Oxygen

“Find your oxygen, everyone’s is different.”  Will Guidara in Unreasonable Hospitality. 

There is a lot of uncertainty is in my life right now and although I have an amazing running coach who will tell you I follow her workout plans for me almost religiously, this morning I needed some oxygen.

My oxygen is, not surprisingly, AIR, breathing.  As a Taurus I am an earth sign. Sometimes it feels like my life is full of all three of the other elements (or over full) of emotions (water), energy (fire) and a focus on achievement (earth).  But it is air that sustains me and is my oxygen.  So, this morning I set out to just run joyfully and breathe even though my prescribed workout was a short ladder on the elliptical.

One deep breath can make a difference in my body.  However, if I can move my body while breathing and for maximum impact go hard and long, the air brings myself back to me.  To a calmer space where I can think better, where often I am able to make progress with a problem or find a solution to a situation, that third way or open window. 

One of my sons says, “a marathon will fix everything.” While that is not necessarily true, a long run always brings my nervous system back in alignment (especially after a hot shower).  I need to give myself oxygen in order to do what I have committed to, care for those I love and want to care for and spark creativity in my work. 

Breathing air, especially outside air, has been my oxygen for as long as I can remember.  I was the kid who all the way through Jr. High ran to school and home again.  I always thought, why walk when you could run?  Once I could drive and we moved farther from the high school, I rode the bus or later drove, but by then I was on the cross country (men’s, no women’s available) and track teams and running became more structured but no less necessary as a way to get my oxygen. 

Although breathing with running is the best to me, when I was recovering from my knee replacement, I walked and walked and walked.  Painfully and slowly at first with jagged stilted steps and breaths but then with practice more joyfully and for longer periods of time. 

Breath with movement can be compounded in a walk and talk with a friend.  I get the oxygen from air and the bonus of a positive contribution from all the other elements, air for emotional connection, fire for positive energy transferring between us and earth that we are walking on and nature we are in.   I rarely get to run with others but that is the utmost in oxygen and bonuses when it happens.

Running is my oxygen and therefore my renewal, and because of this I still stand by something I wrote in 2008 when prompted to write about why I ran by the leader of a mom’s running group I was a part of (a wonderful oxygen boosting endeavor). 

“A day with a bad run is better than a day with no run at all.”

Your oxygen doesn’t have to be so literal.  It can be anything that brings you the feelings described here.  Whatever your oxygen is breathe it deeply.