What can I say about my breathing practice?

I’m deeply in love. I relish all our time together, I dream up romantic gestures. I believe it will solve all of my problems and I issue my utter faith and devotion to the breath … not just the breath — to intentional breath. That fantastic foundational unity between the mind and the body, the intentional breath. This is why I love yoga so much — it’s all about the breath! Really I’m just breathing all the time.

I feel like I can breathe through anything. Pain, terror, anxiety, honesty, shadow, joy, orgasm, curiosity, self-chiropracty. Is that a word? It’s a thing. I can often “pop” my back through relaxation and intentional breathing. I have weathered unimaginable physical pain with a fierce devotion to the breath. I have brought panic into loving kindness with my breath. I have braved myself to speak truth to power with my breath.

My breath. The breath. It’s fuzzy there — mine? ours? its own? Anima. Chi. All the variations. Mine and yours. I and I*. We share the breath with the air, the wind, the storm, the balm, the zephyr. We breathe the same air the dinosaurs breathed. What information might exist on the wisps of the wind? What deep wisdom is floating along with the pollen and the snow?

Trees exhale warning signals of immediate danger so the others can turn on their pheromonic defenses. Dogs smell fear. What else arrives with the wind, the breath? Perhaps our subconscious is an expert on these messengers. I think so.

This week I encountered my first wild snake of the year. Hazel the Dog and I bushwhacked off the paths to a creek I know and burst through the bustling green briar and honeysuckle to the limestone bedrock and the little stream. I was a tad joyous and pranced on the rocks. Suddenly, a MASSIVE something flashed.

I clock it is a five foot snake, fat, one foot from my foot. FUCK. Mocassin? Check the head. No. Common Water Snake. Safe. She skitters fast into the water and hides. Still within a few feet of me. Two steps back. Notice heartbeat. Fast. Stop everything. CALM. The lifetime of practice makes this near immediate.

Now I can operate from liberation. I have no fear, I am returned to presence. I reprioritize my joyful prancing to calming the snake and the dog. Project loving kindness to all in the vicinity. Breathe. Intentionally breathe. Heartrate is normal. Snake has stopped trying to escape. Dog is far off running the woods.

I stand in stillness. Complete lack of tension or intention. Absolute existence. I am the rock that moves. The snake moves from the water to another basking spot. Everything is back to calm neutral.

I am at the creek to practice teaching belly breath. So I sit at the perfect spot on the bedrock in the creek and place my little phone up to make a video. I am looking directly at this beauty — The First Wild Snake of the Year. And an absolute unit of one at last! I record my ten minute video as the dog runs (you can see her in the video, small in the background!) and as the snake perches.

It’s easy to outwait a snake who is startled. They will move again within a minute or two to a safer space or back to the day’s business. It’s hard to outwait a snake who is basking or hunting. They will sit all day! If you wait long enough though, you are likely to see a hunting/feeding event. So cool. Our snake continued her perch as we wandered on.

This all is the same process for overcoming any difficult, sudden, scary, or activating situation. Notice the event, be it physical or emotional, or whatever. Pause and evaluate danger. Calm the mind and body, there are many many tools for this. Then, choose what you would like to do. Perhaps this is liberation — having the power to choose.

I find the intentional breath of regular inhale, extra long exhale is best suited for these moments. I call this breath “calming breath.” Because it calms you. Grandma would call it a “big sigh”. And we all know what that means — relief! We often big sigh when we feel safe.

Science tells us the calming breath activates the parasympathetic nervous system, this is the “rest and digest” aspect of our nervous system. A lot of fascinating research exists in this area. Check out The Physiological Sigh Study (Stanford University) or the very interesting Lehrer and Gevirtz study on breath and Heart Rate Variability.

Grandma confirms. We feel better and clearer after calming breaths.

A person begins learning calming breath by inhaling for a two count and exhaling for a four count. You can try this now. As I take a few breaths at this rate, I notice my whole body releasing tension and leaning into the practice. It feels good. My shoulders relax, my rectum relaxes, I start feeling heavy. And after a few minutes, my breath count (were I counting which I don’t) would probably be like 8 on the inhale and 16 or more on the exhale.

It doesn’t matter what your breath count is. It only matters that you are leaning into feeling very calm, and that the exhale is intentionally longer than the inhale. It is a true joy to explore this style of breath! Just go ahead and feel good, whydontcha!?

Breathing intentionally is foundational to a yogic practice. Another dear snake friend, Patanjali, names pranayama as the fourth of eight limbs of yoga in the Yoga Sutras. Remind me sometime to tell you the origin story of this wonderful creature. Prana meaning breath, meaning life force. Think about life force. Yama, meaning restraint, meaning control. Think of limitations and how powerful they can be.

Am I a yogi, or am I the wind?
Am I the space between breaths?
Can a limitation provide your liberation?

Breathe.

Yes.

*credit to Rastafari philosophy