anxiety

Breath-Body-Mind Integration: For Breathlessness, Anxiety and Total Pain

6 Oct 2017, Oxford Our collaborator and blog contributor Kate Binnie will be running a workshop for healthcare professionals and therapists of all disciplines and in all settings who work with people experiencing hard-to-reach symptoms in supportive and palliative care. This course will cover Explain how working with the breath and body affects the emotions & down-regulates symptoms Show how BBMI can help with hard-to-reach symptoms in … Read more…

The Restricto-Box: Research without Borders

22nd May 20176th July 2017 by Life of Breath

Life of Breath PhD student Tina Williams writes: The 2017 Research Without Borders Festival showcase exhibition ran at Bristol’s Colston Hall on May 12th. I, along with ninety-nine other research students, took part in this engaging research exhibition, with the aim … Read more…

Breathless in Bristol (3)

22nd April 20176th July 2017 by Life of Breath

Please note that audio files of all the talks given at this conference will be available shortly. Life of Breath PhD student Tina Williams writes: On the 16th and 17th March, The University of Bristol hosted a conference on phenomenology, anxiety … Read more…

It Felt Like Drowning

3rd April 201711th July 2017 by Life of Breath

The header image shows ‘In the same breath’, a 2008 artwork by artist and glass-blower Kate Williams (borosilicate glass / 40 x 125 x 40 cm / courtesy of the artist / Photo © Yiannis Katsaris. See Kate Williams’s website … Read more…

Phenomenology, anxiety and breath

16-17 March 2016, Bristol This two-day conference will include papers on Thursday from Dylan Trigg (‘The phenomenology of anxiety’), Michael Lewis (‘Breath in the history of philosophy’), Tina Williams (‘Twenty years too soon: Anxiety in theory and practice’), Magdalena Górska (‘Ambivalences: Political Significance of Anxious Breathing’) … Read more…

A phenomenology of illness, part 2

16th January 201715th February 2017 by Life of Breath

Following on from part 1, Life of Breath PI Havi Carel writes: What is breathlessness? This is a seemingly simple question. Why, it’s the well-known experience of panting, perhaps getting hot and sweaty, maybe a heaving of the chest, or … Read more…

A Painful Silence: bringing domestic violence into conversation

4th January 201710th April 2017 by Life of Breath

The header image shows a representation of the three wise monkeys, see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil. A parody of these monkeys (each with a different injury, bandaged or in a cast) can be found in … Read more…

Restoring Breath: Questions, medical advancements and the importance of bystander participation

1st December 201615th February 2017 by Life of Breath

Tina Williams, PhD student on the Life of Breath project, writes a post prompted by the inaugural lecture of Prof. Jerry Nolan (audio recording now available), Honorary Professor of Resuscitation Medicine in the School of Clinical Sciences, University of Bristol: Loss. … Read more…

Breath: the conductor of the body-mind orchestra

19th July 201615th February 2017 by Life of Breath

Kate Binnie, yoga teacher and music therapist, writes: We’ve all experienced the shortness of breath associated with fear, nerves, anger and distress. Think of a tired little boy dropping his Mr. Whippy on the sand after a long hot day … Read more…

The First and Last Breath: reflections from palliative & neonatal care

21st June 201620th July 2017 by Life of Breath

Kate Binnie, yoga teacher and music therapist, writes: In his brilliant book Being Mortal (2015) Atul Gawande calls for all healthcare professionals working with patients at the end of life to “help people to end their stories on their own … Read more…

Every Last Breath (2)

26th May 201615th February 2017 by Life of Breath

In an essay that first appeared in Atrium: The Report of the Northwestern Medical Humanities & Bioethics Program (Spring 2011, p. 6), professor of English Joanne Jacobson writes: My accounts, which I can swear to have kept faithfully, I have, indeed, … Read more…

The philosophical role of illness – and how it can teach us to live reflectively

6th April 201615th February 2017 by Life of Breath

Principle Investigator on the Life of Breath and professor of philosophy Havi Carel will be giving her inaugural lecture on ‘The philosophical role of illness’ on April 11th. She writes: Serious illness is a great calamity. It is unwelcome, violent, frightening … Read more…

Singing for Breathing

10th March 201611th June 2017 by Life of Breath

Vocal coach, community choir and workshop leader and music therapist Phoene Cave writes: In 2008 I answered an advertisement for a singing teacher at Royal Brompton Hospital in London. The original idea was inspired by Bronchial Boogie in Oldham, to … Read more…

With bated breath: diagnosis of respiratory illness

10th December 201520th January 2016 by Life of Breath

In this essay, senior investigator Havi Carel recounts her experience of being diagnosed with a rare respiratory condition as a starting point for considering how waiting for and receiving a medical diagnosis affects people’s lives. After perhaps a prolonged period … Read more…

‘I need security to survive’

28th October 201515th February 2017 by Life of Breath

Kate Binnie, yoga teacher and music therapist, shares a memory of a hospice patient: Paula wakes early every day and spends time in bed, praying. “I’m a good Catholic girl” she wheezes up at me from her chair, grinning naughtily. … Read more…

Making the invisible visible (1)

7th August 201515th February 2017 by Jess Farr-Cox

Sarah McLusky, Project Manager (Durham) writes: What is breath? We all know what it feels like. We can perceive the rise and fall of the chest, the air moving in and out of our lungs, but unless it’s a frosty … Read more…

Portrait Therapy for Life Support?

25th April 201523rd May 2016 by Jess Farr-Cox

Susan M D Carr, art therapist at the Prospect Hospice and PhD Student at Loughborough University, writes: I was in a CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) training session the other day, about to assist a ‘collapsed person’ in the form of a … Read more…

Signal failure? Thinking outside the lung

17th March 201519th May 2016 by Jess Farr-Cox

Physiotherapist and Bradcliff practitioner Pip Windsor writes: How can a symptom of chronic over-breathing be a feeling of lack of air? How can the answer to the feeling of air ‘hunger’ be to breathe less? Our body will usually give some useful … Read more…

‘To breathe is all that is required’

24th February 201519th May 2016 by Jess Farr-Cox

Knowledge Exchange Facilitator (Humanities) Cleo Hanaway-Oakley at the University of Oxford writes: Cry, inspire, expire, and cry. This single short sentence provides a synopsis of Samuel Beckett’s play, Breath (1969). The full play script – which is, in its entirety, a mere … Read more…

‘An ongoing presence’

9th January 201515th February 2017 by Jess Farr-Cox

Newly-appointed PhD student on the Life of Breath project Tina Williams writes: The patient experiences her illness from within, as a transforming experience impacting all dimensions of life […] She does not compartmentalise the disease, nor does she understand it … Read more…