I've been working on a blog post, "5 Reasons I Love Being a Yogi."  It is a post that I still plan to share.  One of the reasons talks about how yoga has taught be to be a more authentic person, and because of that, I wanted to share the story of my week which also highlights why I love yoga.

Our youngest has been having a rough time since Sunday night.  Thoughout the night that night, he was coughing, crying and not sleeping at all.  He wanted to be right next to me, and even then he wasn't happy.  Monday morning, as I was putting the finishing touches on my top 5 reasons post, I had Porter in the sling snuggled up next to me.  It's not typically for my busy body 2 year old to want to hang out in the sling.

When he fell asleep, I noticed that his breathing seemed a little heavy.  We were already scheduled to visit the doctor, so I added this to my mental list of things to talk about at our appointment.

When we got to the appointment a few hours later, the doctor did not like what she saw.  Porter's respiratory rate was elevated.  The doctor immediately said, "How long has he been having trouble breathing?"  I was caught off guard.  He was having trouble breathing?  I thought he had an ear infection.  I mean, I knew that his breathing seemed a little labored, but I didn't realize he was having trouble breathing.

I found my way to my breath.  In and out.  In and out.  Over and over again.  I stayed calm and in the moment. 

I gave the doctor the information she needed to make a decision on what to do next.  She started an albuteral breathing treatment.  If you haven't been through this before, an electric pump diffuses the medicine through a face mask. Porter screamed the whole time.  The noise of the machine terrified him (he is also afraid of the vacuum cleaner, and he doesn't want to be in the same room as a vacuum even if it isn't turned on).

I knew he needed the medicine.  I found my way to my breath.  In and out.  In and out.  Over and over again.  I stayed calm and in the moment. 

I rocked him, I sang to him and I held him close.  Most importantly, I stayed calm on the inside. 

The treatment worked. His lungs cleared and his respiratory rate went down.  (It turns out that he also has an ear infection in both ears.)  We've been doing breathing treatments every 5 hours since Monday afternoon, and we have a couple more days to go.

It is extremely stressful to continually check in on your child to make sure he is breathing.  There is also huge learning curve taking place. We haven't been through this not breathing stuff before.  How much congestion is okay?  What do we look for?  How will we know if the breathing treatments stop working?  Will we notice before things get really bad?

When it's not your child that isn't breathing, it is easy to think the answers to these questions are cut and dry.  But when it is your son, so small and unable to tell you what is happening in his little two year old lungs, the answers are not cut and dry at all.  The world is filled with shades of grey, especially in the evenings when breathing difficulties are more likely to occur.

Each day, each night I find my way to my breath.  In and out.  In and out.  Over and over again.  I do my best to stay calm and in the moment. 

Please realize that I am not saying that every moment is calm.  I've sent panicked text messages to friends asking how to make sense out of pulse oxygen readings, I've sat staring at a sleeping child making sure he was breathing without difficulty, I even breathed healthily into the phone demonstrating to a friend what his breathing sounded like so she could counsel and comfort me.  I'm not saying I've got this down.  Please don't get the impression that I have been a my-sons-not-breathing-well buddha.  It's not the case.  Far from it. 

But every time we come to the mat and practice linking our breath with our movement, yoking together our body and mind, it is like putting a deposit in the "calm" bank.  When we invest the time to cultivate the connection between breath and calmness in low stress situations and non chaotic moments, we create a powerful pathway that we can intentionally follow during times of stress and confusion.  Sometimes we need to start off down that pathway over and over again in order to find our way, but we know that if we stay on the trail, it leads us back to a calm, open space.

It's a practice.  It's a discipline.  It's an investment that I am so glad that I made, and it is an investment that I will continue to make over and over again.

I have realized the gift in this situation. My son's troubled breathing has taught me more about the steadiness of my own breath.  We are all connected in beautiful and magical ways.

As I finish this post, Porter is sleeping soundly in the room next door.  He is recovering, and I am recovering.  We will keep walking forward together breathing in, breathing out.  Over and over.  Doing our best to stay calm and in the moment.

Michelle Massey Barnes is a yogi, a writer, and a deeply connected portrait photographer that loves to create images that change the way people see themselves.  If you would like to receive weekly reflections like this one right in your in box, please join the Reflections for the Mat email list by SIGNING UP HERE.