Natural Breath

One of the foundations of the yoga practice is learning to breathe.  Breathing is so funny because we already DO this all day long.  It can seem strange to stop and actually practice something that is already happening!  But I think these are the best kind of practices: to pay attention to the things that are already happening inside of ourselves and to develop a deep and intimate relationship with those movements.

Most people never breathe more than the barest minimum required to bring oxygen into our lungs.  Have you noticed how shallow your breath is usually?  There are huge benefits to breathing more deeply, more profoundly, as a dedicated practice.  These benefits help to support your nervous system, your heart and your lungs, and even can exercise important muscles in and around your chest and core.

So what are the physical benefits to breathing, and how is that done?

I like to teach something called natural breathing.  In yoga we usually cultivate fancy breathing techniques with mysterious sounding names and complex theories.  These practices can be fun, but natural breathing forms an important foundation to the later practices and is really all you need to make huge shifts and changes to your physical, mental, and emotional experiences.

It’s best to try natural breathing by lying comfortably on your back, though eventually it’s important to sit upright and try because your relationship to gravity changes and you can feel your breath in your whole ribcage and spine.

When you lie on your back make sure your knees are bent: you can place your feet on the ground wider than your hips and rest your knees together, you can prop a pillow or roll up a thick blanket behind your knees, or you can even swing your legs up onto a chair, a wall, or a couch.   If your neck is uncomfortable you can also prop a small pillow, towel, or blanket under your head.

Spend a minute just feeling your breath.  Not changing anything, not manipulating anything, just noticing how your breath moves in your body.  Is it all in your chest?  Or all in your belly?  Do you only breathe up into your front ribs? 

When you exhale, do you push your bellybutton down into your low back?

This is valuable information.  Many of us are not supporting our physical bodies when we breathe.  And breath is DESIGNED to support us physically!

For example, if you are only breathing into the front of your chest but you don’t feel any movement in the side of your ribcage then you are limiting your breathing capacity.  Place your hands on the sides of your ribs, where your gills would be if you were a fish, with your fingers pointed toward your heart and your elbows facing outward.  Press your hands into your side ribs and then feel your breath pressing back!  Expand your side ribs out when you inhale and feel those ribs coming back toward your center when you exhale.

Do this practice a few times.  Start to expand your breath into the SIDES of your body.  There is so much untapped space there to breathe!  Also, you are exercising your core when you do this.  Forget crunches, just breathe deeply and you’ll begin to feel how much more function and strength you can build in your core (specifically, the intercostal muscles, the diaphragm, even the upper part of the psoas system, the obliques, and the pectoral-muscles).

Begin to pay attention to your exhales: if you find that you are pushing your bellybutton down into your lower back when you exhale you will want to change this pattern.  Your low belly should not push down to the ground when you breathe out.  You should feel a drawing back and up toward your heart on your exhale.  This is much easier to do when you have a full inhalation that makes use of your side ribs, so try the two practices together:

Inhale to draw your ribs wide side-to-side, and exhale to allow your belly to move back and up.  You can imagine that you are taking a little comb and brushing your exhalation up the length of your spine from your tailbone to your heart.  This is a deeply nourishing way to exhale.  Move your belly UP toward your heart rather than BACK into your spine.

Hint: you’ve just learned uddiyana bandha, one of the main energetic “locks” of the subtle body in Yoga.

This is natural breathing!  You are just following the natural movements of your muscles as they are designed to breathe.

If you sit upright you can really feel the difference with this breath pattern.  

You can place your hands on your outer ribs again and just feel for your breath drawing outward in all directions: not only forward into your chest behind your breastbone, but also out to the sides and into the back of your heart.

Eventually you’ll let your arms drop onto the sides of your chest and just feel the dimensions of your in-breath at your chest.  That space is absolutely necessary so that your exhalation can release pressure up and out of your pelvis by combing the diaphragm and everything below it (your organs of digestion and elimination) upward toward your heart, giving space to your belly.

Inhale to open out in all directions from your heart.

Exhale to draw your breath back up your spine toward your heart.

Inhale to expand the heart out.

Exhale to return to the heart.

Inhale to move your heart energy out into the world.

Exhale to return your energy back into your heart.

See how the physicality of your natural breathing becomes a moving prayer that connects your heart to the world around you and then returns back to your heart center.  This is the most profound kind of moving prayer that we can offer ourselves and the space around us.  And it requires only that you breathe according to the natural design of your body.

You may even notice when you sit upright how much your LEGS have been trying to help your CHEST to breathe!  Our legs try to hold up our spine.  Let your legs relax.  Sit upright on a pillow or a blanket so that your upper thighs can soften and relax.  Then ask them to soften and relax some more.  When your legs stop trying to hold you up then your spine will start to hold itself up.

You are building strength.  Core strength.  Real core strength.

So go slowly, because you are exercising.  Start with just a few minutes on your back and then expand that practice.  Then try it upright.  Then maybe you start to notice yourself getting stronger, little by little, until one day you are breathing naturally and easefully.  You may find the strength that has always been there in your breath available to you.  You may discover the moving prayer of your breathing supported by that strength.  You may find that your body has been helping you all along.