#the power of breath work

[csuitebitches]

Do you think you speak too fast/ too slow?

Here is what I learned from a speech coach.

warm up:

start this exercise by taking a deep breath and saying “aaaaah” - try to extend this to 30 seconds. Now if it doesn’t go till 30, that’s fine. Aim to work your way to that. If you can work it up to 30, go for 45/60 seconds. Do this 5 times.

next. Download an app called Metronome beats. It’s basically what singers/ musicians use for beats.

Settings: keep beats/bar as 1,

clicks/beats as 1

start at 90. It will start with a click sound and continue “beeping.”

Match your words to the beep. One beep = one word. Now slowly, increase the beat by 5 till you reach 110. Increase it at your own pace but try to spend at least 20 seconds on each number (90 for 20 seconds; 95 for 20; 100 for 20….) That’s when you stop.

either start by reading something out loud and matching the beat, or select a topic and speak freely.

do this every single day. This will help with your breath, if you’re speaking on a topic it will help you think better and improve over time. The best way to further complement this exercise is to improve your vocabulary. Try to learn 1-3 new words a day and incorporate it in your vocabulary.

This is a great tool to use when learning new languages too. You can practice your speaking skills and see how fast you can remember/ read words.

[reality-detective]

Breath Work 🤔

[flame-shadow]

Bloodsport Puppet Mantis God (and Charon) for @mantisgodsart [Attack #80]

(I did some work to this piece post-art fight, because the attack version felt unfinished but I hadn't had the time to poke at it and get it where I wanted. Below the cut are some of the iterations:

submission on art fight -> after some additions but still felt like it was missing a few things -> final

[thecatspasta]

Every now and again I think about Jon having dissociative identity disorder and I think that just needs to happen. Please he has the childhood trauma for it (Im not talking about Mr Spider I mean his grandmother and parents deaths). I fucking need this. For me specifically and noone else

[weaselle]

being a line cook is insane but people do it anyway

do you want to know the secret to why line cooks stay line cooks?

We're addicted to a certain aspect of the job. A sort of combination of Pride and Power.

See, most of what is going on in that restaurant comes down to you. If the restaurant was a dairy, you'd be the cow, everything is based on what you produce; how much, how fast, and of what quality.

And it's INSANELY hard for most people to do. It requires you to keep mental track of tons of stuff while doing complicated physical creation in a dangerous environment under intense pressure

Any line cooks reading this? let me recreate a moment most of us have had many many times

For the rest of you this will be a nice window into the line cook experience

you have a rail FULL of tickets, and the printer will NOT stop printing more.

You've got a stove FULL of stuff you're cooking, and half of it is for stuff you don't even have a ticket for, because of something on a table that already went out was wrong or missing, or a server forgot to put something on a ticket and needs it in a hurry, or...

the tickets you are working on are for tables that finished their appetizers 45 minutes ago, and it could be an hour before you even get a chance to read whatever the printer is currently printing.

You have a head FULL of stuff you're tracking: how quickly the sauce is thickening in this pan, whether the garlic is about to burn in that pan, how long before you drain the pasta in that pot before it over cooks. As soon as the thing in the oven for table 31 is 5 minutes from done you gotta put the other thing on the flat top to go with it, you're putting together Something on your board and you can't finish it because you need a refill of an ingredient from the walk-in but you can't go get it because if you leave the kitchen you'll burn the thing in the salamander. And you can't plate the thing in salamander yet because the Something you're putting together on your board is taking up all the room you had left in this disaster of a kitchen

Three people have just told you complicated changes to dishes you have to organize and keep in your head. Something like

"24 needs 3 gnocchi not 4, and 2 with no rosemary; 3 needs all 4 gnocchi to have extra rosemary, 2 with no garnish; 22 needs an extra gnocchi extra garnish no rosemary, salads are almost out you can go in 3 or 4 minutes"

The manager, assistant manager, about 8 servers, and a fuckton of people at tables are all waiting on YOU with an impatience bordering on fury.

right? sound familiar? okay that's not the moment, that's just the dinner rush on a night somewhere between bad and average.

The moment happens when, during this insanity, you reach an internal place where you become completely overwhelmed. Panic and frustration and over stimulus all rise up and wipe your brain completely clean. You can't think, you have no idea what to do, you want to run away, you want to quit, you can barely think of your own name, everything feels completely impossible.

And then. The Moment

You pull it back together.

You stop being overwhelmed, you stop panicking, you insist that it IS possible, and that you are going to do it. You decide what has to happen and you start. You clear all the clutter you can from your kitchen. You pull all your tickets as far down the rail as possible and scan through the tickets on the printer so you have an idea of how things are going to go. You write down a couple of times on tickets that you would usually keep in your head but you need the brain space. You group the tickets according to not only time but what dishes they have in common so you can do batches of things. You decide if you can just get these two things out of your way you'll be in a much better position and so you concentrate on getting those two things cooked and plated. You beg the dishwasher to grab you the thing you need from the walk-in. You call your assistant manager or manager into the kitchen and you tell them you need them to start you 8 gnocchis: 3 no rosemary one extra garnish, 4 extra rosemary two no garnish, and one normal.

Right? Okay so first of all, as you can see... The job is INSANE

and second of all. Not everybody is capable of that Moment. The moment you stare already-existing catastrophic failure in the face and tell it No. That moment.

and you have to be capable of that moment if you want to be a line cook.

Which means pretty close to zero other people in that restaurant can do what you can do.

So now let me tell you a story.

I was 19 years old. I was a line cook at an italian joint. We're slammed off our ass one night, and the manager is in the little galley kitchen with me, and he's just standing there because he isn't good enough to not be in the way if he tries to help

and he's over my should about everything, telling me to drain that more or turn the heat down on this etc.

Finally, I stop completely, look him dead in the eye, and say "Tony, i'm not cooking another thing until you leave this kitchen."

I'm 19. Ive worked here six months. Tony is twice my age and married to the owner's daughter. There is a heavy pause.

Then Tony turns around and walks out of the kitchen.

What's he going to do, send me home? Zero other people in this restaurant can do the thing that makes it a restaurant. If i go home the customers are going home too.

And that's the real reason most line cooks stay line cooks even though the job feels like a war you never win.

It's that interplay of Pride and Power. For those few hours, the restaurant is happening because of you.

That's the power.

For the other part, try pulling a cook off the line during the rush. You can't. Even if they are in the weeds. Maybe even especially if they are in the weeds.

Once i was working with a cook who, in the middle of the dinner rush, sliced is hand open - a cut both deep and wide, pouring blood. No bandage we had was going to be a solution for it.

So he popped a latex glove on that hand, triple wrapped a rubber band around his wrist to keep the blood in, washed with soap, and went right back to cooking.

Because it was the dinner rush and no one else could do the job, and he wasn't coming off that line.

30 minutes in he had to swap gloves because it had filled with blood like a water balloon and was making it hard to cook. Leaving the line was never even a question.

that's the pride

[sisterdivinium]

Now is the time to place your bets on whether or not this hyper self-indulgent doctor superion Vampire the Masquerade AU fic will or won't get to 100 handwritten pages...

[levaagrace]

In what world is this not Martin not listening nor caring that Jon is deeply upset at everything that was forced upon him, lol. In what world is this not Jon attempting to talk about his emotions so he can deal with them but instead being steamrolled into ~suppressing them~ again cause his “”anchor“” thinks it’s chill.

Enlighten me.

[lanayrutower]

this keeps me up at night btw.

[oflights]

made an incredible lasagna entirely from scratch today and it was earth-shatteringly delicious. some notes no one asked for:

roasted garlic and herb béchamel >>>> ricotta

i used meatloaf mix (beef, pork, veal) for the bolognese and it was a game changer

cooked the bolognese low and slow in the oven for just under 4 hours and it got thick and ultra-concentrated and flavorful. my mom always said a good bolognese should be spreadable, not just spoonable.

i used both shredded and sliced mozzarella. shredded for the inner layers so it would cut well without sliding around but sliced on the top for a beautiful blanket of cheese

35 minutes covered at 350, 5 minutes uncovered under the broiler to get crispy and brown on top, then i let it sit for about 15 minutes before cutting into it

i made this purposefully today because tomorrow i have to start working again; using the promise of these incredible leftovers to make it through tomorrow lol

[to-illustrate-the-stars]

thinking about them so much all the time every day (i am playing totk)

[skyland2703]

…ok so I got inspired <3

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Thesis in the tags

[reality-detective]

Humming OMMMM 🤔

[inkperch]

Just saying, a lot of Edelgard's White Clouds interactions with TWSITD are a hell of a lot more forgivable when you remember its not just an Emperor and the devil she made a deal with, it's also a deeply traumatised teenager forcing herself to continue to interact with her abusers because she's trying to convince herself that her suffering at their hands meant something.

(with a side of a very clearly displayed implication that they won't hurt her while she's useful to them-)

[symphonyofsilence]

Normalize people not wanting to be miserable anymore as a solid motivation, and not an immoral, dishonorable, weak one.

[mrhowells]

what is your favourite clois scene?

I honestly love all their interactions so much that I couldn't even decide on my top five, so I'll just talk about their opening scene in booster because I keep thinking about it and it really captures one of the main reasons I love them so much.

So they're both in transitional periods of their lives, with Clark trying to create a new persona for himself and Lois working towards a promotion, and they're just so... invested and supportive about it?? Lois is helping Clark with his body language and reassures him because he's feeling insecure but then he's like "forget about ME Lois you're up for that promotion!!!" and you can see on his face how proud and excited about it he is like, he's really her biggest cheerleader and I'm😭😭😭

They're best friends and they're in love and above all else they just genuinely want to see each other thrive and be happy and grow into the best versions of themselves and it makes me want to collapse on the floor in tears.