From Sceptic to Believer to Advocate to Practitioner: Discovering the Power of Breath

As, among other things related to my practice, I write about breathwork and am currently researching for the upcoming article about differing (but overlapping) functions that various breathing techniques serve/may serve, I wanted to pause and share a story of my own relationship with breathwork.

I first encountered breathwork in yoga setting. For a couple of years, I was trying out various types of yoga with different instructors and teachers until I finally found ‘the one.’ There was nothing wrong with the previous ones I ‘tried out’; it was a simple matter of the fact that their specific offer and approach were different to which I was seeking. No different than me preferring americano coffee while somebody else may prefer flat white. Both are good at being what they are, but they are not the other.

My motivation for seeking out a yoga teacher was that I wanted to learn to stand on my head. No, I am not joking (full disclosure – I never did and eventually moved on).

It started as a little self-challenge vanity project.

The funny thing is, those previous yoga teachers and instructors I ‘tried out’ but didn’t stick with were probably better placed to give me the very thing I was looking to gain; the skill to get into the headstand position and remain there for some time than the teacher I ended up staying with for a period of three years.

Only after a while, when reflection became possible, I realised that the process of 'searching' delivered me not what I wanted, but what I needed. As cliché as it sounds, that's my truth.

With those other teachers and instructors, I would’ve been a client while they would’ve been the provider of the service I sought to get.

But something inside me – I can only assume it was something a bit deeper than the surface level a mind whim – kept on looking for ‘something else’ and ‘something else’ and ‘something else’. I didn’t know what it was until I finally found it.

It was a FEELING that indicated to me that I finally found the right one for me.

My all-time favourite film is The Karate Kid. The 1984 original.

And the teacher my feeling told me was the right one for me became my Mr. Miyagi.

Not an instructor.

Teacher.

Mentor.

I didn’t feel like his client.

I felt like a disciple. Like an apprentice.

Anyway, back to the story.

I would go to the ‘class’ once a week, on Tuesdays. The place where he practiced was just over an hour’s drive away, and the route would take me over a mostly barren, bare, imposing mountain with winding roads where driving at speed any faster than 25-30 mph was unwise, and then through the most magical of valleys, and them back up again. Plus, it was a given that some sheep would be taking their time crossing the narrow roads; sometimes with their lambs, depending on time of year. Every now and again, I’d see a herd of wild horses in not-too-far a distance. Magnificent Earthlings. And the general view that would open as I’d reach the top of the mountain before the inevitable descent was breathtaking. If I remember right, it was on one of those drives that I finally truly appreciated the meaning and the possible coining of the word ‘breathtaking’; the meaning finally landed from my mind and into my body. I have been very careful when I choose to use that word since; I will fight its trivialisation for as long as I live.

I came to call Tuesdays ‘my yoga days’, even though the actual class would only last 90 minutes. But the experience would begin well before the ‘class’ time. It would begin when I got up in the morning and would find myself mindful not to overeat before yoga. I’d find myself being intentional in how I would prepare to leave the house for it. Then the breathtaking drive. Then the slower, more grounded walk back to the car. Then the drive back over the same mountain that held such power so to pull me out of my head and into the here and now.

The whole of my Tuesday had become a ritual without my planning for it; as if without my explicit input or thought.

For the first three months of my ‘classes’, we would do little more other than sit in a lotus position in front of each other and alternate between talking and breathing. At that point, my body wasn’t used to sitting in such position, so I’d squirm and shift every so many minutes when my hips and knees would begin protesting while he sat perfectly still the whole 90 minutes, grounded and level. For the first three months, not only did he not show me how to begin learning to do a headstand, but he didn’t even get me into any asanas. Asana being a Sanskrit word originally meaning ‘seat’ that, in the Westernised yoga ‘traditions’ eventually became to mean yoga poses. I fancied that word because I felt cool saying it; it’s exotic. Not like the boring word ‘pose’. I assume I felt – without giving it much thought – like ‘doing asanas’ was much cooler than ‘doing poses’. It made me feel like using it indicated to ‘outsiders’ I was a member of this exclusive, somewhat mystical, veiled club.

My teacher always called them ‘poses’. Steadfastly.

For the first three months, we’d sit facing each other, talking and breathing. Whatever topic would naturally arise, we’d eventually wonder off into Vedic philosophy and how the meanings contained within it show up in our lives in the proverbial today. Then we’d breathe. Then he’d share some other little bit from the Yogic thought tradition and we’d ponder that. Then we’d breathe again.

For the first three months, each ‘class’, simultaneously while alternating between talking and breathing, I’d catch some semi-dissociated part of my brain thinking, ‘Wtf is all this about?! All I wanted was to learn to stand on my head.’

Still, every week I came back. There was something that compelled me.

When the fourth month started, during one session, he finally suggested that I get into a pose. My mind sprinted right back to, ‘Ah, finally, I’m gonna learn some stuff that others can’t do.’ When he suggested that I get into what’s in the Westernised approaches is generally referred to as ‘Bow Pose’ (I had to look this up: in Yogic tradition the word for it is Dhanurasana’, where you lie on your belly and grab your ankles with your hands while lifting your chest and thighs off the ground, I felt it was a bit of a ‘boring’ pose that anyone can do, but I bit my tongue thinking it was at least a start.

So I got on my belly, grabbed my ankles with my hands, and stated pulling my feet up and towards. I had never been the most flexible of people, so I soon reached my limit. When I finally gave up forcing and declared that ‘that’s all I can do’, my teacher retorted that I can definitely do more if I applied the things we were talking and doing over the previous three months. I continued to try pulling on my feet with my hands more, but there was no more give, and I was getting frustrated by his seemingly indifferent claim that I could do more. As I struggled, he would calmly observe and occasionally remark that I still wasn’t applying what we’ve been doing in the run up to this. I continued not knowing what the hell he was on about.

Until, finally, he said, ‘You’ve been holding your breath for most part.’

Indeed, he was right. I have been holding my breath without even noticing.

So when I finally got my breath back from holding it, he slowly guided me into intentional, slow, rhythmic breathing and told me to try the bow pose again. As he observed me begin using force to pull on my ankles with my hands again, he told me to stop pulling and just hold my ankles and slowly lift my chest and thighs off the floor and allow my back to arch as it naturally would as my chest and thighs rise. And breathe. Just breathe to the rhythm into which I settled with his guidance. Throughout, I was still in my head, mentally ticking the check list: ‘don’t pull’, ‘lift thighs from the hips’, ‘don’t forget to breathe’, ‘don’t lose breath rhythm’, ‘slowly in’, ‘slowly out’, ‘notice how the belly expands’, ‘notice how the chest expands’, ‘control the exhale’, ‘don’t lose rhythm’, notice how the chest and belly deflate’…

Until, suddenly, I felt as if lying on the surface of a calm ocean and being gently rocked up and down by tiny waves. And with that feeling came a vision – as if it came from the outside of me; as if it was presented in front of me – of that very vast, shimmering ocean water and me, just being rocked by the calm waves. It was so, so strange, and so magical at the same time. I was both ‘in it’, feeling it, and, at the same time, I was a nearby observer, just watching this serene scene. I remember starting to laugh. Child-like laugh, unburdened, un-analytical. Just in the here and now. Eventually, my mind returned and I found a thought in there, ‘Ooooooh, NOW I get it.’

And my back was arched beyond anything I could’ve ever imagined my body capable of. Without the slightest tension in my arms; without any force being applied.

It was then that my Sceptic softened.

And it’s softening opened me up to the idea that there are more ways of knowing than that to which we are accustomed.

*

The ancient teachers knew thousands of years before science has even started scratching the surface.

And my body knew.

Because our bodies are ancient organisms whose memory goes much further back than that of our culturally conditioned minds.

There is no other such knowing than body knowing.

*

Two years later, when completing the research project for my BSc in Psychology dissertation, I learnt that it was the breathwork element of yoga practice that was found to be positively correlated with emotional intelligence, i.e., practitioners who engaged in more breathwork as part of their yoga practice were found to be more emotionally intelligent than practitioners who focused on the breathwork element less. While no claims could be made about the causation from the then-existing body of evidence, i.e., it is unclear whether the practice of breathwork causes higher emotional intelligence or whether those who posses higher emotional intelligence are more likely to engage in the breathwork element, the association was strong. And while I have my intuitions about causation, I also have biases, so I wouldn’t dare make claims without evidence.

(I just had to pause to add ‘look up up-to-date evidence’ to my to-do list)

Another year later, I happened upon James Nestor’s book ‘Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art. My first reaction, while I read, was immense anger. Anger that our medical systems do not know these things; anger that this knowledge is not common knowledge.

As time went on and algorithm did what it does, I became exposed to more knowledge, both scientific and traditional, and opportunities to experience it.

Eventually – it felt as if it was always going to be that way, well before I knew – I trained as a facilitator and a space holder.

Today, I am writing a Phd proposal to research breathwork because I cannot bare the thought of eventually coming to an end of my life without doing everything in my power to contribute towards the body of evidence that could, hopefully, even if not within my lifetime, lead to these things becoming common knowledge and accessible to all. Whether I succeed in getting the funding, especially given the current state of academia and the broader world, remains to be seen. But I’ll sure try.

*

 At some point, my Sceptic left for good. I don’t know when; I failed to notice our parting moment. The moment when it being there changed to it being there no longer.

I just know it’s been a while. As if in a different lifetime.

*

If you’d like to experience breathwork, see my invitation here:

https://www.pub-lish.com/en/read/e6e13d4c-7490-4c4a-a802-fa034a37fa18

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