Gentle Breathing For Our Nervous System

Do you hold your breath after the exhale? That sometimes happens when we feel overwhelmed and like life is too much.

Do you hold your breath after you inhale, like maybe you're not sure about letting go of what you have even though the air is stale? Is it safe enough to let go and trust the inhale will come?

This guided practice explores our relationship with our breath and habitual nervous system stress through a lens of gentleness and kindness for ourselves.

Transcript

Let your body settle more deeply into whatever support that you have right now.

And a lot of the benefit of this somatic mindfulness is we can be aware of what the signals are.

I'm holding my breath.

If I'm signaling that there's danger here,

Then we notice that,

But then we also do something about that.

So we might smooth out our breath.

We might relax our gut and move our shoulders around a little bit.

Let our body soften so that we have room to breathe.

It's hard to breathe when our stomach muscles are clenched,

But then that might also set up a cascade of different feelings or sensations.

It can be very vulnerable to pay attention to our gut.

And some of the reason why we're out of our body a lot is because of stored trauma.

We don't really want to be paying attention to what's going on in our body.

So as we're coming in and doing these practices,

Part of it is just to notice what is my go-to.

If there is going to be one part of my body that's going to be most tense,

Which part is that?

We will go through our body and notice what happens when we bring our attention more directly into those parts of the body.

But we also notice that we're doing this practice with gentleness.

It's not like the inner critic comes in and goes,

Look what you're doing.

You're holding your breath again.

What's the matter with you?

We're not doing that.

We're just like,

Oh,

I'm holding my breath.

And then maybe we'll take a deeper in-breath and let our exhalation flow a little bit longer.

Part of this is developing this kind,

Intimate relationship with our body,

With ourselves.

And our body didn't just decide out of the blue to give us a hard time and hold our breath.

Holding our breath is a trauma response.

It's from years of stress in the body,

Not safe to breathe,

Hiding out,

Being in freeze.

So if that's the origin of this breath holding,

We could bring some gentleness into working with that as well.

That's my habit.

I understand why.

And I can look around and notice,

Is my body safe enough in this moment to take a deep breath,

Breath to let out some sound with the breath.

Take a deep breath in.

Or some kind of a sound.

Can I let my breath out and make some noise?

Can I let my body move a little bit with the breath?

Maybe inhaling with the arms up,

Stretching up through the rib cage,

Whatever you're moved to do.

Those little intercostal muscles between the ribs can get quite tight because we don't use them if we're not breathing deeply.

It's one of the things that often happens with yoga is that those muscles start to expand a little.

Same with breathing practice.

So as you're breathing in,

Can you notice the ribs moving a little bit more widely open around the front,

The sides,

The back,

Letting the breath go?

We're always just experimenting.

What is it that's going on?

How could I approach my experience with less judgment,

More kindness?

And what does it feel like now?

Just a few minutes of breathing a little bit more deeply.

And then the other part of this exploration is that there's no right or wrong answers here.

So if it makes you feel a little on edge or unnerved,

Then that's what it feels like.

If it feels like,

Oh,

I love that rush of oxygen.

I'm feeling a little bit more mobility.

It feels good.

That's another response that it might be.

Most of these responses have to do with the nervous system.

If you're feeling uneasy after doing that,

It could be that you've got a lot of tension in your body.

Maybe you have a habit of holding your breath at the end of the inhale or at the end of the exhale.

We do all of these things with our body unconsciously.

So if life is feeling like too full,

I can't really handle anything more,

Then sometimes we'll hesitate before we breathe in.

It's like,

I can't even breathe in.

So we get into that long exhale.

Maybe our left nostril is up and gets more activated.

We sigh.

That's a bit exaggerated,

But on a subtle level,

There might be some of that.

If you notice that you tend to hold your breath at the end of the exhale,

Without words so much,

But I mean,

The words are something like,

I'm willing to breathe in.

I can handle breathing in and letting go.

Notice that in your body.

Are you full up?

Is it okay to breathe in?

Can you breathe in deeply and then long exhale?

Let your breath go.

The pattern of holding the breath at the end of the exhalation is a little bit more left nostril,

More depressive.

Let's go back to just breathing normally,

However your breath is coming.

But if you hold your breath at the end of the inhale,

What does it feel like at the end of an inhale?

Can you afford to let go of the breath?

This is more on the anxious side.

So if you breathe in and then you kind of hold onto that for a moment,

And then you breathe out,

But then you breathe in again.

So one thing that might help with that is to notice that when we breathe out,

We maybe breathe out to three seconds or something.

And then we have another in-breath,

It just is here.

We can count on that.

Let the breath go without any hesitation.

So it's an exercise partly in trust.

And sometimes when I say those words,

My mind comes in and says,

Well,

Yeah,

But you don't know,

It could be your last breath.

Not guaranteed in that sense.

However,

Yogis say we breathe about 21,

600 times a day,

The average person.

So 21,

600 times every day that we're alive,

We have the evidence that after the out-breath comes an in-breath.

So we could let that be something that we know.

Noticing as you're coming to the end of the inhale,

Let your breath go.

And does that feel okay?

If it doesn't,

That's fine.

We're just experimenting.

We're messing with the breath a little bit to see what happens when we change the habit.

These habits of the nervous system don't make a lot of sense.

Because if we're feeling really because if we're feeling really full up and exhausted,

And we are holding our breath at the end of the exhale,

What we need is the inhale because that's the new oxygen.

Holding the breath is kind of the opposite of what we really need.

At the end of the inhale,

If you're holding the breath there,

That kind of anxiety holding in,

I'm not sure if I'm going to have another out-breath.

If I let the breath go,

Will I have a new in-breath?

So that's a bit of a different kind of hesitation.

Let your breath do whatever it's going to do without trying to make it smooth and continuous.

Just watch as your breath settles in again.

You might notice the sensations in your nostrils.

What does it feel like as your breath moves in and out?

You might notice the sensations in your chest and stomach area.

What parts of your body are moving with your breath?

When we're breathing diaphragmatically,

What it feels like is on the exhalation,

Our stomach softens back towards the spine.

On the inhalation,

There's a rise and expansion of the belly.

What parts of your body are moving?

And does it feel like you have enough room to breathe?

And let's go back now to softening the muscles of the body,

Bringing our awareness to the muscles.

Bring your attention away from the breath and into your body.

Is there any part of my body that's tight,

Tense?

Where do I feel my body?

Is there any part of my body that's tight,

Tense?

Where do I hold my tension?

Is it my jaw,

My neck and back,

My gut?

Notice if there's any change in your body now.

Quite often there is.

Either it's more relaxed,

Which is more common with the relaxation practice,

Or it might be more tense.

When we bring our awareness into the body,

It's not necessarily this glorious softening.

Sometimes we get more tension.

Notice the whole of your back body,

The back of your head,

Behind your ears,

The sides and back of your neck,

Large muscles of the upper back.

Notice the whole of your mid and upper back,

Behind your heart center.

If you take a few deeper breaths,

Notice if you can feel any movement in the lower ribcage at the back.

And bring your awareness down through the lower back,

Your buttocks,

To the back of your legs,

Down to your heels,

The back of your hands,

Up through the back of your arms so that you're aware of the whole of your back body.

Notice again now what's happening with your breath.

Often when we take our attention away from something,

It reverts back to the habit.

Then notice the whole front of your body,

The forehead,

Eyebrows and eyes,

Mouth and jaw.

Notice your collarbones,

The muscles in the front of the chest.

Of course,

Now we're coming back into the area of the body that moves with the breath,

Down through your stomach area,

Navel center,

Lower belly.

Notice as well the front of the arms and hands,

The front of your thighs,

Down to your toes.

Let's do a little bit of sweeping breath.

Bring your attention to the top of your head,

The crown of your head.

And as you exhale,

Let your awareness flow through your body,

Down through the soles of your feet.

You can do that in one big gush,

Kind of a big flow,

Right from head to toes.

You can go partway,

Just taking your time.

And then breathe in,

Bring your awareness all the way up through,

From the soles of your feet,

Through your legs,

Your torso,

Up through your spine,

To the top of the head.

Exhale,

Let that flow happen all the way through your body to the soles of your feet.

Imagine that any tension is washing away,

Top of your head,

All the way down through to your feet.

Through the back of the body,

Those muscles of the neck,

The upper back,

Back of the arms and legs,

The whole front body through the face,

The chest and belly,

The front of the arms and legs.

The whole interior space again,

From the crowns,

Through that central channel of the chakras,

Through the shoulders,

Through the hands,

The hips,

Through the toes,

Through the shoulders,

Through the hands,

The hips,

Through the toes and feet.

And then let go of that awareness movement,

Come back into noticing what's here now.

And it might be that you have a very challenging situation right now,

Your body's in pain,

Or there's something going on that's not as enjoyable as when your body feels rested and alive and soft and relaxed.

But coming back to that relationship that we have with our body,

No matter what it is that's going on with our body and breath,

To be present,

Kind,

Gentle.

If you had any kind of uneasiness when we were working with the breath,

Or any other part of the practice,

Offer yourself some softness around that as well.

This part of your nervous system is signaling it's not really okay to breathe and soften the belly.

When we think back on our life,

We might understand why that is,

But we don't need to understand.

We could just accept,

Okay,

That's what's going on.

And for these few minutes of the practice,

We can allow ourselves to have whatever it is that's going on.

We don't need to make it different.

We could just be here with ourselves.

You want,

You could put a hand or hands on your heart and offer that with the warmth of your hands.

And whether you feel like you're 90% gentle with yourself or 10% or something in the middle,

Just to offer yourself right now in this moment,

Your own kind,

Soft compassion.

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