – I’ve had hundreds of massages since but they haven’t come close. Thanks!”

Binifer Kaikobad
Anti-money Laundering Specialist. International Banking

Thanks for your feedback folks – it’s really appreciated!