WHY #1
The breath is what grounds us to reality when we need it the most, as much as it can be the thing responsible for altering our perception (if you know how). But what’s the point? Why should you give a fuck about how you breathe? There are numerous, genuinely profound, health reasons in relation to both physical and mental outcomes. However, today this ramble will be from a little more of a conceptual perspective.
AWARENESS // BALANCE
As you learn and develop a breath practice, that is to consciously spend time manipulating your breath with a specific goal or focus, you start juggling profoundly different energies. Think of these energies as that of ‘grounding/calming/physical’ and ‘elevating/high/mind/mental.’ These can be subtle initially, however over time your intrinsic (internal) awareness improves, and these become more profound. This could be simplified in a physical context, like your heart rate dropping (‘towards the ground’) or rising (elevating), or maybe the more esoteric imagery speaks to you. You choose. Its most effective to use a mix of the two, then strictly one or the other I’ve found.
Breath-work to this degree enables you to learn how to address the ‘noise of the mind’ (your bullshit) to concentrate your awareness appropriately, a skill deeply lacking in today’s screen society (stimulation - always). It can allow you to be able to feel subtle sensory (physical) inputs through your torso, palate (roof of your mouth) and nasal passages. This enables you to improve the quality of your breath. These areas are of particular importance in the ability to forcefully exhale out your nose (see note*). And it can allow you, over time, to get to the root cause of what is upsetting you (mind/mental). The ultimate expression of this noise is during long breath holds; your mind starts to really fuck with you there.
*Fun fact: it’s tricker than you might expect to forcefully exhale through your nose, and usually way harder than maximal nasal inhales!!
If you continue with your breath practice, you get stronger in this ability to sift through the nonsense of the mind and get to what it is that you are actually upset about. What is the problem that needs solving? What physical connection is missing. And boy, your initial instincts can be wrong… a lot.
An easy illustration of this point, a majority of us may believe that when holding our breath, it is the ‘lack of oxygen’ that is driving the profoundly intense hunger to breathe. The interesting reality of the situation is that your oxygen saturation probably won’t drop below 97% before you have to breathe. You can survive several minutes without breathing and suffer no physiological damage (as long as you recommence breathing again calmly after). Ask anyone who free dives. But you will be convinced you’ve run out of air because that’s how it feels.
Heads up!!
Our feelings, just like our instincts, can be wrong too.
It is the elevating CARBON DIOXIDE in your blood that you are responding too when you get that overwhelming urge to heave a breath. It begins a cascade of physiological processes that result in changes in how you feel and think in that moment. Shit is changing quickly. You telling yourself how you’re probably going to die if you don’t breathe RIGHT NOW isn’t helping the situation either. So you panic, open your mouth and gasp for air. Oddly, a gasp that resembles that of an individual in the midst of a panic attack. This ‘reaction’ is not the appropriate response. Its just that, its a reaction. We learn, with the breath and time, how to instead respond appropriately.
Another interesting note, when someone experiences a panic attack and begins to aggressively over-breathe, they will state feeling like they ‘cant breathe.’ This is despite the fact that it’s the one thing they are actually doing. There is a glitch in the matrix that makes a major symptom of ‘hyperventilation’ being a sense of strangulation. Not breathing, and breathing too much, create the same sort of response. Weird.
CHRONIC OVER-CORRECTORS
Consider factoring in that we, as modern humans, are chronic ‘over-correctors.’ I see it physically in clinical cases of unstable ankles or knees. When off balanced in one direction an individual may often over-correct and stumble further in the opposite direction to initial imbalance.
We see this over-correction in society also. Let’s take the change in collective mindset (mental) over the last 3-4 generations. I spent a lot of time with my grandparents’ generation, born around 1930-1945, while rehabbing veterans. Over 65% of my clients were from the Vietnam war [1955-1975] era or earlier.
This generation, particularly the men but also the women, were a little ‘emotionally disconnected’ to use modern psychology. They were tough (sometimes a little too tough), humble, and worked hard. Hard work was the answer to everything. Fuck your feelings, go back to work. That approach, as tough as it is, builds character. You had to overcome the obstacle in your way, there was literally no other option. Don’t get me wrong though, this approach absolutely has its flaws.
Nowadays, when speaking with teachers/parents/carers, there seems to be a generation of young people who suffer from an extreme sense of entitlement. Little self-conscious narcissists who only do what they FEEL LIKE and become highly emotional the minute things don’t go their way, the minute they hit an obstacle. They give up, it’s unfair, it’s too hard, I can’t. They are way too in their feels. But it is good to be in-touch with your emotions…
See the over correction there?
Now many among us are starting to deeply lack resilience. People are so driven by their emotions and fear that they allow them to take over. How well do you make decisions when emotionally dysregulated (upset and afraid)?
Let’s now add to the older generation the fact that a majority of the work was physical labour. Life was physically demanding and quite simple with respect to today. In the modern world we need to VOLUNTARILY make our life physically challenging while at the same time ‘life’ is more convoluted and complex than ever.
We need to run, ride, swim, lift, fight etc to get close to the physical output of this previous generation. But without resilience, you can’t push when shit starts to get difficult. It hurts, your body and your feelings, but you can’t cave to that. Then once you have trained hard (6+ sessions/week) for a set period time, notice anything happen to your mental wellbeing? What’s your baseline anxiety doing?
Modern human in the west = overweight and anxious. We don’t move enough; we think too much. Shitty combination for physical and mental wellbeing.
So, after all of this story time, what does any of this have to do with the breath?
Build resilience dancing with your breath. Various implementations of breath work allow us to practice the skill of ‘leaning into’ discomfort or ‘finding comfort in discomfort.’ Adapting to stress and using it to make us stronger between the ears, not actively avoiding it. This helps us sift through the mind and balance our thoughts/emotions. Sometimes we need to be tough, sometimes we need to be soft. Start by slowing down your breath, all the time, to find your balance…
Go from there.
