Blog - Laurie Klein, Scribe

Sigh, Sigh, Sigh (& Stay Alive!)

Sigh … audibly. Deeply. Frequently. (So says my fitness instructor)

Dreamer’s latest angiogram date looms. After 5 bypasses, why are we here again? Dismay feels substantive enough to mold—like river sludge between cupped palms.

Sigh. Empty the hands, lift them in trusting surrender.

An audible sigh re-inflates the vital, occasionally squashed alveoli within our lungs, keeping us alive.

So sigh some more.

A sigh alleviates stress. Research shows that 12 hourly sighs help us regroup, emotionally. Read more here.

Yes, bad news strikes, and fear makes us bristle, become thistle-y with those we love
Yes, sometimes even the air weighs on us, seemingly saturated with unshed tears
Yes, how easily we slide toward the sump of dread

Stalled out again,
going nowhere fast,
I remember “nowhere”
plus the addition
of one slender space
becomes “now here.”

Presence. One slender pause—a breath, a hum, a prayer—invites a sacred recalibration. The built-in reset for body and soul.

Inhale. Sigh aloud. Repeat.

“there is a changing of everything —
when breath becomes prayer.”*

Richard Rohr teaches a simple breath prayer. Using the name YAHWEH for God: inhale, audibly voicing the YAH; exhale, audibly voicing the WEH.

I also like Dr. Andrew’s Weil’s calming breath exercise:

Exhale as much air as possible with a big whoosh
Place tongue behind upper teeth, inhale for an easy count of 4
Hold breath for a count of 7
Exhale audibly for a count of 8

Do this four times. As it becomes easier, increase to eight repetitions, twice a day.

I vary the 4-7-8 exercise by counting on my fingers, simultaneously humming or praying.

*Prayer, Ann Voskamp

Breaking In

by Laurie Klein 37 Chiming In

Breaking in sounds so … criminal.

Unless it’s light breaking in, or insight, or a penetrating sense of hope.

February 1973, public restroom, Hawaii:

Pre-Luau, six friends wash up. Judy sings Ju – bi – late Deo (rejoice in God). We all chime in. Great acoustics, a 15th-century round—we sound like a choir in a soaring cathedral.

Later the luau bandleader says, into the mic, “We heard heavenly music … coming from the ladies’ room.”

(laughter)

We slide down in our seats.

“Would those angels please join us onstage?”

(crowd, rubbernecking, applauds).

“Everyone should hear you,” he adds.

Before an international audience we sing and sing—in Latin. The long-dead language rising, rising.

We finish. A person could hear a lei petal drop.

“We sing. Things become fresh,” Walter Brueggermann writes.

“But then the moment breaks.”

In this half-broken world “a song’s always breaking in,” my friend Barb says.

Listen for it.

And sometimes, be one.

When have you heard the sound of hope breaking in? What happened?

For us there was no birth cry,
the newborn bird is suddenly here,
the egg broken, the nest alive,
and we heard nothing when the world changed.

—Lisel Mueller (excerpt), “What the Dog Perhaps Hears”

Hear “Jubilate Deo” here: 15th century round, or perpetual canon, written by Michael Praetorious.

Hinge Points: Relative Movement

by Laurie Klein 17 Chiming In

Hinge point: It’s my blog’s 2 1/2 year mark. I’m trying something new. Let me know what you think?

Introducing . . . ONE-MINUTE WONDERS:

1 snapshot
100-some words
1 minute of your time

Hinge: A flexible point of connection that allows relative movement.

Hinges squeal. Our old rattle-scrap screen door heaves and judders.

His sleeve cinched between door and jamb, the kid roars: “Let. Me. Go-o-o-o!”

He’s livid. And bigger than me. He’ll punch through the mesh any second. Then kill me. And then it’ll be me, the girl memorialized in the family album viewed with sighs, and shaken heads. “Always the stubborn one.”

Still, I’m leaning backward now, death-gripping cloth, white-knuckling the knob. Sweaty, panting, we glare at each other.

He’s my brother. We share a genetic axis. We are self-contained yet revolve around each other.