[Exploring Life] Breath Awareness: The quality of our breathing simultaneously affects body-mind-spirit. If our breathing is disturbed or stressed we feel the conscious and subconscious affects of this physically, mentally, and spiritually. A vibrant sense of health and well being originate in optimal breathing; abnormal breathing creates disease and unease. Optimal breathing practices are an essential means to explore the physical development of our body, the imaginative development of our mind, and the more intuitive and subtle development of our spirit. Optimal breathing is the confluence of body-mind-spirit.

Breathing is the only function that is controlled by both the autonomic and central nervous system, that is, it can operate automatically without any attention be given to it, or it can be brought under conscious control. Breathing is both conscious and subconscious; we can remain completely unaware of it and our breathing manages on its own, or we can bring our attention to it in order to observe and develop its power. Breath awareness, or developing the capacity to attend to the quality and nature of our breathing, is a fundamental step toward the ideal of optimal breathing.

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.