Calming with the breath

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Many people want to know the correct way to breathe. However, the only incorrect thing about your breathing is your desire to control it. Allowing your breathing to self-organize in response to life is the healthiest thing you can do. These lessons focus on unhooking the codependent relationships in the breathing apparatus.

All of these lessons are designed to give you options instead of to tell you how to be in the world. You will engage with many novel muscular patterns until new pathways become familiar and available, helping you return to a healthy baseline.

For more calming lessons, see:

• the body pattern of anxiety

• destress and calm: gentle pressing and rolling

• 19 short lessons to relieve tension

A gentle exploration of space, volume, sensation, and awareness. This lesson begins your practice of varying the patterns associated with the diaphragm.

Tip: Part of this lesson is on the side. Have a folded towel nearby to put under your head, or lie on your arm.

This is a lovely lesson for before bed, as many breathing lessons are. This lesson doesn’t require much thinking or engagement, just sensing. It’s very meditative, just gentle noticing of the breath through the sensation of the hands.

This lesson starts the journey of letting go in the abdomen. Again, super gentle, slow, and novel. It both wakes up new patterns and calms the system. Lower back tension lets go as you expand the space into the pelvic floor.

This lesson removes anxiety and calms the system. Whatever pattern of breathing is informing your current state will shift. You can’t hold onto that pattern and also do the tapping and breathing. It's an effective way to cut across ruminating, shallow breathing, and holding.

For more on breathing and tapping, see The Body Pattern of Anxiety: Breathing and Tapping

A seesaw of the ribs with Dr. Feldenkrais’s four-part breathing, something that changes the state and invites a smooth excursion of the diaphragm. Once that feels smoother, the whole being reorients toward openness instead of resistance.

I love this lesson. My clients love this lesson. It involves imagining the expansion and widening of different parts of the lungs in all directions. This helps with digestion, posture, oxygen, tension in the face, and more. 

It’s a thought experiment for the most part, but so powerful in its effects. Your ribs will magically reveal the secret to easy breathing after this.

A gentle sliding of the shoulders accompanies slow exhaling and inhaling. The shoulders soften and let go as the ribs and diaphragm inhabit new space. This is a good lesson to do after working at a computer!

This also highlights how Moshe Feldenkrais uses variables and constraints to invite a fuller, whole-self movement by moving around a constraint, then watching what happens when you release it. It's a wonderful awareness of where you were holding and how you can reduce excess, unnecessary contraction.

This explores how we hold our breath. Funnily enough, we have habits around this as well. It’s a shorter version of Dr. Feldenkrais’s lesson, which I’ll add to this series in a little bit. It’s worth discovering your habits around this so you can more easily let go of it when it happens.

A lovely lesson that is actually vocalized, so you might want to do it in private! The sounds relate to different parts of the belly and chest. Everything starts to let go. Try it and see how you feel.

An absolutely fundamental skill is linking the pelvis and the head without excess tension, blocking, gripping, or bracing along the spine. This lesson guides you to sense an easy connection by pointing out how and where you’re holding. It’s very soothing to make this gentle rocking throughout your spine and ribs. It will help you organize the breathing, soften the ribs, and let go of tension in the neck.

I recommend using this lesson as a background skill for any of the oscillating lessons: 64, 67, 71, 73, 75.

This lesson is also under help for the neck.