PLEASE CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE
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BREATHE Catherine L. Johnson 2016
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Call and Response: Frequency and Resonance Catherine L. Johnson 2008
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Quiet Anguish In Elgar’s Cello Concerto
http://www.npr.org/2011/07/18/120248259/quiet-anguish-in-elgars-cello-concerto
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Completed in 1919, the Cello Concerto was Edward Elgar’s
last major work for orchestra,
and his most confessional.
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In spite of fleeting moments of idyllic release,
it’s dominated by disillusionment,
by a sense of suffering
that at times cries out against life,
yet more often speaks in quiet anguish.
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Elgar had been ill,
and he was deeply depressed
by the Great War’s destruction of the world he had known.
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All of this he poured into a concerto for the cello
— not such an unlikely instrument,
considering its rich-toned yet brooding personality
and
its searing, dark timbre.
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Fragment of the manuscript of the opening of the second movement of the concerto
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I love the sound of the cello.
This instrument has the capacity to open
the most barricaded defended heart
and melt/meld the heart to serene wholeness
with its elegiac/sacred/humane sonorous “voice”.
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Edward Elgar Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85,
his last notable work,
the Cello Concerto is for the most part contemplative and elegiac.
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The first performance was a debacle
because Elgar and the performers had been deprived of adequate rehearsal time.
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The work did not achieve wide popularity until the 1960s,
when a recording by Jacqueline du Pré captivated the public imagination.
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What Happens In The Body When We’re Stressed?
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The physiological stress response is actually designed to be an asset.
It speeds the heart rate and diverts blood away
from the gut and to the muscles so we can run away.
It constricts the pupils of our eyes so we can focus on our attacker.
It dilates the bronchi of the lungs to increase blood oxygenation,
and converts energy stored in the liver into fuel for strength and stamina.
In short, it keeps us safe, says Esther Sternberg,
physician and author of several books on stress and healing.
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It’s in a part of the brain called the hypothalamus,
which makes a hormone called CRH,
or corticotropin-releasing hormone.
Sternberg says that when you are stressed,
you are bathing yourself
in a whole soup of other nerve chemicals and hormones.
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But if they hang around too long,
those same nerve chemicals and hormones
can impair the immune system.
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Eventually, stress hormones make the adrenal glands
release another hormone called cortisol.
Cortisone, which is the drug form of the hormone cortisol,
is one of the most powerful anti-inflammatory drugs available.
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“What’s happening when you’re stressed
is that your own body is giving itself
multiple shots of that anti-inflammatory hormone,
and
so that tunes down your immune system’s ability
to do its job to fight infection,” Sternberg says.
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Slow, deep breathing
actually stimulates the opposing
parasympathetic reaction
— the one that calms us down.
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“The relaxation response
is controlled by another set of nerves
— the main nerve being the Vagus nerve.
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Think of a car throttling down the highway
at 120 miles an hour.
That’s the stress response,
and
the Vagus nerve is the brake,” says Sternberg.
“When you are stressed,
you have your foot on the gas,
pedal to the floor.
When you take slow, deep breaths,
that is what is engaging the brake.”
http://www.npr.org/2010/12/06/131734718/just-breathe-body-has-a-built-in-stress-reliever
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Understanding the stress response
Chronic activation of this survival mechanism impairs health.
http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/understanding-the-stress-response
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We are almost always stronger
and
more capable than we believe ourselves to be.
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But anxiety is not rational in nature,
which means that in most cases we cannot work
through it using logic as our only tool.
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Reason can help us recognize the relative futility
of unwarranted worry
but, more often than not,
we will find more comfort in patterns of thought and activity
that redirect our attention to practical or engaging matters.
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Most of us find it remarkably difficult to focus
on two distinct thoughts or emotions at once,
and
we can use this natural human limitation to our advantage
when trying to stay centered in the period
leading up to a potentially unknown/uncertain experience.
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When we concentrate on something
unrelated to our worry
—such as deep breathing, visualizations of success,
pleasurable pursuits, or exercise
—anxiety dissipates naturally.
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Meditation is also a useful coping mechanism
as it provides us with a means
to ground ourselves in the moment.
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The intense emotional flare-up you experience just
before you are set to challenge yourself
is often a mixture of both EXCITEMENT + FEAR.
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When you take steps to eliminate the fear,
you can more fully enjoy the excitement.
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Though you may find it difficult
to avoid getting worked up,
your awareness of the forces acting on your feelings
will help you return to your CENTER
and accept that FEW hurdles you will face
will be as high as they at first appear.
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Surround
yourself with loving and kind people
whenever possible.
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http://www.quietmindcafe.com/sympathetic-breathing.html
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BREATHE Catherine L. Johnson 2016
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Call and Response: Frequency and Resonance Catherine L. Johnson 2008
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I dedicate this entry to ALL Americans.
WE ALL BREATHE THE SAME OXYGEN.
CATHERINE L. JOHNSON 