The Power of One Simple Breath
While I’ve long suspected that breath work to be a transformative practice, it has always felt like work to me. There’s a sense that if I breathe in a more shallow way, from my upper chest, I can avoid feeling uncomfortable feelings. This makes sense since breathing deeply strengthens our connection to unconscious emotional material, allowing it to surface and be healed. This material may come up in dreams, intuition, or just greater sensitivity to our emotional states. And sometimes, the last thing I want is to be sensitized to my feelings or see what’s lurking in my unconcious. Sometimes, I don’t want to feel anything at all.
Yet, I’m well aware that the degree to which I breathe deeply is the same degree to which I take in life force. Ultimately, even though I may be tired and resistant at times, I don’t want to deprive myself of vitality by ignoring my breath.
While resting in presence feels great, there are times when I get lost in thought or emotion and find it hard to do. This is when I take a simple breath to act as a bridge and bring me out of my spinning and into the present moment. From here, I can return to presence more easily than trying to go there directly.
Sometimes, I’m super worked up and need a more intense breathing prace. That’s when I turn to the 4-7-8 breath technique. This simple practice, popularized by Dr. Andrew Weil, has been shown to quickly reduce feelings of anxiety and create a calmer mental state.
But how does breathwork actually work? To answer that question we have to understand the difference between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. The sympathetic nervous system commands our primal fight or flight response, and when triggered by perceived dangers - whether a hyena or a work presentation - causes our heart rate and breathing to speed up and stress hormones like cortisol to start pumping. While it may feel like a life or death struggle, our system is only doing its best to prepare our bodies to face what it perceives to be an impending threat. Yet, when cortisol is elevated for too long and too frequently, it disturbs all the hormonal systems of the body.
The parasympathetic system on the other hand, controls our resting, relaxation, and digestion responses. When this system is dominant, our breathing slows, our heart rate drops, our blood pressure lowers as the blood vessels relax, and our body is put into a state of calm and healing.
Essentially, breathing techniques work by shifting us out of fight/flight/fawn/freeze response of the sympathetic system and into the more restful and energetically open parasympathetic state.
It’s a simple trick and one that we can use any time. All we have to be willing to do is become conscious of our breathing. We can make it faster, slower, breathe in a pettern, through our mouth or nose or any combination we like. As long as we’re giving the breath some attention, we can change our inner state. It’s so simple that we constantly overlook it. But it’s always there, waiting for us. The question is: How open are we willing to be to the high sensation of life? How willing are we to take a moment to return to the breath and back to our natural state of presence, peace and power?
“Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.”
References
The Presence Process by Michael Brown is one of the first books I read on the power of using the breath and the element of water to work through stuck emotions in the body. A truly inspiring gem, which the psychopath Teal Swan was brazen enough to plagiarize almost entirely.
How to Breathe by Ashley Neese is an excellent resource on using the breath to diffuse stress and tension quickly and easily. Ashley is at the top of her game and her writing is clear, accessible and transformative.
I’ve had the privilige of doing breathwork sessions with David Elliott and Holotropic breathwork trained facilitators. Through the use of music, meditation and simple cyclical breathing practices, I laughed, cried, shook and released more in a few hours than I would have in months. Of course, you can just Youtube these techinques and try them at home, but there’s something to be said for the amplified support of a dedicated group and teacher.