How do you feel inhaling? How do you feel exhaling? Do you prefer one over the other? These are just a few of the questions I have been asking about breathing lately in my groups. I ask them to encourage everyone to be more aware of this fundamental physiological necessity in being alive -- an activity that just happens without our having to make it happen, but one that we can control. How we breathe might be one of the most critical pieces of our health and happiness, and yet how often do I hold my breath when I am doing so many activities in a given day?
I can hold my breath reading a news article, driving in traffic, or reading my email. I'm really good at it! As a child, I would see how many laps I could swim underwater before I would come up gasping for air. It was insane. Didn't anyone look at the pool and wonder where I was? That's for another email, I suppose. I can hold it in and I can hold it out. I prefer exhaling to inhaling. Exhaling feels like a relief; everything relaxes. Inhaling feels effortful, as if I am trying to fill air into a long, narrow balloon—the kind you twist into animal shapes. I prefer to be like a big, round, red balloon like the one I let go of too early in the late '70s on balloon day at school. I cried. That's for another email, too. Thank goodness there aren't balloon days anymore. The poor earth. What we did to it. Back to the breath… what are we doing to ourselves by not being aware of it? It might be just as bad as 100 kids letting balloons with notes on them into the air in pre-school in 1978.
James Nestor, a researcher who wrote a book called Breath (one many of us concurred we read almost to the end but didn’t quite get there), makes many crucial points about why our breath is so important. You don't need to read the book unless you are interested in hearing all of his adventures and experiments; instead, you can watch this short YouTube video of his that captures some of the crucial points. It is worth the 12 minutes. After that, what I want to offer to you is this inspiration: how you breathe can change how you feel in any moment. We often think we have to change our thoughts to change how we feel, but coming from the body to change how we think and feel is just as powerful, if not more powerful. The breath has this power.
If you pay attention to your breathing, it will slow down. It is hard to be aware of the details of anything when we move fast. If I follow my breath in—not just the beginning, but the whole path in and the whole path out—if I notice the transitions between the inhale and exhale, and exhale and inhale, and don't rush to get to the next one, my breathing will slow down naturally, and it will be deeper and more nourishing. And my goodness, who doesn't need to be nourished more? When we feel nourished, we approach ourselves and the world in a softer, more open way. Why cheat ourselves out of this experience because we are grasping to get to another experience? Often in my meditations I will say, “Don’t be in a hurry to get to the next breath; enjoy this one.” One breath at a time. It is all we can take. We don't have to rush it. It brings grounding, calm, and ease. It nourishes all our cells, organs, and muscles.
My invitation, not just for this week but for all day, every day, is to let your breath be a source of comfort, nourishment, grounding, and safety. When you feel yourself holding your breath, no worries—you get to exhale once you realize it! There is nothing wrong with you. We can retrain ourselves. And often we need to. We go through some pretty big things in life, and sometimes, if we have been in fight-or-flight mode for an extended period of time, it becomes a habit to breathe shallowly. It's okay if you have been doing this your whole life! It’s not the end of the story. Start now.
Meditation is a time for you to do just this, but don't stop following your breathing when the meditation ends. Follow it into your next moment and your next moment. And then start again when you drop it. It shouldn't feel effortful, but wonderful.
Wishing you a week of joyful breathing.
Warmly,
Jean
