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How this came about, I don’t know really, and though it works for me it may not work for anyone else, and though it has worked for me now a number of times over the past few months, it may not work for me in the future. But it has worked for me every time I’ve done it…for now.

Big revelation. Here it is. I’m only sorry I can’t describe exactly how I do it. But I realized through yoga how to stop hiccups. At least those which belong to me.

I’m one of those people who when they get hiccups, nothing ever works for getting rid of them, that is until many years ago I read about taking a sip of water and standing on your head and swallowing. I tried this and it worked for me. Usually I’d have to take several sips of water but it would work for me much of the time, though not always.

Sipping water while inverted is not always practical or possible though, is it?

Several months ago, I got the hiccups, and via the yoga and some of the postures in which the concentration is on the palate, somehow I simply knew that if I concentrated on my palate and sucked up and back from inside/above it, while at the same time drawing the muscles at the back of my throat down, then the hiccups would probably stop. I knew it was different from taking a sip of water and standing on your head but it was somehow the same. So, I did this and it worked, the hiccups immediately stopped.

Would it work the next time? It did. And the next. Every time now I get the hiccups, I do this, and they stop immediately…except for once when I had to do this brief procedure three times before they stopped.

H.o.p. gets the hiccups, usually at bedtime. He doesn’t want to sleep, is excited and laughing and the next thing he knows he has the hiccups.

The other night he got the hiccups. I told him, “Try this. Suck up on your palate and pull the muscles at the back of your throat down at the same time.”

Now, H.o.p. had just heard me describe to his dad how I do this and how it works for me.

He hiccuped, “I can’t! I don’t do yoga!”

He was adamant on that last point. H.o.p. has it in his mind, somehow, that yoga is for girls. Never mind that I’ve got a couple of books showing Iyengar in the postures, as far as H.o.p. is concerned, his mom rolls out a mat and does yoga and therefore it is for moms and girls. I know this because he’s told me, “Yoga is for girls!” Sometimes he’s nice about me doing my yoga (which I practice in the living room as it’s the only place in our apartment where I’ve room to roll out the mat) and will be respectful of it, and sometimes he’s even helpful, and then a lot of the time he likes to sneak up behind me when I’m in a difficult posture and grab me and give me a bear hug and yell, “I love you!” and grin while waiting to see if I fall over.

“This isn’t yoga,” I assured him. “Just try. Suck up on your palate and pull the muscles at the back of your throat down. It has to be at the same time.”

“I can’t!” he hiccuped. “I don’t do yoga!”

“Just try.”

He tried. “I can’t do it!” he complained vigorously. “I really can’t do it! I can’t! I don’t know how! I told you, I don’t do yoga!!!! Aren’t you listening to me?”

I said, “Do you still have the hiccups?”

H.o.p. stopped and reflected, surveyed his body. “No,” he said.

He didn’t. But I’d observed he didn’t have them any longer or else I wouldn’t have asked.

He looked at me as if I was somehow suddenly beyond his ken. A mystery of a person who could work strange feats of magic.

“OK, now go to sleep,” I said, and as I stood and left the room he didn’t say a word. For the first time in his eleven years (and probably the last) there was no complaint about having to sleep. No outcry.

He had been awed, for once, by mom.

This will never work again, of course.

* * * * *

P.S. I figured why not look this up on the internet and see if someone else has written about the same experience. I find a woman named Kris keeps a yoga blog and she has a post in which she discusses her discovery that Jalandhara bandha (the throat lock), perhaps through stimulation of the vagus nerve, gets rid of hiccups after a few breaths. I compared the procedure I described above with Jalandhara bandha and I think it is, in effect, the same thing.

Interesting that even being a yoga neophyte, through your practice you can intuit bandhas you had no idea existed. And makes sense as well.

If you think about it many cures for hiccups, such as eating a big spoonful of peanut butter, sipping water through a paper towel or washcloth, applying sugar to the back of the throat, are ways of attempting to a throat lock.