Hot Yoga Topics > Conscious Breathing
This is a great thread. I really like to concept of awareness breathing because we all breathe--that's what keeps us alive, but these breaths do the bare minimum. They help our bodies go through the motions, and this is very much like going through the motions of an unhappy life. Taking the time to focus on a deeper breaths provides the entire body with deeper benefits.
A deep breath of air can rejuvenate the entire body in various situations. I think back to sports when I was a kid. During a soccer game, I would get a runner's stitch; and this usually started from spasmodic breathing. Taking the time to realign my breathing through the use of deep breathing, I could cure the agonizing pain. Similarly, when I am crazy stressed and my stomach acid starts boiling and giving me severe pains, I learned that curling up in a ball and taking short shallow breaths (I did this in panic as a kid) was not the solution. Opening my chest and focusing on deliberate inhales and exhales brings me back to a state where the pain in soothed, and I can refocus on how to deal with the stress.
Brittany Yard
You have first-hand experience with the healing and curative power of conscious breathing, Brittany...people are familiar with the idea that slowing the breath calms your mind, many still dont know that breathing positively impacts many - dare I say ALL - ailments of the body.
Still, paraplegics in hospitals have brought themselves back to full-body use with deep breathing ONLY. It's amazing still that deep breathing has not yet been touted as the most important part of "physical therapy."
As for your possible cracked rib that we talked about Brittany - deep breathing many not be possible for you...but IMAGINING it is. And remember the difference between imagining and feeling, and doing? No difference at all
When I was a kid I first heard about hyperbaric chambers: if people were in severe accidents and lost limbs, putting them and their severed limbs into a room where oxygen was in high concentration and forcing oxygen into the limbs and the body, kept their limbs and the reattachment site "alive" until reattachment was possible. EVERYTHING flourishes by breathing deeper - even things we think of as dead such as severed limbs - and breathing sustains life.
It leads back to the yogic notion that breathing is not just oxygen - it ist taking in Prana - life force which surrounds you everywhere - for which oxygen is the vehicle. The delivery system is you, taking it all in, with conscious joy.
Rhonda Uretzky, E-RYT
Rhonda, that's so interesting about the hyperbaric chambers. I had never heard that before, but wow. It's so great to think about how healing breathing can be, because until I did yoga, I never thought about my breath at all, other than the old "take 3 deep breaths to calm down" that I would do or teach my kids to do when I was teaching. But one thing I've found recently (with some cues from a teacher) is that you can breathe into different parts of the body to help get a deeper stretching feeling. I think it's amazing that you can focus the breath so much that it feels like you're moving it to different parts of the body.
Chrissy Graziano
Its so true, Chrissy: breath is so ubiquitous that we take it for granted. But its the other way around: its so available because its the most powerful thing around - and literally all around - for all sorts of healings, transformations, and life experiences that we truly want.
Rhonda Uretzky, E-RYT
I have learned how valuable our breath is. Now I say it is my magic. Since TT I have learned to focus and use my breath to meditate, during asana, when I’m stressed. It has helped with my practice, I find so much calm and ease with my asana’s. I guess this has become unconscious breathing now.
Jeanne
Isnt it amazing and oh so perfect, Lisa, how breathing - something so simple and easily available, requiring no props or tools - is the key to everything in your life being as you want it to be?
We can now see how breathing affects our personal bodies, emotions, attitudes...but can YOUR breathing affect your financial status...the well being of others...the state of politics in the world...what do you think?