orange you glad...?

For the first half of my massage therapy session last night I was asked to concentrate on the colour orange. Orange is supposed to relate to creativity and ideas, and they are things I have never really had a problem with - I have hundreds of ideas, just not enough focus or drive to put the majority of them into action.

I have always found orange the easiest colour on which to focus and be absorbed by, and for the most part my orange-imagining was easy enough... until I started thinking about Ariel, the Little Mermaid.

Oh dear, that was enough to distract an already pretty distractable girl from the task at hand. My breathing went all wonky as I tried to get images of Ariel's beautiful orange hair and greeny-blue tail out of my head, but it was hard. So I gave up and just let my mind wander, imagining orange and azure things. I got my breathing almost back to normal, but yet again my thoughts had turned to mermaids.

No unicorns this time, but hey, mermaids are still pretty good.

{cinnamon and azure treasury}

breathing in the blue

Last week I had another session with my holistic therapist. I haven't been doing great lately - I'm finding I have no problems at all with creativity and inspiration (in fact the ideas just keep on coming, yay!) but I'm still finding it hard to get motivated and I'm certainly going through a bit of communication crisis at the moment, whereby I'm finding I can't actually do it.

Ever since that stupid anxiety attack I've become very wary of my breathing, in particular how shallow it seems, and how much effort it is to actually take in a long deep breath. Post A&E I went to see my nurse (she is Irish and awesome) to have a breathing test but she said although my breathing wasn't great, I wasn't asthmatic. That's good at least. It does, however, mean that I have to go back to the hospital for another chest x-ray, as neither of us can work out why my breathing is suddenly such an issue.

Be, Do, Breathe by satchelandsage

Since I have a tendency to worry, I wouldn't be surprised if it's totally anxiety-related, as in, I'm not breathing properly because I'm scared that I won't be able to breathe again and I'm over-analysing my breathing, making it seem like there's a problem when actually it's probably fine. I would hate to go to the hospital and waste their time if there's nothing wrong with my little lungs and it's all actually psychological, but I guess it's better to be safe than sorry.

In my session we talked about the breathing issues, and I tried some deep breathing exercises before getting on to the main part of the session. I was asked to concentrate on the colour blue as it is associated with the throat and with communication. I had to imagine being surrounded by absolute blue-ness and let myself be absorbed into it and enveloped by it, letting it fill my lungs and chest. It didn't take long to start breathing blue into my system, and to be totally taken over by it.

It was probably the most relaxed I have ever felt, and it was easy for me to focus on the correct colour, for once - I imagined a shimmering, opalescent sea with mermaids frolicking in the waves and on nearby rocks. It was incredibly exhilarating and yet also incredibly serene, and as the session was drawing to a close I didn't want to leave this little paradise I had created for myself, I wanted to stay and make friends with the mermaids.

Sea Friends by Andrea Gutierrez