Inside Yoga 48 (4/2/2012)
It’s a simple message and one that is repeated frequently in yoga’s teaching, yet it can be one of the hardest skills to learn and equally hard to maintain – I am speaking of breathing!
We breathe every day; so why can it be so difficult to learn if it’s actually a skill we have already learnt? But have we really learnt to breathe? Well, we have learnt to breathe otherwise we would have collapsed suffocating long ago, so perhaps I am being a bit oblique here.
What we have not done is learn how to breathe effectively and efficiently. Most of us breathe in and out, barely dipping into our lungs, developing an unhealthy habit of shallow breath. This becomes even worse when we are stressed, angry, exhausted or distressed.
The ancient teachings of yoga have reference to a finite allocation of breath which we have from birth. To put it simply at birth a “Breath Account” is opened for us. So if we lead a life of unhealthy pursuits from excessive use of intoxicants (eg smoking or drinking to excess) or simply a life filled with stress and exhaustion, we will have a shallow unhealthy breath. We will use up our deposit in the Breath Bank so quickly we will have a shortened lifespan.
This teaching might be thousands of years old, yet it has been proven to be true, as modern medical science has made a connection between smoking and drinking, or stress-related illnesses, and a shortened lifespan.
Some of the events in our life are beyond our control, for example, a family bereavement which leads to stress; or employment problems – especially during this difficult period of economic uncertainty (we used to call this “recession”) – that can mean loss of work and or simply struggling to keep financially afloat. Even though some events are beyond our control, the way we breathe can be within our control.
Learning yogic breathing can help us respond to life’s ups and downs. There are numerous breathing techniques in yoga, but simply learning to breathe in and out deeply and smoothly can have such healing properties, and at the same time help foster clarity (a deep breath can help clear our heads!) which is helpful when meditating.
Try this out. Pause right now: take a long deep breath – long enough to fill your lungs comfortably, but not to the point of straining the lungs; and then very slowly exhale. Repeat this two more times. Reduce the length of the inhalation or exhalation if either is shaky, unsteady or stressed. It needs to be steady and comfortable.
Did that feel good? Did it help relax your nerves? Was it calming? Hopefully it was. And to be honest, if it didn’t feel so good, it is a practice that I said at the start is difficult, even if it’s easy to understand intellectually. So keep practising. Try as often as you can – in safe and controlled environments – so do not do this when hurtling down the motorway for example!
When practising yoga asanas (the exercises we do in class) the breathing is also important. Very important. We learn to move with the breath, we learn to hold a position with the breath and we learn to exit a posture with the breath.
Ideally, when moving in or out of a posture the breath, whether it is an exhalation or an inhalation, is as long if not a bit longer than the movement. This is the hard part, so be patient, but keep aiming to get the breathing to synchronise with the body’s movements.
And please note: we will feel the benefit of this practice even if we feel we have not got it perfectly right, as the journey offers many rewards as much as reaching the destination has its rewards.
