The Breath We Forget

Sometimes Coming Back to Yourself Begins With Something as Simple as Remembering to Breathe

By Rachel Y. Hill, DNP, FNP-BC, PMHNP-BC, AHN-BC, HWNC-BC

I took a mini retreat with Tammy Bratton and her ViveHealing Center this past week.

And I probably took more conscious breaths in those few days than I had in a long time.

It was amazing.

I felt so free, so expansive, so at peace.

The kind of peace that doesn't come from anything changing on the outside...

But from something finally settling on the inside.

Here's what I keep coming back to, though:

Being a holistic-minded person doesn't exempt you from trauma, stress, strain, and the other kinds of tension the body carries.

Knowing the practices is not the same as living inside them every day.

I teach this.

I believe in this.

And still, somehow...

The breath is the first thing I forget.

I don't fully understand why that is.

Of everything the body does, breath should be the easiest thing to stay connected to.

It's always right there.

Happening whether we notice it or not.

And yet it's often the first casualty of a hard day.

A hard week.

A hard year.

We hold it.

We shorten it.

We forget it entirely.

All without ever deciding to.

When the Breath Became the Teacher

I've seen this play out in more than one part of my life.

When I've studied yoga, I've felt firsthand how breath changes what the body can do.

Postures that once felt out of reach became accessible.

Not because I stretched harder...

But because I breathed into them.

The breath softened what force could never soften.

It let me go farther by asking me to hold less.

Running marathons taught me the same lesson from a completely different direction.

I couldn't have finished those races on effort alone.

Learning how to breathe properly—deliberately, rhythmically, without wasting air on tension—was as much a part of training as the miles themselves.

The breath wasn't in the background of that work.

It was the work.

So when I sat with Tammy this past week and let myself really breathe again, it wasn't a new discovery.

It was a homecoming to something I already knew and had simply let slip.

Thirty-Six Breaths Back to Yourself

One of the practices I was reminded of during the retreat comes from Jin Shin Jyutsu, a Japanese healing art built around the idea that the fingers and palms hold energetic connections to the whole body, mind, and spirit.

At the center of the practice is something wonderfully simple:

The 36 Breaths.

The idea is this:

Using the opposite hand, you gently hold each finger, one at a time, starting with the thumb.

Take three conscious breaths per finger.

Counting on the exhale helps quiet the mind and keep you present.

The sequence looks like this:

• Hold each finger gently with the opposite hand.
• Begin with the thumb.
• Take three conscious breaths with each finger.
• Move through all five fingers on one hand.
• Take three breaths while holding the center of the palm.
• Repeat with the opposite hand.

Five fingers per hand, three breaths each, brings you to fifteen per hand.

Add three breaths held in the center of each palm...

And the full sequence becomes thirty-six conscious breaths.

You don't need special training.

You don't need equipment.

You simply need a few quiet minutes and a willingness to actually feel the breath instead of thinking about it.

Some people complete the entire sequence in one sitting.

Others break it into nine conscious exhales, four times throughout the day.

Either way, the practice isn't really about counting.

It's about what the counting gives you: a reason to stay with your breath long enough to notice it.

What I love most about this practice is how unglamorous it is.

It doesn't ask you to retreat to a mountain.

It doesn't ask you to clear your calendar for an hour.

It asks you to hold your own hand and breathe.

That's it.

And somehow...

That's often enough to bring you back to yourself.

When the Practice Left the Retreat

It's one thing to breathe on a retreat.

Surrounded by quiet.

Intention.

And people who are there for exactly the same reason you are.

It's another thing entirely to breathe in the middle of a 95-degree stadium while being yelled at by a stranger with a line of people watching.

That happened to me recently.

And it turned out to be the truest test the breath had given me in a long time.

I was at a Chiefs game.

I placed an order for a cherry limeade for myself and a plain limeade slushy for my friend.

While we waited, another woman working the stand asked if I was the one who had placed the slushy order.

I said yes...

Then went back to my conversation.

When the drinks came up, one was wrong.

I didn't realize it was mine.

I assumed it belonged to someone else and kept waiting.

She looked at me, confused that I wasn't stepping forward to claim it.

When she told me it was mine, I said, "Oh!"

I'd take the cherry limeade, but my friend actually wanted the plain version of the slushy, not the cherry one.

That's when everything changed.

She told me sharply that she had asked directly whether we wanted the cherry limeade slushies and I had said yes.

Then she was yelling.

Genuinely angry.

Raising her voice at me in front of a line of strangers...

In the heat...

Over a drink order.

The Space Between Reaction and Response

I felt myself go into something like shock.

I had never been spoken to like that in public before.

I could feel the eyes of the people standing in line.

I could feel my own instinct rising.

Defend yourself.

Explain yourself.

Match her energy.

I didn't know, in that moment, how to break the attack.

So I took a deep breath.

The exercise Tammy had given me during the retreat was still fresh enough in my body that it came without my having to think about it.

In through the nose.

Filling the stomach first.

Then filling the chest.

And slowly out through the mouth.

Such a simple sequence.

But in that moment...

It gave my nervous system somewhere to go besides straight into fight.

What I actually wanted underneath everything was simply to keep the peace.

I wanted her to know she was probably right.

I had been deep in conversation.

I genuinely hadn't listened closely enough the first time she asked.

I wasn't trying to win anything.

I was trying to be honest and de-escalate at the same time.

So instead of matching her volume with defensiveness...

I matched it with honesty.

I apologized.

Clearly.

Sincerely.

Loud enough for her to hear me over the noise of the stadium and her own frustration.

And here's the part I'm still turning over.

As I said it...

I could have sworn I saw her take a breath too.

Right before she said:

"Okay."

Something in her shoulders came down.

I don't know whether it was my deep breath she picked up on.

The sincerity of the apology.

Or both.

But something shifted.

Was there a breath in the room that somehow became shared?

She made the correct limeade, set it down harder than she needed to, and that was the end of it.

My friend and I took our drinks and walked away.

Breathing Until Compassion Returned

I kept breathing the whole way back to our seats.

The same sequence.

Nose.

Stomach.

Chest.

Slowly out through the mouth.

Again.

And again.

Not because the confrontation was still happening.

Because my body needed somewhere to put what had just happened.

I stayed with the breath deliberately.

Breath after breath.

Until I could feel the anger—mine, and whatever residue of hers I was still carrying—begin to leave my body.

I kept going until what remained was compassion.

It would have been easy to spiral.

To replay the moment.

To feel humiliated.

To carry the heat of that exchange through the rest of the game.

Instead...

I used the breath to regulate a nervous system that had every reason to spike.

My friend and I spent some time talking through what happened.

Not just the event itself...

But how we wanted to hold it.

We talked about compassion for ourselves.

For the confusion.

For the discomfort of being dressed down publicly over something small.

For the fact that neither of us had done anything deserving of being yelled at.

And then we talked about compassion for her.

A stranger working a concession stand in 95-degree heat.

Moving through what was probably a very long, very hot shift.

Someone who reached a breaking point over a mixed-up drink order that likely had very little to do with us...

And everything to do with everything else she was carrying that day.

That is the difference conscious breath can make.

Not that the hard moment doesn't happen.

Not that the sting immediately disappears.

But that you create enough space to choose what happens next.

Do you meet heat with more heat?

Or can you find enough room inside one deep breath to respond differently?

The retreat gave me the practice.

The stadium gave me the proof.

The Quiet Moments That Ask Us to Breathe

The stadium was the loudest test.

But it wasn't the only one.

Once I started paying attention, I noticed how many ordinary moments in a day quietly ask for the same thing.

A breath taken on purpose before I react.

There's the moment in traffic when someone cuts in front of me without so much as a glance.

My body tenses before my mind has even caught up.

There's the message that lands wrong.

I begin reading a tone into words that may never have been there.

My jaw tightens before I've even decided how I feel.

There's the end of a long day.

Dishes piling up.

Someone asking one more thing of me.

And I can feel the accumulated weight of the day searching for somewhere to land.

None of these moments make the news.

They don't come with an audience.

They may not even become stories worth telling later.

But perhaps...

They are the more important tests.

Because they happen constantly.

Quietly.

Dozens of times a day.

And they're the moments we're least likely to meet with intention.

Before the Reaction Runs the Moment

I've started noticing that the same breathing sequence that carried me through that stadium works in ordinary places too.

The produce aisle.

A waiting room.

On hold with an insurance company.

The space between receiving an unkind text and deciding how to respond.

In through the nose.

Filling the stomach.

Then the chest.

Slowly out through the mouth.

It takes almost no time.

And yet...

It can create the space between reacting from the oldest, most defended part of ourselves and responding from somewhere steadier.

What I'm learning is that breath isn't only a tool for emergencies.

The dramatic moments make us remember it.

But the real practice happens in the moments that aren't dramatic at all.

The red light that turns green a half-second too slowly.

The child asking the same question for the fifth time.

The coworker who forgets—again—to close the loop on something you've already asked about twice.

These are the moments when unconscious living runs on autopilot.

And every one of them offers the same invitation:

Come back to the breath before the reaction runs the moment instead of you.

I don't always catch it.

I still snap.

Still sigh.

Still allow the day's weight to land somewhere it didn't need to.

But more and more...

I catch it sooner than I used to.

And every time I do, I'm reminded:

The breath was never the small thing.

It was always the whole thing, hiding in plain sight, waiting for me to remember it was there.

Remembering What My Body Already Knew

I've seen this before in quieter ways.

And now that I'm paying attention again...

Those memories are returning.

I remember practicing different breathing variations in yoga.

Different rhythms.

Different counts.

Different places to hold the breath.

Later, I noticed that a cold I'd felt coming on simply never landed.

It didn't take hold.

I don't know the full mechanism behind that.

But I know what I experienced.

And it wasn't the only time.

The breath is powerful.

Sometimes I scratch my head wondering why I don't practice it more consistently when the evidence of what it does for me is already there in my own history.

But perhaps this isn't a mystery I need to solve.

It's simply a practice I need to return to.

Ground First. Then Breathe.

That recognition has already begun changing how I show up for other people.

Not only myself.

This week, I've caught myself doing something new when visiting with patients.

Before we even begin...

I ask them to take a deep breath with me.

Ground first.

Then breathe.

Feet steady.

Breath deep.

In just a few days, that combination has become one of the simplest and most powerful things I offer someone before we do anything else together.

It costs nothing.

It doesn't require them to believe in anything.

It simply asks them to arrive fully in the room before we begin the work.

I have so much gratitude for Tammy for sharing that mini retreat with me.

It went a long way.

Perhaps further than either of us expected when it began.

Sometimes the most important shifts don't come from learning something new.

They come from being gently reminded of something you already knew and had simply stopped doing.

Coming Home on the Next Breath

If you're anything like me...

You probably already know much of this.

Maybe you've studied it.

Taught it.

Practiced it during seasons when it came more easily.

This isn't necessarily new information.

It's a reminder.

The kind I needed this past week.

And the kind I suspect many of us need more often than we admit.

The breath doesn't ask for much.

It only asks to be noticed.

Hold a finger if you'd like.

Or simply exhale.

Drop your shoulders.

Let the next inhale arrive on its own.

You don't have to go anywhere to come home to yourself.

You just have to breathe like you mean it.

--Dr. Rachel