waiting to exhale

Recently, I've found myself in this state. Waiting to exhale. I know this is very stressful. I try not to do it. But apparently, I find myself in many situations where I do hold my breath. Sometimes when I write a sentence, I exhale just at the end or pause after writing a phrase. There are many instances. All of these involve waiting. It surprised me that the nanosecond that you wait before you exhale sometimes seems like an hour or more. Waiting for a hello at the other end of the line. Waiting just after you turned over that fried fish. Waiting for a thought to become an idea. There are many more. It just seems that these nanoseconds of waiting build up to become stress. Sigh!

I should review my open water diving. One of the principles of scuba diving is "never hold your breath." This will help you relax in the water, thus preventing any panic. It takes a while before you get used to breathe normally underwater using the scuba. But once you do relax and exhale slowly, you will experience a great time underwater. I also realized that the most ordinary way of relaxing is deep breathing. Conversely, the fastest way to be stressed out is to hold your breath.

When we anticipate things, we tend to hold our breath. While a bit scared there seems to be a time when you hold your breath. Just before plunging yourself into something you hold your breath. I need to re-learn not to hold my breath. Recently I've been holding more often than I supposed to do. I can feel the stress scale going up. I just have to breathe, slowly.