Your breath ~ whisper it!

Dear Yoga Friends, 

Breath-work is everywhere! It seems that science is catching up with yoga in so many ways and how we breathe is being explored amongst many modalities, not least as a tool to calm the nervous system and help us live our lives with ease and vitality. However, the suggestions we hear about how we should be breathing can be a bit noisy and confusing, with mixed messages and hyperbolic claims. 

There is no doubt how we breathe has a profound impact on how we are in general, and how we move through life, but really, should it all involve such hard work?!

I like to call it breath-play. In learning about what are the unhelpful patterns of breathing we may have accumulated in life, we can learn how to un-do those patterns to restore a relaxed breath that is easy and efficient. Like yoga, like meditation, a lot of the practice is not about acquiring new tricks or skills, but rather it’s about letting go of the habits we have had in our lives that can keep us stuck. Your own natural breath should feel comfortable and familiar. This might take a little while to discover if you’ve been breathing in a tense, rushed way, which many of us have a tendency to do. I invite you to be patient, be playful, and be curious. 

In yoga we get curious about the breath, we get playful with it, we discover something about ourselves, and we learn how to choose wiser courses of action. The goal is to live a life of ease and peace, regardless of the external circumstances. And, let’s face it, external circumstances can be challenging to say the least. Do you know they say it’s impossible to be a functioning human in today’s world and not be stressed. No wonder we can be breathing away every day and doing it “wrong”. 

Where do we go wrong? For simplicity I like to have us explore the two main ways. One, we can breathe in a rushed, stressed way. In our busy world many of us are used to doing things quickly, always thinking about the next thing we have to do. No wonder, since the age of 4-ish, or younger, our poor parents encouraged us to hurry along to accomplish all we had to do to get along in life. “Dont be late for school”, “don’t dilly-dally”, “hurry up” - who doesn’t feel a knot in their tummy when they reflect on the sheer terror of being late for a strict teacher or principle, and the punishment that might follow. Who amongst us doesn’t know that feeling of waking up in a panic, starting our day hitting the ground running. A healthy breath is a slow breath. Slow and smooth and so relaxed and un-rushed it is silent to us. 

Speaking of that knot in our tummies, the second way we can get in the way of our own natural un-rushed healthy breathing is by carrying tension in the body. Tension anywhere results in muscle tightness everywhere. Poor posture and lack of exercise can result in muscles in the torso being weak and tight and under-used. Holding onto that knot of tension inside can lead to our diaphragm being stiff and restricted. Our diaphragm should be fluid and relaxed like a jellyfish, in fact it’s shape is not unlike a large flat jellyfish, think of a large sheet of muscle from the bottom of the ribs at the front to the bottom of the ribs at the back. The diaphragm moves up and down inside us, in the watery space of the inner body, as we breathe. The intercostal muscles between the ribs gently expand and contract as we breathe. In this watery spaciousness inside we might learn to become aware of relaxation all the way down into the base of the body, the pelvic floor. We might learn to notice that the other places we could hold tension in the body, for example the jaw, or tension in the shoulders, or gripping in the area of the root of the tongue. These tense areas we learn to recognize, with patience and curiosity, should ideally feel spacious, relaxed and fluid all the time. 

With that in mind I invite you to come with me on a short breathing practice, just as you are right now. Settle the body in a comfortable position. Notice the body as a whole, like a big temple, maybe notice your posture or the expression on your face. The idea is to be spacious, relaxed and open as best you can. Ideally we are breathing in and out through the nose all of the time. For the practice, in daily life, in sleep and even in exercise; as best you can nose breathing all the time. Notice where you are noticing the sensations of breathing, maybe the air in your nostrils, or the rise and fall of the chest, or the expansion of the rib cage as you breathe in, or a soft rise and fall in your tummy area. Let’s see if we can notice this breathing sensation while also noticing the spacious container of the body as a whole. Let’s start with an out-breath, an exhale, and keep our attention on the sensations of breathing from the start of the exhale all the way for that half-breath cycle until the very end when the breath is all gone and the new inhale naturally begins. Let’s repeat that as we inhale. And so on. When the mind wanders, which it will, simply begin again at the start of an in-breath, or an out-breath, and see if you can stay attentive to the sensation of breathing for the entire half-breath cycle. And maybe the next one after that again. 

There is no hurry as we breathe. We remain aware of the soft space of the body as a whole, we might need to re-relax something like the jaw, or the hands, or the root of the tongue as we go along. A useful breath-play as we get settled into the practice is to extend the out-breath, the exhale, to make it a little bit longer. We could do this using a count (eg. breathe in for a count of 3 and out for a count of 4) or we could just breathe out a little bit more or a little bit slower each time we find ourselves breathing out. Another breath-play is to pause that moment when the breath is all gone for a silent count of one. This helps us slow down the breathing pattern - remember, this is one of our goals. It’s also immediately calming for the nervous system which relaxes the body as a whole, the second one of our goals. 

After a little bit of breath-play (you decide… a few rounds of breathing, ten minutes, longer?) see if you can settle into your natural pattern of simple, un-rushed, spacious breathing. Soft and gentle. Relaxed and complete. A sense of the body as a whole as being a strong, receptive container for this easeful breathing. The body as a whole relaxed, spacious and receptive. The natural breath easy and soft, so quiet it’s whispering.