You have the hiccups. What do you do? Think about this for a second. Odds are, you came to an answer to this question rather quickly. Have you ever stopped and wondered why that works?

          Now, I don’t know what it is about my particular configuration of a body, but I get the hiccups a lot. Some people I know only get the hiccups once a month or less, but I get them at least once a week, if not more. I’m almost guaranteed to get them at least two more times after the initial attack, as well. Hiccups are a rough experience for me. Simply put, I hate them. But after time and time of getting them, I started to pay attention to what, exactly, they felt like.

          Hiccups are a result of irregular contractions of the diaphragm. When the diaphragm contracts normally, it makes the thoracic cavity larger, and the increase in size creates a suction which helps the lungs draw in air. So, spasms in the diaphragm cause you to breathe in without warning or rhythm, and thus, the hiccups! This is why doing things like holding your breath or drinking water can help get rid of the hiccups, because what you’re really trying to do is make your diaphragm chill out, scientifically speaking and all. I can’t remember when I learned the thing about diaphragms, but I’ve used it to a create a nigh-infallible system for getting rid of hiccups, while at the same time unintentionally becoming keenly aware of what breathing feels like, bodily.

          I don’t just mean that I know what it feels like to breathe in — although I could if I wanted to be really abstract — but more that I feel the hiccups in a very embodied way. I can’t think of exactly how to describe it, but I can feel the difference in the way my body is taking in and drawing out air when I have the hiccups. There are little, almost entirely undetectable changes in my breathing pattern when they’re there, and of course all of this is separate from the actual hiccup itself. If I don’t focus on it too hard, hiccups feel like random, intrusive bursts of inhalation, but if I concentrate on my body, I can feel the resonances in my lungs as they react to my upset diaphragm, in which tension draws tighter and tighter until, finally, hiccup!

          It’s with this that I’ve developed a nearly ten-for-ten way of getting rid of the hiccups. Stop moving, relax the body, focus on the body, breathe in through the belly, deep as possible, hold, hold, hold, breathe out, slow as possible, out, out, out, listen, listen, gone! It’s the listening and the relaxing that are really the most important parts, as nothing else works without those two complete. I can’t get rid of the hiccups if I’m walking, or if I’m talking to someone else, or if I’m even listening to a song. All of my attention has to be on my body, or else no matter what I do, I won’t stop hiccuping. I don’t think holding my breath for a certain amount of time or taking the right kind of deep breaths do the trick on their own. When I’m especially lucky, I don’t have to hold my breath at all. Just listen and breathe slowly, and the hiccups are gone.

          I hate the hiccups, but I’d be wrong to say that having them as frequently as I do hasn’t somehow allowed me to understand my body in a way that is truly embodied, and not merely the result of reading about it in a textbook. For that, I suppose I am grateful, and even lucky. But I still hate the hiccups.