Take a breath! Anne Lowry Parr takes us through the fundamentals of healthy breathwork - Breath & Movement

One of the most effective tools for health is one we use all day long, every day of our lives, whether we are waking or sleeping. It's our breath!

If breath is such an effective way to greater health and well-being, and we all do it every day, all day long, then how come we aren't all as healthy, wealthy, wise and good-looking as we want to be? What do we need to know to transform the everyday breath into the marvelous tool for transformation, health, and radiant aliveness?

A BRIEF HISTORY OF BREATH

In the beginning, the Creator had a marvelous plan to teach us to breathe fully and completely with each and every breath we take. That brilliant plan was intended to unfold naturally at the moment of our birth and within the next 5-10 minutes afterward. The plan went like this.

Emerging from the safety of your mother's womb at the moment of your birth, you were still connected to her by the life-giving umbilical cord, which had provided you with all the nutrients and oxygen you needed for the previous nine months. In these critical first moments of your life outside the womb, the umbilical cord was still providing you with oxygen as it gave you its one final gift-time to learn to breathe, fully, gently, and naturally on your own.

If you were born through natural childbirth, your introduction to breathing may have gone something like this. Still receiving all the oxygen you needed from the umbilical cord, you tried out your lungs by taking your first breath. That breath no doubt felt very odd to brand new lungs, so you may have cried out and stopped breathing again. After a moment, you breathed in again, a tiny breath. Then you took another, a bit larger this time. Then another, and and another, until finally, in just a few moments you had learned to use your lungs fully. An onlooker would have been able to see your tiny chest, back, ribs and abdomen rise and fall with every complete breathwave you made as you learned to use your lungs to their full capacity in a very natural and gentle learning process, just the way nature intended. At this point, the umbilical cord began to wither and withdraw, having been allowed to completely fulfill its purpose. Babies who learn to breathe in this synchronous natural way learn that it is safe to breathe in deeply, and they grow up trusting that it is safe to drink in lots of breath, lots of love, lots of prosperity, abundance and all that nurtures them!

Many of us were not that fortunate, however. Most of us began life in a hospital delivered by a male doctor, during a time in medical history when childbirth was regarded more as a medical emergency than as a natural process. In this scenario, intervention and interruption of the natural birth processes were considered the "thing to do." You may have been induced, held back, cut out of the womb by caesarian section, or pulled out by forceps. After nine months of floating with your back and spine in a rounded position, you may have been abruptly pulled up by your heels and slapped on your rump, producing vertigo and great physical pain. Then, rather than being allowed to learn to breathe in the gentle way described above, your umbilical cord may have been immediately severed, converting your first breath from a natural occurrence to a matter of life and death. You had to breathe now with those brand new lungs. No time for gentleness anymore. And that first breath hurt. It felt like fire in your tiny chest. In order to live, you had to breathe, and in order to breathe, you had to hurt.

So the first lesson you may have learned about breath, and about life, in that type of birth, was that it hurt! To cope with that you probably adjusted by breathing in very, very small breaths, and in a very contracted way. You learned to take in just enough breath to stay alive, but no more. You had already learned that it was too painful to take in a lot of breath (which equals taking in a lot of health, a lot of aliveness, a lot of love, abundance, or anything else which would make life truly rich and fun!).

That is why so many of us today are shallow breathers. That is why, when faced with a challenging or painful situation, the first thing many of us do is stop breathing. Have you noticed?

Now, take a deep breath: here's the good news. It is an easy and joyful process to learn to breathe fully and completely, and to access the benefits of greater health and well-being!

BREATHING 101

Now that you know it is possible, and preferable, to breathe more fully, more deeply, and more often, you are equipped to begin noticing your own breathing. That is step one. You might want to place little signs or post-it notes in places where you'll be likely to see them often--on your desk, your mirrors, and in your car. They can say "BREATHE!", "Are you breathing?", or "Take a Deep Breath", or anything else to remind yourself to breathe more often and more deeply. Anytime you have a spare moment, reflect on your breath. You can do this waiting in line at the grocery store or post office, waiting in your car at a red light, or while you're waiting on hold on a phone call.