Last night I was catching up with one of our students- last week she had received some incredibly devasting news which rocked her world (its seems a few of us may have had something like that this year!) We hugged, she cried but she kept saying over again how important her practice had become to her- the 2 classes a week where she could just be.
Where she could just breathe.
Pretty incredible for someone who has just started to be fair!
On Weds morning we had another student who has also just started, that has been in a really stressful place for a long time. Boy, had this long term stress affected her breathing- the tension through her body made trying to breathe deeply a real challenge. It was a bit of a wake up call for her about how much this stress had affected her.
So today I thought it appropriate to bring attention to breathe.
As you are probably aware breathing brings life and energy into our bodies, it fuels our muscles, our mind and helps our body shift waste products and even helps to regulate our body temperature. Its an incredible system and works (thank goodness) without our conscious thought & effort.
Our breathing also informs our brain and nervous system about how we are currently going- feeling good, feeling stressed etc and our brain then follows this and sends a whole bunch of chemicals whizzing around us to follow up on this info. For example if our breathe out is slow (especially slower than our in breathe) it informs our brain that we are calm and chilled- so the brain responds by sending chill out chemicals and responses to the body dropping blood pressure & heart rate as quickly as 3 breathe cycles (go on and try it!), whereas speeding up our breathe rate will send through a whole bunch of chemicals that will wake us up and get ready to move fast.
So when we think about breathing there’s a few things that we can play with:
– What will we move when we breathe- ie belly, lower ribs, chest- focusing on these different areas of breathe will do wildly different things- from massaging organs and improving bloodflow to the digestive tract, to reducing back pain and improving your breathe capacity by 100-200% to telling your bodies flight & fight mode to stay engaged
– What Tempo will we breathe at- fast/slow, extended breathe in or extended breathe out or extended pauses between breathes will all influence the body in different ways from promoting fertility & libido to changing focus & concentration, changing digestive capability and even how hot or cold we feel.
-How you breathe in & out ie in/out from the nose or the mouth or even just one nostril!
It can seem all a bit complex for something that many of us haven’t considered for decades. There are many different breathing practices in Yoga & Pilates that we can use to support our students- FYI we do have to be pretty careful what/when/who/how we share these as they are very powerful practices and have a strong influence on body & mind so I guess with great power comes great responsibility!! (for example we have to avoid certain practices with different medical conditions or life phases, whereas they can be extremely beneficial in others).
What I recommend as a starting place that is super safe, super effective & super easy……
Just take some moments to notice your breathing- notice the tempo, how the breathe comes in- where you breathe to, how the breathe goes out. (if you are breathing with your nose- which nostril is dominant!?)
There is nothing that you have to change- but please notice how your breathing changes as you pay attention to it- and how this then influences the rest of you. There’s no right or wrong- just notice 🙂
Guess what…. you are doing Yoga (& you might not even be wearing lycra…amazing!)
Let me know how you get on or if you want a hand with this- its common to feel a bit overwhelmed at the start!
Have a great day, keep breathing x🧘♂️🧘♂️