jimlinsa

So I have this problem that old guys get . . . . noooooo . . . not what you're thinking. It's called sleep apnea. Whoa. You stop breathing when you're asleep. But instead of dying you just feel like crap. There's two solutions. You can wear this thing over your face that's attached to a machine that blows air up your nose all night while you try to sleep. Or you can do nothing.

Chose to do nothing, naturally. I'd rather feel like crap that sleep with a machine.

But I've been figuring there must be some kind of hypnotherapy or something that could help by reminding your unconscious to breathe while asleep. It's also depressing because I've been doing breathing exercises of one type or another for the last ten years because I really like to breathe! It's a natural high! Also I play lots of flutes and didgeridoos and things that you blow into and I even sing sometimes when I'm by myself.

Last night I was sitting in my sacred spot with some of my instruments and I started doing a kind of breathing exercise that I learned in a workshop called Working with Bamboo that I took with a Peruvian sound healing shaman recently using two bamboo pipes (the musical sort) that I made in the workshop and keeping time with my drum. It was slooooowwww, blowing into the pipes and then breathing in . . . blowing into the pipes and then breathing in . . . keeping a slow, regular beat on the drum. I kept doing it for a long time.

When I was done my wife said to me "That song was spooky." Usually I don't play when she's trying to read or lie down or something, but for some reason this time I did.

Yeah. It was spooky. I had been feeling particularly crappy too, my last night's sleep having been unusually terrible. But now I felt much better.

So I went to bed, and a little bit before I woke up in the morning I became aware in my sleep. It wasn't like a lucid dream exactly because I wasn't dreaming. I was just aware while I was still asleep. And I was breathing I was breathing in counting to four and breathing out counting to four, very much like the breathing exercise I had been doing the night before, only without the pipes and the drum. And I felt like even though I had just become aware of it it had been going on for a much longer time.

So I kept doing it until my alarm went off. Then I got up and I felt good! Sweet!

I did it! I had communicated with my unconscious to keep breathing while I was asleep!

So I don't know if I'll keep doing it or if my problem is now cured. Probably not. But at least I know that it's possible. Back to my bamboo pipes and my drum for sure. Hope I don't freak my wife out.!