A Guest Post by Gay Yellen

Is life stressing you out? Take a breath and relax. Or so we’re told. Some days, it’s not so simple.

I’ve learned how to breathe four times in my life. Once, with that first, lifegiving gasp. The second time, when I was five and learning how to swim. Third time, in acting class, with lessons on voice projection and breath control.

The most important breathing lesson came a decade later. As a young adult I was introduced to biofeedback, a kind of visualization technique used to control some of our body functions like heart rate, breath, muscle response, and brain waves. It can help relax muscles, decrease heart rate, and slow and deepen breathing. It has been clinically proven to help with a myriad of ailments.

I was skeptical, but after other treatments for chronic pain failed me, I was a prime candidate for the training. They hooked me up to monitors to measure my progress.

The first lesson focused on how to exhale. “Empty your lungs as much as you can,” they said. Then the task was to passively allow air to refill my lungs, which was harder than it sounds when you’re stressed. Concentrating on lowering the numbers on the body function indicators took a lot of practice, but eventually, I succeeded.

In the last session, they prompted me to recall a place where I’d felt peaceful in the past. I tried and rejected a few lovely memories (mountain hikes, sailing, whale watching) before I landed on one that stuck. Eyes shut, I was told to put myself there and try to re-experience the sounds, smells, and quality of light in that place. And breathe the new way.

Whether consciously or subconsciously, fiction writers can’t help but mine parts of our personal lives when we create a story. I had always planned to adapt a frightening experience from my life to become the inciting incident in The Body in the News, the latest release in my Samantha Newman Mystery Series. Later on, another real-life experience popped in unexpectedly.

After her colleague at the TV station is killed, Sam is threatened, too, and she’s at her wit’s end. A friend recommends a “healer” of sorts to help her relax. Though she’s skeptical, Sam learns a new way to breathe and eventually manages to visualize her own peaceful place. Whether or not it saves her in the end is… Oops, no spoilers here!

The biofeedback training worked for me. Even now, when I’m stressed, I can shut my eyes and return to the deserted tropical island in my memory. I can still climb into that one lone shade tree, listen to the gentle waves, and observe how the sunlight dapples its way through the leaves as the sea breeze fills my lungs and caresses my skin.

Many of us could use a workable relaxation technique as we navigate what promises to be another stressful year. Here’s hoping you can find your own inner peace in 2024.

What helps you relax when life gets crazy? Please share your thoughts in the Comments below, and you could win a free e-book from the series!

About the Samantha Newman Series: All Samantha Newman wants is a good job, a place to call her own, and a chance at love. But in her rollercoaster life, things don’t come easy. Just when success seems possible, a dead body shows up and Samantha is in the hot seat. If she didn’t have a sense of humor, she’d really go crazy. Her story in the award-winning Samantha Newman Mysteries will make you smile and perhaps even shed a tear as she wades through minefields in search of the life she wants to live.

About the Author: Gay Yellen was a working actress before she moved behind the camera to become Assistant to the Director of Production at the American Film Institute (AFI). She later shifted to writing for a living and became a magazine editor and national journalism award winner. Gay was also the contributing book editor for the international thriller, Five Minutes to Midnight (Delacorte), which was a New York Times “Notable.” Gay lives in Texas. She loves connecting with book clubs and community groups in person and online. You can read more about her on Facebook, BookBub, or X, and contact her through her website, Gay Yellen.com.

Photo credit: the guest author provided the photo from a royalty-free site.