Teacher Self-Care- The Power of the Hush
In the short months of pregnancy, my yoga practice descended from a downward dog to a dead dog. After countless vials of blood, comical birth classes, and debunked parenting wisdom, I have successfully kept a small human alive for over eight months. I didn’t want to be a mother. Unsettling images of parentage flooded my imagination as I imagined the abrupt and vapid shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh of a young mother in the bookstore and the continual stream of hushing mothers adorning baggy sweatpants, hoodie, and sloppy ponytail poking through a baseball cap that can haggardly be found in the lines of my local Target Starbucks, awaiting their next responsible fix. But that hush with flared nostrils and vibrating lips is what has given me the literal life to continue in motherhood…and all of life.
Desperate at 3:34 AM, I gave hushing a try. Most folks in child development will tell you that a gentle hush emulates the gentle flowing sounds of the mother’s body. When hushing, you are calming a child with the gentle, familiar, and rushing sounds of the last nine months. Child development expert and writer of the best-seller book “The Happiest Baby on the Block”, Dr. Harvey Karp points out, “Imagine what it’s like for a newborn to leave the raucous environment of the womb — complete with constant noise and motion — and enter a world of whispers, tiptoeing, and silence.” But the gentle hush that emulates prenatal circulatory and digestive rhythms actually has far-reaching benefits for the mother.
What more is a hush than an extended yoga breath? For a moment in time, however long the hush may be, there is an awareness of one’s own breath — a welcome distraction from the perplexity of a bundle of joy that has suddenly become a milk-guzzling, flopping fish. There is a break in the input of the exterior world as the breath and sound of sssssshhh as the tongue turns upward into the front roof of the mouth. What is more, there is a stabilization of anxiety and blood pressurization. Dr. Richard Brown at Columbia University points out in the “Healing Power of the Breath”: “By changing the patterns of breathing it is possible to restore balance to stress hormones, calm an agitated mind, relieve symptoms of anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), improve physical strength and endurance, elevate performance, and enhance relationships”. Conscious and controlled breathing can help regulate the sympathetic system which regulates stress hormones like cortisol. Although a hush may seem like the base reflex of a tired parent, it is nature’s form of controlled breathing. Its essence is pranayama which has been used for centuries to promote longevity and health.
I gave my son breath, but a hush made me learn to breathe peace into chaos. As an urban educator surrounded by trauma and community violence, I have carried this breath into my classroom. The gentle hush in a chaotic school day isn’t for my students — it’s for me. I have carried this breath into my struggles with OCD. When I hush and control my breathing, my brain is able to turn off thoughts and focus and be still in the moment of my breath. While the next school year is filled with unknowns, one thing I do know is that slowing down to breathe will help me handle those challenges with the peace and clarity of a hush.
