Remember to Breathe

Remembering to breathe may seem like a silly recommendation. After all, we breathe through every minute of every day, and we don't have to stop to think about it. It's automatic. Yes, you may notice your breath when you lose it suddenly (like after intense exercise) or when you are sick and your chest is tight, but the fact remains that most of us don't pay any attention to our breathing on a regular basis. 

I had practiced breathing exercises intermittently in yoga classes, but sometimes they seemed a little unusual. In one technique, you breathe in through one nostril and out through the other, and I was initially put off by this because I didn't want to be so intimate with my nose. Plus there wasn't much detail thrown in about why it was important to practice these exercises, so I wasn't exactly rushing home after class to dig up more information. I figured I had breathing pretty much down, and I would just focus on trying to keep it in sync with my postures.

But all that changed during my teacher training program. I was introduced to the why and how of pranayama, or controlled breath, and the effect that it has on the mind and body. Through my own practice and experience, I started to notice how the benefits of pranayama could impact my life off the mat, too.

I grew up in a family that saw conflict as something to be avoided. If I was mad at my sister, even for legitimate reasons, it wasn't acceptable. We might be forced to apologize and hug it out until we could agree to play together nicely. I learned early in life to keep my mouth closed and my feelings under wraps whenever a situation activated strong emotions. It wasn't okay to express them. And I carried this with me into adulthood. 

I probably don't need to point out that this isn't a great coping mechanism for living in the real world. We are constantly confronted with emotionally difficult situations, and I often do not handle them successfully. If I get into an argument with my partner and he says something that hurts my feelings, or worries me, or makes me mad, I am unable to accept what he is saying. Immediately I'm in my head, thinking about how he has it all wrong. Or being overrun with fear about something that hasn't even happened yet. Or deciding what I can say to shift the blame away from myself. Meanwhile, I'm stuffing all the painful emotions I'm feeling deep inside and throwing up a wall to protect myself.

I might physically look like I am present in these conversations, but I'm not. I'm not able to listen. I can't process what my partner is actually saying. Instead I am creating stories (that are often only slightly relevant to the situation at hand) in my head and reacting to them. And as you can imagine, it's hard to find a solution when you and your partner are not even in the same conversation.

Cue the breath! Remembering to breath has dramatically changed how I respond in these emotional situations. This simple thing that we practice over and over again in yoga class–bringing your attention to your breath–has made it possible for me to stay in the conversation. If my attention is on my breath, I have a single point of focus. My mind is in the here and now, which means it can't be composing elaborate stories about what is happening. If my attention is in the present moment, then I'm not lost in my head. I can listen. I can feel the emotions that come up and give them space and permission to exist. I can accept when someone says something about me that I don't like. I can let it sit there and not get carried away. I can keep breathing. 

Of course this is easier said than done. I don't always remember to breathe, but when I do the conversation is always much more productive–even if the subject is extremely painful. Placing my attention on my breath has allowed me to turn excruciating moments into opportunities to grow as a person. That's worth practicing. 

Finding Your Breath

Finding your breath is an important component of many contemporary yoga classes. If you've been to a class, you have probably heard some iteration of this phrase. The first time I had a teacher direct me to find my breath, I thought it was a little odd but I made an assumption about what she was saying. As I understood it, the instruction was to simply pay attention to my breathing: inhale, exhale. While no one ever explained the actual purpose behind this practice, it gave me something to focus on besides all the other thoughts flying around my head. That was good enough for me.

Ancient yogis took it a little further. They realized that if you can control your breath, you can control your mind. This simple statement clearly describes one of the main benefits of yoga practice. Our breath and our minds are interconnected, and there is a relationship between the rate of our thoughts and the rate of our breathing. When we are angry and our minds are moving fast, our breathing becomes rapid. When we make an effort to take deep breaths, our thoughts slow down. This might be a place where experts could have a "chicken or the egg" debate, but I don't think it really matters which comes first because one of these factors is clearly easier for me to control: my breath.

When we practice yoga and we concentrate on finding and controlling our breath, we slow down and connect our breathing to our movements. This slows the runaway train of thoughts that is constantly racing around our heads. And as we get further along into our practice, we may notice that we actually start to have little bits of space in between our thoughts. We can see the gaps between the cars as they are passing on the tracks. These gaps might occupy only the briefest of moments, but we see that they can exist. We don't have to have a thought and then immediately judge it or–even worse–judge ourselves for having it. We don't have to automatically react to it in any way, possibly by saying or doing something that we later regret. Instead, once we cultivate those spaces we can look at each thought for what it is: a thought. And we can choose if or how we want to respond to it. 

This isn't something that happens overnight. It takes a lot of practice, a lot of time finding your breath, to find the spaces. For me it is worth the effort.