Dr Laura Lowery's Blog

I have a lot going on in my head these days, but I have been having difficulty figuring out what to capture in these blog posts, what to share with the world. But it’s been over a month since my last post, and so I decided to mainly just say hello and let my readers know that I haven’t forgotten this blog. I think about it most days and wonder what I should share. What is truly safe to share with anyone who stumbles upon this blog these days. Words have power, and I am confronted every day with the difference between intent and impact. And so I want to be quite intentional to ensure the best impact. And these days, my go to response at times when I am stressed and worried is that I keep my mouth shut. And this has been happening in a number of areas in my life, both personal and professional. 

For example, with my youngest child, who is struggling with mental illness, I get so frustrated at times when he refuses to get out of bed in the morning and/or refuses to interact at all with me. And I want to help him. But I have learned that talking to him when he is in that state just makes things worse. So I need to work on letting it go, walking away, keeping my mouth shut, not taking his issues personally. I’ve been working on this very actively these last few months.

And then, at the same time I was doing this, working on keeping my mouth shut, biting my tongue, I also began to develop very painful neck spasms. I hoped they were isolated occurrences that would go away, but they kept happening every day. And so last week, I went to a really wonderful massage therapist that I know and she worked her magic, and it was wonderful. And she told me afterwards that she got the sense that I have been holding words in, repressing my thoughts and feelings, and that can cause tension in the throat chakra, leading to spasms. And so she recommended that I add some really deep breathing exercises to my daily routine, breathing where I exhale loudly, as loudly as I can, to release that tension. And you know what? It worked! The first few times I did it, I became surprised that the breathing and loud exhalation led me to start crying, and I see now that I had been storing up all this frustration and tension, and the breathing and then crying allowed me to release that. So, I need to keep working on that. Deep breathing, releasing the tension. It’s crazy to me how breathing is so fundamental, so essential, to our life, and yet most of us take it for granted most of the time.