On Breathing

I’ve been doing a lot of breathing lately and it’s been working out great. 10/10, would recommend.

Sarcasm aside, breathing is an art form. It requires focus and self-attunement. It’s the simplest of actions, and because of its simplicity is often taken for granted. Our bodies do it naturally. We can’t “forget to breathe” as many yoga teachers will warn their students not to do. We’re intelligent beings that way. But the way we breathe has tremendous effect on our mental outlook, physical performance and overall health. Something I’ve learned is that hazard breathing is a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario. Whether our bodies tense up and subsequently constrict our breath, or we breathe shallowly and recoil our bodies in reaction, breath and physiology have a lot to do with each other.

I’ve been taking Alexander Technique lessons for a few months now. At first I was consistent, attending lessons weekly. Now I book them sporadically. Alexander lessons are expensive and I have not yet published a great Canadian novel, leaving me with a starving artist budget. What is Alexander Technique (AT)? I struggle to put it concisely. The technique is a way of managing your posture so your body is moving well mechanically, but there’s much more to it than that. It’s a way to maintain poise and self awareness, making AT popular amongst actors. It’s a way to avoid figurative knee-jerk bodily compensation during exertion, making it a great way to target train in the gym. It’s a tool to allow air to enter and exit the body freely yet powerfully, earning the technique a following of singers and orators. Alexander Technique even has therapeutic benefits. When we go through trauma we often hold the memories in our bodies. This was a good thing hundreds of years ago, when it paid to be wary of your every move. But today holding onto trauma, to stress, to self-effacing beliefs is limiting, if not life ruining. Alexander Technique re-educates the body on how to hold itself easily and naturally, and re-educates the operator on how to recognize negative body habits and gently alter them.

The reason I signed up for AT lessons was not so profound. I had just been to the dentist and was told I had nearly ground my teeth to nubs. I could purchase a mouthguard, or figure out a way to quit grinding my teeth at night. I also have very vivid dreams most nights, which are a source of hilarity to my friends when I retell them the next day. The novelty of experiencing a Tom Cruise calibre feature film every night wears off after a while when it starts to feel like your waking hours are a vacation from being asleep. Call it a writer’s vivid imagination, call it being torked in the head, or call it being sensitive to the position of the moon and the tides of the ocean. Either way, sleeping was becoming exhausting. I needed to get to the bottom of things.

Alexander Technique illuminated all the nervous tics and twitches my body performed as a matter of course. I was so jittery! Foot tapping, hair pulling, palm clenching, leg wagging…even writing these things my body is tempted to perform them. They were symptoms of low-key anxiety. I won’t speculate as to the cause, because being alive itself is anxiety producing, let alone all the stuff that happens in it.

The tenents of Alexander Technique are, in a nutshell:

• Let the neck be free
• Allow the back to widen and lengthen
• Allow the shoulders to fan into width

It really helps to have an experienced, compassionate teacher manually do this for you. When we’re stuck in our habits, that becomes our sense of normality. When my teacher took my neck and gave it a pull there was so much crackling that I’m pretty sure I gained an inch of height just from my spine unfurling. It was something of a revelation, how much I’d been stooping and hiding my height. I really didn’t want to get taller. I was 5’10 when I started classes and I’m pretty sure I’m 5’11 now. I wanted to be a dainty flower, not a tall willowy tree.

I expressed as much to my teacher, who laughed and told me that there was little to do about it short of chopping me off at the knee. It probably sounds so strange, especially to shorter folks who would do anything to gain another inch of height, but AT gave me permission to be tall. It allowed me to own my height, to be comfortable in my body and think of treating my body kindly instead of looking for faults and railing against them.

Being tall, open, wide and calm had an immediate effect on my breathing. For one thing, it became more unconscious. We’re programmed to manage our breathing more or less, especially in yoga. While I agree it’s important to link breath to movement and not to stifle breath in order to produce a burst of power, telling people to breathe all the time is a bit redundant. When you open your chest and allow everything to move, breath just happens. It fills all your lungs, pushing outwards on the sides of your chest, expanding your whole rib cage. And it feels natural, not like a command that someone is telling you to do to the tune of their own personal drum.

Alexander Technique carries a lot of tips for deep, effective breathing. One I really like is “think of giving your internal organs a massage with each breath”. So neat, right? I had never thought of breath like that before, but that’s totally something it does. You need to be sitting tall and relaxedly in order to allow your breath to travel so deeply inwards. Your shoulders can’t be curled and you can’t be hunching forward or else your breath will be cut off. The more you simply think of lengthening and expanding, the more room your breath will have to fill you entirely. It’s the best life hack I’ve ever received.

AT has had a tremendous effect on my training at the dance studio (I dance recreationally but enjoy going as deep down the rabbit hole with training as I can). I learned how I was shooting myself in the foot by using my body in bizarre ways, neglecting to build smaller muscle groups because of the initial difficulty in activating them. I’ll say it again: our bodies are intelligent. If there’s an easier way to perform a task then our bodies will take that easier route. Being open, freeing my neck and back, and connecting my breath to each movement added a robustness that brought my dancing to life. It helps me tackle each conditioning exercise with purpose and confidence. And it helps me stay relaxed in the face, so that I don’t give it away that dancing is hard work instead of effortless floating.

I became the community manager a few months ago for a company called Zansors, who recently launched their Respa breathing sensor. I was immediately excited about the prospect, having just experienced what life impact proper breathing can make. The sensor uses complex algorithms to determine if the wearer’s breathing patterns are off, proven to be as effective as lab tests to procure the same data. This would make a wild difference for the training of endurance athletes such as marathon runners, rowers and triathletes. I also loved how the sensor illuminates the importance of breathing, linking scientific evidence to sport and performance. Breathing is part of the complete training picture, but most people don’t give it much thought. I wanted to let people know that there was another world of training potential that comes with focusing on form and breath using the technique that has, no exageration, changed my life.

Changing my breath, my posture and my habits has given me a sense of inner quiet that wasn’t there before. It’s taken my dance training from passable to purposeful. And it’s made me more self aware in the moment, making me a better friend, daughter and partner. What’s more exciting is there’s always room to improve. Alexander Technique reminds the student that nothing is wrong per say but simply different than it could be. Exploring yourself, exploring your body and exploring your mind are moment-to-moment gifts that bring you closer in touch with yourself.

One of my favourite sayings is “I don’t have a body. I am a body.” Alexander Technique has demonstrated this. How the mind, body and breath connect is so cool. So simple, yet so powerful.

Originally from my blog, aliceinthematrix.