Breathing: Breath Awareness

[Explor­ing Life] Breath­ing nor­mally occurs out­side of our con­scious aware­ness. Under nor­mal cir­cum­stances we do not focus our atten­tion on how we are breath­ing. If our minds were required to be fully engaged in man­ag­ing our breath­ing we would have dif­fi­culty per­form­ing even the most rou­tine of tasks. The assump­tion that breath­ing is a sub­con­scious activ­ity that requires no con­scious inter­ven­tion is, how­ever, false and poten­tially self-destructive.

It is com­mon to develop abnor­mal breath­ing pat­terns that can remain out­side of our own con­scious awareness.[1] Nat­ural breath­ing is a thresh­old lead­ing to health, heal­ing and well being; abnor­mal breath­ing is a pre­scrip­tion for ill­ness, dis­ease, emo­tional dis­tur­bances, impaired think­ing pat­terns, a weak mem­ory, frag­ile social inter­ac­tions, and tainted expe­ri­ence. [2] Lack of aware­ness with respect to our breath­ing habits is a fun­da­men­tal prob­lem; the devel­op­ment of breath aware­ness is the ini­tial step toward the recov­ery of nat­ural breathing.

70 per­cent of the waste that our bod­ies gen­er­ate is removed by the breath. Only 30 per­cent is removed by sweat and elim­i­na­tion. [3]

What is Breath Awareness?

In sim­ple terms, breath aware­ness is the abil­ity to notice and observe the char­ac­ter of our breath­ing in any given moment. In this sense, when we move our atten­tion onto our breath, we notice whether is is shal­low, deep, hur­ried, or being held (hold­ing or stop­ping the breath) smooth, or irregular.

The char­ac­ter of our breath­ing has a direct and imme­di­ate influ­ence on our body chem­istry, and there­fore men­tal and emo­tional state of mind. Breath, in this sense, is insep­a­ra­ble from how we feel and what we think. All feel­ing is thought; all thought is feel­ing. For exam­ple, chronic shal­low breath­ing induces an acidic and toxic state within the body, which trig­ger an unde­sir­able range of feel­ings and emo­tions, and den­i­grates our abil­ity to think clearly and calmly. Chronic shal­low breath­ing there­fore ulti­mately impairs our social envi­ron­ment and qual­ity of experience.

Unless we learn breath aware­ness and develop prac­ti­cal skills to con­sis­tently encour­age the effec­tive man­age­ment of breath­ing, we fall prey to a range of neg­a­tive influ­ences. Breath is the thresh­old of body, mind, spirit, envi­ron­ment, and expe­ri­ence. In this sense, breath aware­ness is the ini­tial pre­req­ui­site to expe­ri­ence the essence of liv­ing. To remain unaware of the qual­ity of our breath­ing is to neglect the expe­ri­ence of being fully alive.

Breath aware­ness means that our atten­tion is com­pletely focused on breath­ing in the present moment. Our sense of aware­ness must be, how­ever, dis­cern­ing. Dis­cern­ment invites a higher level of aware­ness in order that we may con­sciously observe, sense, and clar­ify the spe­cific qual­i­ties of breath with­out inter­fer­ence. Through dis­cern­ment we rec­og­nize and can describe the spe­cific char­ac­ter and attrib­utes of our breath­ing pat­terns, and travel with those phys­i­cal sen­sa­tions to see how they are influ­enc­ing the qual­ity of our thoughts and emotions.

The spe­cific skill or capac­ity being devel­oped through breath aware­ness is called pro­pri­o­cep­tion (from the Latin pro­prius mean­ing own + recep­tive or per­cep­tion). Pro­pri­o­cep­tion is a form of per­cep­tion that senses stim­uli aris­ing within the body. For exam­ple, if you are blind­folded and begin mov­ing your arms is var­i­ous direc­tions, through pro­pri­o­cep­tion you can sense the posi­tion of your arms as they move through space. Though you can­not lit­er­ally see your arms mov­ing, you can sense both their move­ment and posi­tion in any given moment. Pro­pri­o­cep­tion lies at the root of breath awareness.

Breath aware­ness is there­fore the capac­ity to explore the innate inter­re­la­tion­ships and con­nec­tions that exist in the fab­ric of the body­mind. Breath and thought are not sep­a­rate; breath and feel­ing are not sep­a­rate. To be dis­cern­ing of breath­ing is to inhabit the source and essence of both thought and feeling.

Cul­ti­vat­ing Breath Awareness

Cul­ti­vat­ing breath aware­ness means to con­sis­tently improve our abil­ity to be aware of and rec­og­nize spe­cific breath­ing pat­terns, and the effects of those pat­terns on our being. This means we must learn to extri­cate our­selves from the vagaries of every­day life, observe the char­ac­ter of our own breath­ing pat­terns, and develop the abil­ity to eval­u­ate the qual­ity and effec­tive­ness of our breath­ing pat­terns. The result is the abil­ity to label our own breath­ing as being deep and relaxed, or per­haps shal­low and irregular.

Some­times (excerpt)
Some­times if you move care­fully through the for­est,
breath­ing like the ones in the old sto­ries,
who could cross a shim­mer­ing bed of leaves with­out a sound,
you come to a place whose only task is to trou­ble you with tiny but fright­en­ing requests,
con­ceived out of nowhere but in this place begin­ning to lead every­where.
(David Whyte 2003)

The skill of breath aware­ness is a kind of real-time in the moment sur­veil­lance tool of the body, mind and spirit. This can be learned in quiet moments of retreat as well as in the midst of the stresses and ten­sions of our busy-ness. Breath aware­ness is an inter­jec­tion into what­ever is hap­pen­ing, a resolve to stop and assess, a strate­gic inter­rup­tion in the onslaught of demands on our time. The more fre­quently we inter­ject and sur­vey our state of breath­ing the more pow­er­ful our sense of breath aware­ness becomes.

Cul­ti­vat­ing breath aware­ness is the con­scious intro­duc­tion of exer­cises that cre­ate a space for dis­cern­ment and deeper lev­els of body con­scious­ness. In other words, we decide to make breath­ing and the improve­ment of breath­ing a focus of atten­tion and prac­tice. Many ancient tra­di­tions such as Yoga have embraced spe­cific kinds of breath­ing tech­niques as a means to heighten our sen­si­tiv­ity to breath. What is most impor­tant, how­ever, is deter­min­ing which breath­ing exer­cises have the great­est res­o­nance in our own lives.

The goal of breath aware­ness is to cre­ate the abil­ity to mon­i­tor our breath­ing pat­terns in any given moment. The prac­tice of exer­cises allows for con­scious devel­op­ment in a con­trolled space. How­ever, breath aware­ness should become a habit of mind in every­day life so that when unex­pected or dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances arise we instantly begin to mon­i­tor the qual­ity of our breath. This is the first step toward gain­ing con­trol and exer­cis­ing power over the bar­rage of sit­u­a­tions we face in through­out the con­flu­ence of life.

Exer­cises for Breath Awareness

1. Wit­ness­ing the Breath: This is the most basic and per­haps most essen­tial exer­cise for devel­op­ing breath aware­ness. Elim­i­nat­ing all dis­trac­tions, we sim­ply sit (or lie down) and fol­low our breath­ing. We invite dis­cern­ment by ask­ing spe­cific ques­tions related to the qual­ity of a breath­ing. How does the breath feel as it enters, pauses and leaves the body? Are there points of ten­sion or stress else­where in the body as result of the breath? Can I feel a rela­tion­ship between the qual­ity of my breath and the kinds of thoughts that are mate­ri­al­iz­ing in my mind? Is my body and mind still enough to main­tain focus on my breath?

What is most impor­tant in this exer­cise is embrac­ing a calm spirit of inquiry. The spe­cific ques­tions being asked are less impor­tant than devel­op­ing the abil­ity to impro­vise ques­tions and calmly fol­low the line of inquiry sug­gested by them. It is highly likely that dif­fer­ent ques­tions may emerge through sub­se­quent prac­tice ses­sions. In this sense, each wit­ness­ing ses­sion is unique and there is some­thing new to be dis­cov­ered in each one.

Wit­ness­ing the breath does not involve a con­scious manip­u­la­tion or desire to con­trol it (con­trolled breath­ing). At this point the essen­tial task is to focus on watch­ing the breath and observ­ing with pre­ci­sion the effects on our mind and emo­tions. In this sense, wit­ness­ing the breath is in a sense a self-directed form of med­i­ta­tion that has a strong impro­vi­sa­tional and mind­ful spirit. Though we are not attempt­ing to focus on a sin­gle object of per­cep­tion, we are focused on cre­at­ing the opti­mal con­di­tions for discernment.

2. Breath Aware­ness is the Foun­da­tion of Fit­ness: Move­ment of any kind is impos­si­ble with­out breath­ing. The qual­ity of our breath has a dra­matic impact on the qual­ity of our move­ment. Often, phys­i­cal fit­ness rou­tines do not place breath and breath­ing as the most basic ele­ment of all fit­ness train­ing. Breath­ing is the most essen­tial source of all fitness.

In the pre­vi­ous exer­cise, a quiet space free of dis­trac­tions was cre­ated in order to allow the direct per­cep­tion of breath. We do not always sit in quiet spaces, so it is impor­tant to trans­fer the aware­ness being fos­tered int he pre­vi­ous exer­cise into move­ments com­mon to our daily rou­tine. For exam­ple, the sim­ply act of walk­ing is an oppor­tu­nity to prac­tice breath aware­ness and com­pare the walk­ing breath to the sit­ting breath. In this sense, we are extend­ing our dis­cern­ment of breath­ing into forms of move­ment, such as phys­i­cal exercise.

3. Breath Aware­ness in Every­day Life: Breath aware­ness may also be exer­cised in moments of stress and anx­i­ety. In fact, this realm is per­haps the most essen­tial since breath is the most essen­tial and effec­tive tech­nique for reduc­ing the neg­a­tive impacts of stress, ten­sion, and anx­i­ety. We can­not con­trol every­thing that hap­pens to us, but we can always con­trol our breath­ing if we choose to learn how to.

Some­times a phys­i­cal trig­ger can be use­ful. For exam­ple, when I feel con­fronted with a chal­leng­ing sit­u­a­tion, I touch the tip of my thumb to the tips of my first two fin­gers of my right hand. Over time and though rep­e­ti­tion, this has become a habit­ual and sub­con­scious response. In my iso­lated prac­tice ses­sion, I always prac­tice breath­ing, and other con­tem­pla­tive tech­niques, with these fin­gers touch­ing. In the real world, where I am not in con­trol of the sur­round­ing events, I con­nect the same fin­gers as a reminder to remain mind­ful and focused. This is a phys­i­cal aid that imme­di­ately invokes a relax­ation response, and with vary­ing degrees of suc­cess, it brings breath aware­ness into real-time experience.

Ide­ally, what I believe to be most impor­tant with breath aware­ness, and any other form of dis­cern­ment, is devel­op­ing the abil­ity to bring the lev­els of calm dis­cern­ment prac­ticed in the con­trolled wit­ness­ing exer­cise directly into the more mer­cu­r­ial world of sit­u­a­tions and cir­cum­stances that emerge around us. Thus, breath aware­ness is always mas­tered in the present moment, in the now of what­ever may be hap­pen­ing to us.

Breath Aware­ness: Summary

• Breath­ing lies at the root of human func­tion and impacts our phys­i­cal, men­tal, emo­tional, and spir­i­tual well being.
• Breath aware­ness means focus­ing our atten­tion in order to impar­tially observe the nature and qual­ity of our own breath­ing habits.
• An impor­tant goal of breath aware­ness is to become con­scious of pat­terns of breath­ing that are abnormal.
• Deeper lev­els of aware­ness are cre­ated by impro­vis­ing ques­tions and pur­su­ing those ques­tions within breath aware­ness exer­cises. The mind remains curi­ous, yet impar­tial. This fos­ters greater inti­macy and sen­si­tiv­ity with breathing.
• Breath aware­ness is a way to develop higher lev­els of pro­pri­o­cep­tion (or self-perception), an essen­tial capac­ity in mind­ful­ness, med­i­ta­tion and basic relaxation.

Notes

1. There is a great deal of mount­ing sci­en­tific evi­dence that reveal the dan­ger­ous and dis­as­trous effects of abnor­mal breath­ing on the body and mind. Through­out Per­fect breath­ing: trans­form your life one breath at a time, the authors pro­vide an exten­sive sum­mary of the increas­ing body of sci­en­tific evi­dence reveal­ing abnor­mal breath­ing as a root cause of var­i­ous degen­er­a­tive dis­eases, var­i­ous ill­nesses, a weak­ened immune sys­tem, as well as emo­tional and men­tal disturbances.

2. See Breath­ing: Abnor­mal Breathing

3. Per­fect breath­ing: trans­form your life one breath at a time, 2009.