I met an old friend for lunch a while ago. He observed that I was initially tense and weary, but that I then visibly relaxed over the course of the conversation. Particularly he noticed that I would do these big sighs. I thought about it again when hanging out with my 5-month-old son, who does his own big sighs all the time. I recently gave my wife a massage, and noticed afterwards that she kept yawning repeatedly. And I find myself thinking about phrases people use like “load off my shoulders/chest”. I feel like all of these are related phenomena. There’s something about patterns of tension and knottedness that are intertwingled across body and mind. We tense our bodies up when we’re stressed or worried, as if to protect ourselves from being physically attacked. I love this phrase from Christopher Alexander: the “sleepy, awkward grace which comes from perfect ease”.

^ the above was a snippet from a draft of an essay that didn’t go anywhere, but I’m publishing it because I get the sense that I’m going to be referencing sighs more often