Connecting to the breath changed my life - and it can do the same for you.

Perhaps you can relate to this experience of the breath.

Before I engaged with yoga, the only time that I ever ‘noticed’ my breath was either when I was out of breath due to exercise or as a tight feeling in my chest when I felt stressed. That's if I noticed it at all.

The truth is I was always stressed. At that particular point in my life I was running my own company with a staff of 30 plus people and I never took time to slow down and decompress, I genuinely didn't know how. You could often find me sitting on the edge of my bed after midnight sending an email on my Blackberry (remember those?) or taking a call from a client. As a result I also suffered from insomnia on many nights of the week, immediately falling asleep, then waking up 30 mins later and finding myself awake for the rest of the night.

I had high blood pressure and chronic back pain which was coupled with regular bouts of exhaustion. I often felt as though I was suffering a hangover for days on end. Additionally I was overwhelmed most of the time, prone to emotional outbursts and, if I reflect back now, on the run from my past which I had not taken the time to face up to or honour and to find a path towards healing. Sounds like a great combination! I wasn’t  consciously aware of it at the time but, if I had taken a moment to bring my attention inwards to notice my inner experience, I’m pretty certain that it wouldn’t have felt pleasant.

If it hadn’t been for the intensity of these feelings and the gradual realisation that if I didn’t make a change  soon then something bad was going to happen, it’s very likely that I would never have found yoga as a central practice and source of healing in my life. For that reason I am genuinely grateful for the suffering (duhkha as expressed in Sanskrit) I have experienced in my life as otherwise I would never have woken up to my reality. Of course that doesn’t mean that we would chose for difficulties to arise in our lives, but as and when they arise, we can use them to help us grow.

Although there are so many aspects of yoga that are profound and essential for our growth and healing, one of the most unique and transformative aspects is the relationship that it suggests we develop with our breath. 

In the first chapter of the Yoga Sutras, the essential ancient text on Yoga written by Sage Patanjali, we are told that by ‘regulating the breath, with a special emphasis on exhalation…we can steady the mind.’ He tells us this will help us overcome the obstacles that often block us from moving towards more inner stability and peace. In another sutra he reveals that these obstacles to peace create some or all of the following symptoms, ‘emotional discomfort, negative thinking, physiological imbalances and (crucially) disturbances in the breath.’

So when we face inner disturbances of any nature they cause effects that are experienced in our bodies and in our breath. Yoga prescribes regulating, watching over and softening the breath as, not just an antidote to ‘stress’ but also as a method to bring about deep states of stillness and peace. If you’ve noticed, and I’m sure that many of you have, when we are in over drive, when we are triggered, when we are verging on emotional overwhelm, our breath can become very short, effortful and for many of us chest centred. Our breath emanates tension and the experience can be quite unpleasant.

As a yoga therapist working with many clients who are dealing with lives that are often too busy, who are burnout, anxious, and in various states of emotional overwhelm, I witness the difficulties they are facing by observing their breath. It tells us so much.

Each and every client facing the above challenges will present with some kind of breath imbalance. The breath imbalance often creates unpleasant sensations within the body alongside muscular tension in different regions. If you consider that the inhale is associated with an increase in heart rate and blood pressure as well as requiring muscular effort to arise, and our exhale is related to a drop in those variables and there is generally less effort in an exhale, we can instantly see why an over effortful inhale accompanied by a short exhale doesn’t work in our favour physiologically.

So the breath, our bodies and our minds are intimately linked, which is why it says in another important yoga text, The Hatha Yoga Pradipika (Light on Yoga), that when the breath is disturbed the mind is disturbed, and similarly when the breath is calm the mind becomes calm too. Essentially if we can come to know our breath, bring it to balance and then develop practices that encourage the breath to become long (dirgha) and smooth (suksma), this can help us to overcome a whole range of physical and psychological challenges.

What does this mean for us in our daily lives? Quite literally there is an intimate relationship between our breath and our bodies and our minds. The way our breath manifests in our body affects how we feel internally and how we feel internally plays a huge role in whether we feel comfortable in our own skin and therefore in our lives. When I started to connect to my own breath on the mat I gradually came to know its inner expression and have been able to gradually unpick the knots that were causing unnecessary inner strain. 

Over the years this has been accompanied by various breathing practices that have allowed me to experience the sensations of the breath in different parts of the body, how to balance for example chest, rib and belly breathing, how to moderate the effort of breathing, how to lengthen the exhale, how to pause the breath in a way that contributes to a more peaceful inner experience. The breath is vast, profound and our connection to life itself. As my teacher often says, ‘the effort of breath, is the effort of life.’

As a result of working with the breath in this way over the years, and of course as part of a broader yoga practice, I no longer have high blood pressure or experience insomnia (now the reason I don’t sleep is due to a four year old!) Furthermore when I sit on the mat each morning and night, taking long slow breaths it takes me to a peaceful and calm space that I was previously incapable of accessing. It is a visceral experience that can be felt in body and mind.

At the start of every class that I teach, and equally, at the start of my own practice, I take a minimum of 12 long slow breaths with comfortable pauses between inhale and exhale. My hands are on my heart space and my belly. My intention is to allow the breath to become long and subtle, inwardly pleasant, and to immerse my mind in that experience. No experience of the practice is ever the same, every day the breath reveals something new, every day I learn how to go in to deeper and more subtle realms. This daily connection to my breath has been life changing.

If we really want these practices to create profound change in how we experience life then the next stage is to bring our awareness of breath in to each and every moment of the day. We become sensitised to gently watching over the breath and, in realtime, understanding what it is telling us about our current state. There are times in the day when we may notice a slight tension or strain or speeding up of the breath. In the same moment of noticing we can soften our bodies, let go of the unnecessary effort in the breath and immediately reduce the impact of that heightened state - this is the art of self regulation. All of us can do it with practice and the gentle motivating power of wishing to experience our lives with more inner balance.

I hope that this might motivate you to explore a more intimate relationship with your breath and the transformational opportunities that arise as a result. I’d love to hear from you about your existing breath practices and whether you feel they are supporting you. Similarly if you’ve been aware of the power of breath practices but have yet to journey forward with them, what are the obstacles and challenges that you’ve been facing to get started? Please do share in the comments below.

Thank you for reading as always.