Breathing
First up: if you are reading this, you’re probably breathing. Please do not feel like you are ‘bad at yoga’ because you ‘don’t get the breathing right.’ Breathing to stay alive is much more important than breathing to match your yoga teacher!
So why do yoga teachers and students obsess about breathing? Ancient philosophy identifies eight limbs of yoga. Asana (movement) is the third limb, and the one which most of us imply in our use of the word yoga. If you go to a yoga class that focuses on moving the body into different shapes, you’re doing asana. The fourth limb, pranayama, is breath control. There are lots of debates about whether it should be done before, during or after asana, but I’ll leave those for another time. My main thought today is this: most of us benefit mentally and physically from a few minutes spent focusing on breathing each day. Whether you do this standing on one leg, moving to and from a downward dog, or lying on the floor, your body is still in a specific posture (or asana). So go with the option that feels most helpful to you.
Returning to my opening statement, I’m aware that I often give verbal cues to breathe whilst moving the body. For example, ‘inhale as you lift your arms up, then exhale as you fold towards the floor.’ It’s a habit I’m trying to break, but it may take a while to get there! There are two main reasons why. Firstly, lots of my regular clients have respiratory conditions that mean they find it difficult to change the pace of their breathing. Secondly, adding breathing cues to an instruction can contribute to information overload: so many beginners, particularly those who have come to yoga lacking confidence in their ability to move their own body, tell me that it takes all their concentration to process information about where to put their limbs. If you’re a beginner with asthma, that’s a double-whammy. No wonder lots of people find yoga is less relaxing than they’ve been promised.
Another thought about those of you with asthma/allergies/COPD/long COVID: the act of deep breathing ‘in person’ can be quite stressful just because of the risk of infection or exposure to triggers. So for many of you, it might be more comfortable to do breathing practices in your own home, either as part of a live online class or in your own time. There are various yoga poses and breathing techniques that can help these conditions - but the precise prescription depends very much on the person, their condition, and its severity on any given day. So I haven’t written a ‘if you have X do Y’ in this post, because I’m not sure that helps much! However, if you DO want to explore how yoga could help your own breathing, I’m happy to chat with you on the phone or via Zoom, arrange an individual lesson online or in Acle, or suggest some online group classes that might suit your needs.
Where does all of this leave our classes? I’m going to make more of an effort to include distinct breathing activities into each class, but offer a range of poses from which to try them. I’m also going to keep avoiding excessive breath cues as part of my verbal patter. And if you’d like to build your own regular breathing practice away from our live classes, check out this great playlist from Sleepy Santosha. I’m a big fan of her asana (movement) videos, which are great for those of us living with chronic pain, and these pranayama videos are also well-paced. Do follow her online, and let me know how you get on with any breathing practices you try.
Go to @SantoshaSpirit 's channel to find the whole playlist.
Some of this content was originally published on Instagram in October 2023.