"You still have breath in you!"

“When we breathe in, does our stomach flop out, or does it deflate?”, I asked myself, startled. To my almost-30-year old mind, this question seemed so basic. Yet, I could not wrap my head around how I didn’t know the answer to it.

This was one of my first classes at the Shala. My teacher, with an unshakable calm, motioned to show me how my abdomen expanded with an inhalation and contracted with an exhalation. I walked out wondering what have I learnt in life if I have not learnt how to breathe. I was amused - the simple question had space to breathe between my teacher and I; it was not suffocated with shame. All questions can breathe and maybe I will also learn how to, I told myself.

I spent the next year noticing the breath.

Where am I breathing from? 

How long or short are these breaths? How heavy or light? What temperature are they?

How does it feel to have this breath brush past my nostrils?

Do my inhalations and exhalations differ? Is there more ease in allowing one over another?

What is the pause like between an inhalation and an exhalation? How are these paced? 

Do I force a change in my breath the moment I hear my teacher say, “do not try to change”?

To be able to breathe requires much to come together. Simply put, we breathe because of the pressure difference between the atmosphere and the body cavity. Air is pushed into and out from our lungs with the diaphragm moving in response, much like a balloon inflating and deflating within us. In class, bringing awareness to a quiet process that has sustained us for decades, I wondered, “how did we come to breathe in this way?”

Does the breath move me, or do I move my breath?

This inquiry revealed that the breath houses many feelings, too. When there is awe, our breath is suspended, taken away. Through pain, our breath shortens, it struggles to move. In anxiety, our breath yearns for more to come in, we gasp. Out of fear, our breath is forgotten. With sadness, breath moves out of us in long-drawn out sighs. Life is meant to be breath-taking, breath-giving, breath-yearning, breath-releasing, breath-shortening, breath-pausing. Through practice, we experience these states and we return to our breathing as is.

In that class, I distinctly remember my teacher placing a palm over my abdomen as I lay down in shavasana. As my breath steadied itself, I could sense the palm move with my breath. With a touch of gentleness, he prompted, “there is still breath left in you, breath out”. I opened my eyes to look at him, confused. He nodded, and asked me to breathe out fully. I slowly realised I held some breath inside of me. The balloon refused to deflate, it wanted to hold onto a little bit of air.

I realised then that my breath is influenced by how I feel about taking in or giving away. Am I open to experiencing life as it is? Am I, therefore, able to inhale in life? Do I allow experiences to move through and then out of me? And am I able to exhale life, too? What makes me take in too much through longer inhalations? Or let out too little with shorter exhalations? The metaphorical balloon and the air it takes in or gives out seems to hold much more than their anatomical functionality. I return to this prompt every now and then as I hold in my breath: what am I unwilling to let go of, what am I holding onto? On some days, it is my fear of change. To let out breath, is to allow an experience to pass, to move through you.

In a moment of stress, my shoulders tense, jaw tightens, stomach hardens, toes curl, and my breath is held. I could posit that if I am able to see what has caused me stress, I might be able to let go. But, letting go of an experience is a complex mental process. At the moment if I can allow myself to notice the resistance in my body and breath, I can voluntarily ease into these sensations. Where the body moves, the mind follows. Where the breath goes, the mind goes. In practice, as I returned to my breath, I found that the body and mind relaxed into the moment.