Recently, I have been practicing a breathing exercise that I invented (or if not that – because it’s rare to truly invent anything these days – then, I can promise I genuinely have never heard anyone else talk of it).
When I’m lying in bed and trying to calm myself down, completely, utterly, so that my mind and body are both blissfully still, I breathe my way through the alphabet.
Breathe in – I say “A” in my mind.
Breathe out – I say “B”.
In – “C”.
Out – “D”.
I try to make each letter-breath as long and slow as possible.
I read somewhere that you should be aiming for 10 breaths a minute to be considered “relaxed”. That’s 6 seconds a breath. To be honest – it’s quite hard to breathe that slowly – at first. The more nights you work your way through the alphabet, the slower you really do get.
That said, when I do the breathing exercise, I DON’T count – I just breathe naturally – as slowly as possible, but in a way that’s not uptight about maintaining a particular pace. And, to be honest; I’m too busy remembering what letter I am up to – throwing numbers into the mix would just mess me up!
If it sounds weird that someone can’t keep track of a basic letter sequence, then you haven’t noticed how busy your brain is… or you’re blessed to have a calmer mind than me!
For me, I often only get as far as E or F and my mind is interrupting with “that was a strange noise… why can I never think of a clever comeback in the moment… did I turn off the kitchen light… I wonder where my high-school nemesis is today… oops, I forgot to remind my daughter to set her alarm… what was that lady’s name at the school today?”
When that happens, I have a choice: pick up where I left off (if I’m confident I know what letter I got to) OR start again at the beginning and go back to the letter A.
There are some nights when I have to go all the way back to the beginning a couple of times. I start to feel like I might be in one of those movie-time-loop plots… think “Edge of Tomorrow” (2014) or “Groundhog Day” (1993).
More often than not, I make it to the end of the alphabet and have to start again. Which is OK. It’s good. It’s part of boring yourself to sleep with the banal predictability of a mental routine on repeat (I’ve mentioned it before here).
Interestingly – after doing it so many nights in a row, I rarely make it all the way through to the end of the alphabet that second time. I wake up the next morning (or (occasionally) in the middle of the night) and can’t remember getting to Z. At some point, travelling along the alphabet-highway, I fell asleep!
Sometimes, I spice things up a little bit and work from Z to A.
I DON’T recommend this approach unless you know how to say the alphabet backwards; it will just make your brain have to work too hard at the exact same time you’re trying to rest.
The story of how I learnt to say the alphabet backwards is a weird one.
When I was about 12 years old, my two younger sisters and I were put on a train to travel out to see our Nana. For some reason, we did not have a parent with us, but it was the sort of train that went from A to B with only one or two stops along the 1-hour passage. Provided we stayed in our seat, and stuck together, we would arrive at our destination which was also the last stop of the train – there was no chance of getting lost along the way.
[It makes me a little queasy thinking about it now. I don’t think I would let my daughters travel so far as pre-teens without supervision. I trust them to be sensible… I just don’t trust everyone else in the world to leave them alone. But times were different back then, and perhaps I’m being overly-protective, and Gen Z are now paying the price for Gen X wrapping them in cottonwool rather than letting them take acceptable risks… but… even in the face of being branded super-overly-protective, I just don’t think there were as many problems with substance abuse and mental illness as there is now.]
Anyway – back to the train trip of my youth. My sisters and I all got seated, my mother kissed us goodbye and departed the train, waving farewell from the platform. Off we went. At the next stop, an old man sat on the bench seat facing us and struck up a conversation. My sisters and I were all politely doing our best to navigate the tricky spot we found ourselves in – trapped between two competing hard and fast rules: “don’t talk to strangers” and “respect your elders”.
Luckily enough, absolutely nothing bad happened to us on that train trip. He was just a kind old man (who, for all I know, was feeling protective of us and stayed close to keep us safe). I couldn’t tell you one word of the general chit-chat that took place, I just know that it was nothing out of the ordinary.
What I do remember EXACTLY is how he encouraged us to pass the time: he taught us a sing-song way to say the alphabet backwards (including the word ‘and’ to keep the rhythm right):
ZYX
WV
UTS
and
RQP
ONM
LKJ
IHG
FED
CBA
Learnt in chunks and repeated over and over for an hour, I was able to do it all by myself by the time I got off the train and met my Nana. Trained on a train! And now – 40 years later – I can STILL say the alphabet backwards without thinking.
Most nights I breathe through my ABCs, but sometimes, when my mind is extra-busy and reluctant to slow down, I switch it out and breathe backwards, going from ZYX to CBA.
Try it.
Forwards, backwards, by spelling out words that are meaningful to you – OR – using any of the activities on my better breathing post (here). Remember, as with so many things mindful, there’s no “mindfulness police“, no right or wrong, just intentional slow breathing.
Good luck, stay rested, and
Take care taking care, Linda xx
The Mindful Migraine 
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