49 degrees
the lake nokomis loop, short
Another day of rain. Like yesterday, it was only a drizzle, so it didn’t bother me. Tried to work on my breathing today. Recently I read an article about using breathing to prevent injury: Running on Air. It’s a form of rhythmic breathing, where you inhale for 3 steps and exhale for 2. The idea is that as you exhale your core destabilizes, which puts extra strain on the striking foot and that side of the body. If you trade off which foot you land on when you exhale you can distribute the strain more evenly between your left and right sides. Will it work for me? Not sure, but I’ll try it. I’d like to prevent injury and I’m interested in breathing rhythms. And thinking about and experimenting with breathing in general.
Did you know that the process of breathing in is also known as inspiration? Here’s something that I found on Merriam-Webster online:
“Inspiration has an unusual history in that its figurative sense appears to predate its literal one. It comes from the Latin inspiratus (the past participle of inspirare, “to breathe into, inspire”) and in English has had the meaning “the drawing of air into the lungs” since the middle of the 16th century. This breathing sense is still in common use among doctors, as is expiration (“the act or process of releasing air from the lungs”). However, before inspiration was used to refer to breath it had a distinctly theological meaning in English, referring to a divine influence upon a person, from a divine entity; this sense dates back to the early 14th century. The sense of inspiration often found today (“someone or something that inspires”) is considerably newer than either of these two senses, dating from the 19th century.”
Combine this with the first definition that I found when I googled “inspiration definition”: “the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative.”
I love these connections between breathing, being creatively stimulated and the sacred!