If starry space no limit knows

It just feels so incredibly wrong to try to force my breaths to be a certain length. Usually, when I've tried them, it gives me the sense that I'm not getting enough air or I'm starting to suffocate, which slowly increases the longer I do the breathing exercises, and it's a very stressful feeling.

Last time I tried doing breathing exercises to relax, my back and torso became slowly more and more and more tense and locked up and tight until my back was very painful. It was like I was clenching down with all the muscles of my body to try to make the breaths start and end when they were supposed to.

It sucks because therapists usually think "breathing exercises" are the gold standard for anxiety coping skills, and I had one therapist tell me that it was impossible that they didn't work because scientifically, you Cannot have a fear/stress response if you're doing breathing exercises. Lady, if it was that easy no one would need therapy. Also I guess I'm some kind of alien or something.

In yoga class, I think I finally "got" some of the benefits of what breathing exercises were supposed to do from paying attention to breathing in different poses and feeling how that biological cycle affects the parts of the body that are holding the pose. That isn't trying to control the breathing though.

Also, it's engaging the whole body: trying to focus on my breathing while not doing anything else I think causes that tension to build in my muscles.

I'm just thinking like. I notice that my breaths become faster and shallower when I'm stressed or afraid, but when I try to force myself to breathe slowly, it's like my body is wrestling against me.

I think it's much easier and less pain- and panic-inducing to do breathing exercises when I'm already calm?

what do you mean breathing exercises arent supposed to make you feel out of breath???? what???

also why the fuck did i need to be told the feel better exercise is supposed to make me. feel better? what went wrong here. genuinely asking.

There's a few reasons why breath control is considered a gold standard in calming people down: 1) requires no additional tools or outside intervention, 2) a practice prevalent in many cultures and thus something most patients are already familiar with the idea, and 3) a solidly-proven and well-researched quickest method to regain homeostasis.

It is not supposed to make you feel worse, emotionally or physically, because it's acting directly upon your nervous system to change feedback patterns - I'm going to link as reference the following Wikipedia articles for anyone to read at their leisure:

Conscious breathing

Control of ventilation

Hyperventilation syndrome

I have no idea what anyone is telling a patient to make this literally painful for them, but you're supposed to slowly ease into a completely controlled state of breathing - not a single person is able to go from panicking to calm by ordering themselves to do so, regardless of general mental health. If that were the case then it would not be a state of panic.

Secondly, sometimes therapists are far too by the book, and I'm not sure if it's been recommending to purposefully tense your muscles from head to toe before attempting to regulate your breathing. This helps some people but does not help others; try it out and see if it helps you, because then at least you'll know.

okay. pausing in typing this to sit up straight and do the breathing exercise thing for a few cycles so I can vividly describe what happens.

Breathing in deeply feels like I'm filling up my lungs too much, like I'm trying to engage the wall of my abdomen to get my breath to deepen but it feels wrong. I'm trying to feel that expansion in my stomach, but it just does not feel right. Sometimes there's a "locking up" that happens in my shoulders here.

Holding my breath is just against what my body instinctively wants to do. I feel myself tense up trying to stop from breathing out too soon, and sometimes there's this kind of locking-up feeling in my throat and it's like I almost swallow air trying to stop the exhale from happening. I keep accidentally skipping the hold breath part because the urge to exhale is too strong.

Breathing out for longer than my inhale makes me feel like I'm just trying to wheeze air out of my already airless lungs at the tail end of the breath, which also tenses up my body. It feels wrong to try to empty out all the air from my lungs to that extent, and there's kind of a "gulping" feeling or a spasm in my throat. Like I'm trying to actually flatten all the air out of my chest.

Then of course it seems like the problem is I need to exhale more slowly, but trying to control the length of my breaths more consciously makes the muscles of my back, stomach, ribs etc. lock up because I'm trying to stop it from going too fast and my whole body tenses.

Like, at every part it feels like I'm fighting and wrestling with my body against what it wants to do, and it increases more and more because it feels like I'm not even absorbing oxygen from my breath, like my brain has this panicked feeling of "not enough air" and I have this increasing, reflex-like urge to gasp that I also have to fight against.

You're not required to do a longer exhale, if I'm being really honest - the goal is to extend the length of your inhales (and not even necessarily breathing deeply, just regularly and more smoothly).

Speaking partly from research and partly from personal experience, you can experiment a bit and see what helps you best. Some inhale-hold-exhale patterns that I've seen helping people are 7-5-4 (i.e. seven seconds inhale, five seconds hold, four seconds exhale), or 4-5-4, or similar ratios.

Personally, sometimes doing a long exhale as a start is often more helpful, because it's a good way to trick the brain, but any method works so long as you're slowly increasing how long it takes you to inhale (this is the main part of it). However long that takes you to accomplish, that's how long it takes.

If it hurts to immediately do a large inhale, then uh. Don't do that? You don't have to? If someone's telling you to, they might be more concerned with following their education than looking at the person in front of them.

One thing I would say is that you don't have to correspondingly increase how long you hold your breath with how long it takes you to inhale. A rhythm of, for example, 2-1-3 can be good to start off with, but only if you find it helpful.

Theorems of a Ghost

Fic summary:

It was a wonderful, terrible thing: Rodney McKay learned.

Chapter 3: Wool and Water

Chapter summary:

I'm pretty sure, as far as humans go I am a hard, hard pill to swallow And I know I'm not your intended dose We're goin' low, low, low, low - The Kintsugi Kid (Ten Years) by Fall Out Boy, Album: So Much (For) Stardust, 2023

Read here

瓷器 Porcelain （unesco）

✏️Porcelain is a material made from well-chosen porcelain clay or pottery stone through technological processes like proportioning, molding, drying and firing. Although porcelain developed from pottery, the two are different in raw material, glaze and firing temperature; compared with pottery, porcelain has tougher texture, more transparent body and finer luster. It excels pottery in both pragmatic and artistic terms. That's why it gradually replaced pottery in the ceramic history. It is called china in English because it was first made in China, which fully explains that the delicate porcelain can be the representative of China.

Porcelain is the creative fruit of the working people of ancient China. Since the Han and Tang Dynasties, porcelain has been exported worldwide. It promotes economic and cultural exchange between China and the outside world, and profoundly influences the traditional culture and lifestyle of people from other countries.

①Blue and white porcelain 📷小秦kewpie

②📷中国民族文化数字文库项目

③📷遇见文物

④📷小浓仓

⑤📷花若释

Lucun Zhicheng Hall 卢村志诚堂

A ‘Provincial Protected Site’ that is located in Lucun Village, Anhui Province, Zhicheng Hall was begun by Lu Bangxie during the Daoguang period (1821 to 1850) of the Qing Dynasty and took approximately seven years to complete. It served as the residence of his principal wife and first concubine.

The building faces south and is built beside a river. It is a two-courtyard, two-story, three-room structure. The wood carvings throughout the doors, windows, beams, and rafters are worth appreciating at a leisurely pace.

Chinese furniture refers to a long tradition of woodworking that reached its artistic peak during the Ming Dynasty. Celebrated for its elegant proportions, refined craftsmanship, and ingenious joinery, many surviving examples remain both functional and structurally sound after several centuries.

Instead of nails or glue, craftsmen relied on intricate mortise-and-tenon joints (榫卯) that locked wooden components together with remarkable precision. This method allowed furniture to expand and contract naturally while maintaining exceptional strength and durability.

Furniture was commonly crafted from prized hardwoods such as huanghuali, zitan, and jichimu. Rather than covering the wood with elaborate ornamentation, artisans often emphasized graceful silhouettes and the natural beauty of the timber’s grain.

Traditional Chinese furniture encompasses many forms—including horseshoe-back chairs (圈椅), official’s hat chairs (官帽椅), scholar’s desks, altar tables, cabinets, and daybeds—each designed for particular domestic, ceremonial, or scholarly settings.

Xoxo

-Designer

the myth is roughly that the sumerian storm god iškur is kidnapped to the underworld while inspecting canals, and after his father Enlil conveyes a divine council, only Fox is prepared to retrieve him. foxy shenanigans ensue with the food of the dead, resulting in iškur's return and the restoration of the land.

this was just the beginning of the harassment, though. CC additionally used her friend heidi, a lawyer, to send cease & desist letters and other forms of legal harassment against ppl. none of it would hold up in court and these sort of things weren't even heidi's area of expertise as a lawyer, but it still happened.

CC was such a terrible serial harasser that people started to leave her alone about the plagiarism stuff after a while because it was just not worth her blowing up your entire spot. not just with her lawyer, but with her minions who harassed targets on her behalf. getting a deluge of harassment is a horrible experience that hurts people, so of course people tried to avoid it.

i hate CC because she hurt lots of people. she did it intentionally, repeatedly, and with singular focus on covering her own ass no matter who she hurt.

this was just the beginning of the harassment, though. CC additionally used her friend heidi, a lawyer, to send cease & desist letters and other forms of legal harassment against ppl. none of it would hold up in court and these sort of things weren't even heidi's area of expertise as a lawyer, but it still happened.

CC was such a terrible serial harasser that people started to leave her alone about the plagiarism stuff after a while because it was just not worth her blowing up your entire spot. not just with her lawyer, but with her minions who harassed targets on her behalf. getting a deluge of harassment is a horrible experience that hurts people, so of course people tried to avoid it.

i hate CC because she hurt lots of people. she did it intentionally, repeatedly, and with singular focus on covering her own ass no matter who she hurt.

YOU - "Stop being a b--"

REACTION SPEED [Challenging: Success] - Wait a minute.

DRAMA - Sire, the word you're about to use is historically feminine! Applying it to your transgender child is tantamount to misgendering him.

1. [Suggestion - Legendary 14] Think of a masculine equivalent to "bitch."