Hello everyone and happy Spring! Pulitzer prize-winning poet Mary Oliver asks her readers “ Listen – are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?[i]” As we consider this week – a week that includes an official Yale Break Day – I encourage you to take a deep breath. To take this breath you can sit or stand or even lie down on your back. You can be inside or outside. Warmer weather has arrived so perhaps use this as an excuse to go outside. Just for a minute. Or maybe two. This breath may be very different from the other breaths you’ve been taking lately. It will take some preparation to get to it, but not much. So, choose your place and go there. And once you are settled take a breath, inhaling and exhaling through the nose, and trace the path of air moving from nostrils to lungs and back again. What does it feel and sound like? How does your body move in response to the breath? Our breath is tidal, washing in and out of us like the waves on the seashore. The Pandemic has drawn greater attention to this oft ignored, yet vital, physiological function. Ancient yogis studied the breath and found that, when controlled, it was a means to calming and balancing the nervous system.
Now straighten your torso and breathe in again. Feel air moving inwards, the movement of the abdomen and rib cage outwards and up as the lungs expand. With the exhalation the air moves outwards; feel the shoulders drop a bit while the rib cage and abdomen relax. Now for that deep breath. Inhale gently and deeply. Again, the lungs expand, slowly moving the abdominal muscles and rib cage outward and the chest cavity up a bit. If you are lying down on your back, you might notice how the lungs expand towards your back. Exhale, slowly, and the motions reverse. The chest and abdomen muscles draw inward, and the shoulders move down away from your ears. A lot of oxygen is now circulating through your bloodstream and you may feel a difference in your body. Try to continue breathing gently and deeply. Consider how you feel. Breathing techniques engage the brain as well as the vagus nerve to put a brake on our stress response. The effects can offer instantly relief and calm.
In the long run these techniques can tone the mind and body so that we can persist in a less agitated state, regardless of outer stimuli. They say that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and yet we walk all the time and often never get anywhere new. A journey requires intentionality. An inward journey to self-awareness and serenity is well within reach – and it starts with a single deep breath.
(Interested in learning more about the benefits of yogic breathing? Here is a short video by Stephen Parker on breath awareness: https://youtu.be/5pHsZDlUYwU)
[i] Mary Oliver (2006). “New and Selected Poems, Volume Two”, p.149, Beacon Press