Ode to breath

Breathing is not always easy, as anyone who’s ever broken a rib, or had COVID, can attest to. But even minor tension in the chest, back, or stomach area can belabor breathing. And who doesn’t hold tension at all? Not very many people, in my experience.

In short, breathing — that most essential life-giving of all actions — is often hard.

Breathing is also one of the very few bodily functions that we can do both consciously and automatically: we can regulate our breathing cadence and pace, or let go of all conscious control. This is how we breathe even as we sleep. This is also how we can “trick” our minds into feeling calmer than we actually are: by consciously breathing more deeply and slowly, thus helping activate the parasympathetic nervous system.

Those who know me well will know that I am not a particularly sedentary person. I like moving. I maybe even need moving. Or perhaps it’s that I feel compelled to move in a way that doesn’t always serve me. I marathoned for years, enjoying the steady cadence of the breath, the almost meditative pounding of the ground. But, with age, the repetitiveness caught up with me. Let’s just say I miss my cartilage.

This is where yoga asana practice comes in.

Like running, it anchors breath to movement. And I find that by anchoring my breath to a movement, I can focus more clearly, slowing down the chitchat of my mind, and stay in the present. I attempt to do this in silent, quiet, still meditation too but… it’s hard, y’all. Paradoxically, movement in my body helps my mind be still.

Yoga, of course, is a lot of things. But breathing: regulating it, noticing it, using it, being in it, is central to pretty much every conception of yoga there is. During this month of October, all my online classes will be focusing on core, broadly understood, and at the very core of that is breath. Join me!