Conscious Connected Breathwork — the one with the squirrel
Sometimes, I feel as though I just can’t do it. I don’t even want to. Other times, I feel as though I don’t want to do anything else but that. My relationship with conscious connected breathwork* is fairly new. We officially met during lockdown, mainly because I was bored and needed something to do — or so my thoughts went. Little did I know that I needed conscious connected breathwork far more than I could ever acknowledge. I’m still learning what I get out of it. It’s the gift that keeps giving.
I breathe lying down and sitting up. I didn’t used to. I used to only do conscious connected breathing lying down. I thought that was the ‘done way’. I didn’t realise how much you could get from doing it sitting up. Both positions give me something different.
When lying down, I often leave my body or disappear into a long outbreath. My inhales can feel as though they’re my wings flapping hard as if to take flight. ‘Inhale! Bigger Inhale! Another Inhale!’ (There are exhales in there but I focus on the inhales.) And then at some point, it happens. I just go. It’s as if the out-tide goes further and further until there’s nothing. It’s totally silent. In that moment, when there is nothing and I hardly seem to need to breathe, I take off. I love that silent soar. I also love that first lift! The first time it happened consciously, I felt as though I was flying over houses. I nearly flew into the rooftops — luckily I just missed them, but it was a close one.
Recently, in one of the Monday morning breathworks with Breathing Space, after the breathwork session, I mentioned that I often ‘take off’ when lying down. Hannah Nedas, who had led the session, recommended that I experiment breathing sitting down as a way of staying grounded in my body. It was such a great suggestion. I’ve been practicing both ways ever since. The frequency and vibration of staying close to, or in, my body is different. Like a low hum, comforting, cozy and warm.
The first time I left my body while sitting down was a revelation. I didn’t know it could it happen sitting down; I thought that leaving my body was a lying down thing. There I was, quite content and grounded, focusing on my inhales and letting my mind notice itself. And then whoosh, up I went, high up into the trees. It happened so quickly! They were conifer trees. Huge tall redwood type trees. Giant ones. The trunks at the bottom were fairly bare, with some distance between them. But as you moved upwards, the branches connected, criss-crossed together into a huge pine-needle canopy.
I found myself playing with a squirrel. ‘Hello little squirrel’, I said as I arrived. ‘What do you want?’ I asked. ‘Come with me,’ it said with a sharp head nod. So I went. I wasn’t a squirrel. Or maybe I was? I was me, but not quite human. I was scurrying around on all fours. I had to, so that I didn’t fall off the branches. Where the squirrel went I followed, jumping through the branches chasing after it. That was the game — a cross between version of tag and hide-and-seek. At some point, the dynamic changed and now I could decide the chase. The squirrel ran after me and couldn’t catch me. We were both exhilarated that I had mastered the branches enough to be this fast!
*Conscious connected breathwork typically involves breathing with a wide open mouth, without any gaps or pauses at the top of bottom of inhales and exhales, full body breaths, focusing on active inhales and passive inhales. As is often suggested, imagine your breathing to be like a circle, where the inhale and exhale connect and join, much like waves on the shore, coming in and going out, coming in and going out.