Some thoughts on breathing...

Couple of thoughts...

First is on exhaling. We learn at an early age that when we inhale and don't release our breath - we cut off our feelings. I came across this early on in my exploration of the breath. It was refreshing to see the idea in Dennis Lewis' book, The Tao of natural Breathing as well. This happens somewhere between 2 years and 4 years old. When we're young and don't know how to handle feelings that are uncomfortable, this can be helpful. The problem is that by the time we are adults, we have forgotten that we "learned" this and we start thinking that this is "normal." As adults, (hopefully) we have the ability to process our emotions more effectively and so don't need to restrict our exhale, but as they say - old habits die hard.

What to do? One way that I've found to "jump start" our exhalations is doing an exercise that I got from Nancy Zi's book, The Art of Breathing. Imagine that there is a large, inverted eye dropper inside of you. The bulb part is in your stomach and the other end is at your head. Take a breath in and then imagine your are squeezing the bulb as you let your air out. Then “let go” of the bulb and allow the air to come back in. Sometimes just doing this once gets me back into exhaling.

Second thought regards tension. We are taught that tension is bad. I like to think of tension as neither good or bad, but just one way our body communicates with us. When we stop making tension "wrong" (which only encourages/creates more tension) - we have a better chance of dealing with it. This relates to one of Chekhov's "Four Brothers" - the Feeling of Ease. He was bothered by Stanislavki telling actors "to relax." How does one "relax"? Relaxing is a non-action and it is impossible to do a non-action. Instead, Chekhov encouraged actors to do things with a Feeling of Ease - focusing on how we do a thing rather than "trying" to relax.

Also, if we know what we're tensing up against, then the goal would be to deal with what is causing the tension rather than focusing on the symptom.