On Breath

On breath we put words, meanings, traditions, songs. It is how we human- and mammal- together.

Breath is the one invisible thing without which we are dead. A few years ago I watched my father lose his breath and eventually die. It was excruciating.

One of the last things he used his limited breath to say to me (and the others in the room to whom I translated his ventilated speech) was, “Well I thought I was dead two weeks ago, so?” and “Upset is optional” with a shrug. In many ways it was the best death I could’ve hoped for for him.

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I have been teaching a long time. Over twenty years and in truly varied venues from my treatment rooms to toddler yoga to grad school to boardrooms. Not as long as my parents but certainly as adamantly! I’m not what you’d usually find in “soft skills” learning venues. I don’t appreciate pussyfooting around issues or ignoring the glaring assumptions everyone’s avoiding. So it feels a little funky to say that of the myriad skills I’ve taught along the way, if I had only a handful to “take to my desert island” (is this a thing? who invented this trope? so strange!) that breathing would be one of them.

Breathing would be maybe #2. Or maybe #1. I get a little tricky with this because really theres only one skill in life but it’s not really actionable beyond “use your gotdamn senses and stop worrying about the past and future.”

I find that to be mostly unhelpful to offer people as a skill for living well in day to day practice, except as the occasional, also proverbial, “slap in the face” (our colloquialisms are… fascinating).

The NeiJing SuWen (the foundational classic of acupuncture) says that 70% of all diseases can be healed or at least halted from progressing with “proper breathing”

In both my clinical practice and corporate teaching I have found this to be true. Sometimes I get fancy and add an adjunct like “try dropping your shoulders when you do it” for really stressed out people but usually that’s reserved for level 2.

And Level 1? It’s stupid simple (recall I’ve taught toddlers to 80+ year olds this… yogis and acupuncturists who like to get fancy- keeping it simple is the key to getting it done- the reason for most “improper” breathing is- besides not ever noticing one’s breath at all- “figuring out if they’re doing it right”).

The action? Breathe. In, 2, 3, 4…. however far you get to. Out, 2,3,4… however far you get to. Maybe, gently, eventually, you begin to let it get a little longer, slower, deeper, smoother. But again, that’s like level 1.25. Level 1? Notice and count, when you notice you’ve forgotten to notice, you simply start over.

In my practice I’ve seen people who actually implement this go from suicidal ideation and needing to up their meds- to asking ther doc to reduce meds three weeks later heading into their normally busy overwhelm season. (did I mention the average person breathes about 20,000 times per day? yeah, so to use this to change your body you’re going to have to start noticing at least 1% of those- the teaching of turning a skill into a habit is a separate- also too simple to be true piece.)

In corporate I’ve seen this change a leader dealing with hormonal issues into a leader who no longer had “we never know what we’re going to get with her”. I’ve seen managers of 1200+ people with a regular burnout turnover rate of 2 years use this and decide to stay and even learn to enjoy their teams until promoted. Along the way they started exercising. Of course I’m not solely a corporate breath trainer so I did use my breath and theirs to also make and recreate some other meanings along the way…at core though, without breath, there is no possibility of even seeing the current stories and meanings much less making new ones. At the core is this pause that breath gives us.

I know there’s a lot of new work around the vagus nerve and heart rate variability and yada yada that is lovely corroboration for what yogis and acupuncturists have been telling people for thousands of years. If you’re interested in those studies I’m happy to link- long story short turns out science is finally agreeing that breathing may be crucially important in regulating the vagus nerve leading to regulation of basically all the other bodily systems (and also cool science about how regulating our own nervous systems also regulates those of the people around us- hello leadership skills!!). Nice vindication for all my acupuncture colleagues I guess but I’m more fascinated by our need to have 150 year old physical science- mostly not useful due to their own findings in quantum mechanics- corroborating millennia of experience. In any case there are “studies” should you want them. Personally I want to know If I have been useful to one human in front of me. If they still have breath will I support them in using it to their fullest capacity?

I am here, I am here now, I still have breath. What will I choose to do with these breaths if they are my last? What will you choose to do?