Responsive breathing

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One of my all-time favorite go-to lessons for people with anxiety, stress, low back pain, fatigue in upright sitting, and general difficulties with breathing, speaking, or digesting. It involves a lot of exhalation so that the inhalation is spontaneous and unencumbered. The more exhaling you do, the more the system trusts the inhalation—and the natural survival of the organism. If you spend your whole day trying to manipulate your inhalation, or feeling like you’re not really breathing, you need this lesson. We all need this lesson!

TIP: A good follow-on lesson is 279 Mouth-nose variations for a full inhalation. Wonderful for calming and resetting the system.

(AY17)

This lesson invites many variations of the exhale and inhale in the belly and chest. It clears up all kinds of debris in the breathing pattern for clean, simple, liberated inhales and exhales! Part of this lesson is testing how many breaths you make in 15 seconds. Is it more than four? Some people say that's a sign of the stress response. Wherever you are with this marker it doesn't matter, just note if it changes by the end of the experiment.

It’s very calming to adjust the breathing like this.

For a wonderful complement to this lesson, do this one and then:
459 Easy rocking to soften your spine, jaw, breath

This lesson asks you to press every possible surface area of your ribs into the floor and use your breath to meet the pressure coming up from below. It's an amazing way to “massage” the entire rib cage as you press and expand into the floor. This helps with any tightness in the chest as well as digestion, posture, and letting go of tension.

(A variation on gluing the lungs.)

This lesson, like many others, frees the muscles of the abdomen from the movement of the diaphragm. You’ll get good at moving the belly in and out while inhaling, and then while exhaling. It’s worth doing this to unhook the habits we all carry around in the abdominal muscles.

You’ll feel so much freer and lighter at the end, even if you think you aren’t “doing” the movement. Just asking your nervous system these questions can invite tremendous shifts.

(London notes)

This lesson is more physical, with some interesting positions to play with. It can also be very effective to lengthen the torso, create space in the chest, and feel like you’re totally unwinding.

Don’t worry about doing it correctly, just ask your nervous system the questions and find out what happens. There is no failure here, just testing and refining your feedback.

(AY21)

Believe it or not, this lesson is all exhalation. Practice pushing the belly out and pulling it in while exhaling, allowing the inhalation to become more and more automatic, which is much safer than “trying” to breathe. You will find better posture, sleep, and digestion after this, not to mention an easier time speaking and singing.

After many, many experiments in exhaling, your system can’t help but love the inhalation! It’s also deeply soothing to remove any contrivance to the inhalation. Just let yourself “be breathed,” as Moshe would say.

(AY435)

This is a version of seesaw breathing. It’s a misnomer, really, because the belly and chest are see-sawing while the diaphragm is free to move. The variations include expanding and flattening the chest and belly in many positions, with many patterns of breathing. It will further the possibility of unhooking all the rigid patterns you have in the belly and the chest, allowing for smooth, easy passage of air in any position of life.

Additional note on breathing:

The way you breathe programs your nervous system and controls your metabolism. Most of us have rapid, shallow breathing patterns as a result of stress response conditioning. This is not an efficient way to live. 

Inefficiencies can develop in breathing when muscles other than the diaphragm take on a larger role.  If the muscles of the rib cage or abdomen are actively engaged, they can begin to supplant the diaphragm, causing the diaphragm to weaken. These muscles are not as well suited to a larger role in breathing, making each breath less coordinated and less efficient.  Inefficiencies can also develop if the muscles of the ribs or abdomen are fixed or held rigidly which can impede the diaphragm's movement.

The less you actively use the muscles of the torso for breathing, the more you will rely on the diaphragm and the stronger it will become.