I’m back with the penultimate, (I just so wanted to use this wonderful word today), story from The Rewilded Woman. And truly what could be more wild than the power of our breath. This absolutely free, innately human tool that provides us with life, moment after moment, is one of the greatest - and one of the most under utilized - miracles of our lifetime.
How we breathe, both naturally and in a controlled way, (called pranayama, one of the eight limbs of yoga identified in the yoga sutras and essentially how we direct life force around our body), has the power to completely change our health and how we feel physically and mentally for better or worse.
Conscious breathing calms the nervous system, reduces stress, lowers our heart rate, sharpens our focus, and helps us process emotions by activating the body's relaxation, (‘rest and digest’) response. Breathing and how we breathe is deeply connected to our ability to rest and the quality of our sleep. If you’ve read the wonderful book ‘Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art’ by James Nestor, you’ll have already explored all the arguments against ‘mouth breathing’ and its detrimental health impacts.
When we are not in control of our breath, we cannot feel like ourselves and this is because breathing is so intrinsically linked to the state of our nervous system. If our nervous system isn’t regulated, as in we are highly stressed, or we are in and out of the ‘fight, flight or freeze’ experience, or we are constantly in a state of hyper-vigilance then our breathing, our state of mind and our ability to just be ‘us’ is wildly and negatively impacted.
And this is why breathing is such a fundamental practice in the ancient Eastern sciences of Ayurveda and yoga. Western science is starting to catch up but you dear one don’t need to wait.
In yoga and Ayurveda, pranayama is defined as breath control and it acts as a bridge to our nervous system and can be summarized with the phrase, ‘when we breathe better, we feel better’. And when you feel better, you can relax into being unapologetically you.
Some of my favourite breathing patterns including counting the breath to maintain focus and reduce unhelpful thought patterns, sheetali breath, inhaling through the tongue or lips and exhaling out the mouth for cooling body, mind and emotions (#menopausehack), and nadhi shodhana or as it’s often called alternate nostril breathing for overall balance, focus and clarity. There are many many more breathing patterns (pranayama) available and they all create different qualities in the body and mind.
Breathing, in my view, is an entire system, an entire body of work which is so freely accessible to everyone and has such immediate positive effects on our wellbeing, that it is a vital practice to living unapologetically. Knowing how to control your breathing enables you to actively regulate your nervous system and that means that you are no longer at the whim of external forces and systems that do their best to destabilize you. And let’s be honest, the patriarchy is entirely designed to destabilize women, to have us second guessing ourselves, to make us feel small, to traumatize us into inaction. When women know how to breathe, we have the power to reclaim our agency and throw off the shackles of oppression. All with an inhale and an exhale. Wildly powerful stuff right?!
As this year begins to draw to a close, remember that you can begin again as yourself in any moment with just a single breath. Tightness can transform to expansion with a big inhale, stuckness can be released with an intentional exhale, stress can be reduced with slow deep breaths and suddenly we see magic and miracles when our breathing becomes mindful.