Do You Breathe Well?

In these days of virulence, are we afraid to breathe deeply? Under our facemasks, have we forgotten how to breathe well? When we don’t breathe properly, we can’t open to invite more sensation in. Breath happens in the back body in the thoracic spine, especially the upper back between the neck and the waist. In the front, breath speaks to our core. That’s the area from our mid-chest to about four inches below the navel. For deep diaphragmatic breathers, breath travels as low as the top of the pubic bone.

This area is innervated (the destination where nerves deliver information), starting at latitudes along the length of our core. Nerves emerge between the bones of the spine to twine through abdominal muscles that girdle our midsection. But – the breath mechanism: the diaphragm, the belly, the low part of the abdomen is where a lot of people are scarred or dissociated. Emotions of trust and disgust live here. Especially for women and people with vulvas, self-loathing around even having a noticeable belly can live here too. Due to social pressure suggesting how we should feel about our bellies, we might prefer to check out.

Yet we all know that breathwork can be downregulating. You may view down-regulation as a purely instinctual response – effective breathwork allows you to relax. However, many people don’t know how to use their breath effectively, and mingy, shallow breathing becomes just another way the body generates tension and expresses stress.

I’m curious about whether a group of folks working on their breath together can enrich their own body’s communication with itself. Since the new reality of social distancing and its attendant isolation, the mirroring in a room full of deep breathers in our favorite yoga class is not available for now. Where does that leave us?

I believe a process of mutual support for breathing is possible in the form of an online course. This learning format has the potential to move brain-body conversations from the equivalent of a one-lane dirt road rarely taken to an eight-lane superhighway, dense with productive and useful information. Well-practiced breathers are uniquely equipped to connect their own dots between body and brain, between past and present, even between the nervous system and the immune system. A far-reaching breath trains the body to provide appropriate chemical cues for this elegant biological system called a body. It happens by learning the best breathing techniques for your particular body – over time and with support.

Breath allows us to SEE how which branch of our nervous system dominates our experience, for better or worse. When things swing out of balance, the use of breath can offer sensations to make a correction. How did we accumulate this much stress anyway? Present circumstances aside, as a culture, we do everything to train young people to quiet their bodies and suppress their boisterousness, along with their breath. We’re told to sit still in school. Not to wiggle, not to squirm. To suppress our urges to pee, ignore our need for a snack, and not scratch that itch. As a consequence, we’ve learned to ignore our bodies. Including our breath.

Rinse and repeat – after years of ignoring our impulses, it’s worked! Our suppressive abilities have lead us to abandon our bodies. Dissociation leaves us disenfranchised from the power of breath within our skin. When we become skilled breathers, we’re in a unique position to observe the effects of stress, and then change them to help repair and re-integrate our sense of embodiment.

Breath is the ultimate self-help tool to re-establish communication, re-establish self-love, and literal self-interest when practiced with commitment and the right information. What happens when we deconstruct dysfunctional beliefs about our bodies and reweave our habits of stress? As we inevitably move toward a post-COVID world, it’s vital to project a deeply breathing future – and to imagine what’s possible.