February Check-in | Breathwork
(La Honda, CA)
For January, I wanted to focus on Immunity and Sleep because of seasonal changes, transitioning from the festive part of the year, and COVID. I could have written even more on both of those topics, which I then condense for my Instagram content. When writing on Immunity, I remembered one active health technique that could help with Immunity and Sleep, which is Breathwork. Breathwork is a physiological tool you can use at any point of the day, whether before bed, when stressed at work, or while in the shower after a long day. There are many great practices to follow for meditation, some of my favorite and beloved practioners are Thich Nhat Hanh and Ram Dass.
Two books I would recommend by them that discuss breathwork in practice are Peace is in Every Breath: A Practice for Our Busy Lives by Thich Nhat Hanh (2012) and Be Here Now by Ram Dass (1978). Peace is in Every Breath has much more breathwork activities than Be Here Now, but Be Here Now is full of beautiful life lessons and art that can help you visualize the breathwork you are doing. Both books were some of the first literature works I looked at when beginning and developing my practice.
Now off to the Breathwork shall we!
On top of boosting Immunity and Sleep through Spellwork and Herbalism, another great way to improve you Immune system is through Oxygenation (crazy!) Humans Oxygenate daily, through breathing. Everyday we breathe in constant repetition, cleansing and refreshing our cells, improving circulation, increasing brain grey matter, decreasing cortisol (when slow!), and new studies are showing that simply breathing can decrease cancer and tumors (source). Something important here is that breathing decreases our cortisol decreasing our overall stress. Decreasing our overall stress improves our emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being. I think breathwork is especially important for practitioners to practice, as breathwork aids in spiritual experiences, craft, and any ritual. Breathe can become a guide to aiding the body when a spiritual experience can become overwhelming of jarring. When I tell friends of mine to breathe and meditate, they always say they do not have the time, and that is when I bring up the classic yogi saying "Make it double then!" The great thing about breathwork is that, even if it sounds like a chore, it can be easy, quick, and hugely beneficial (I am guilty of this!)
Here is a quick and easy meditation to practice breathwork for the practitioner and non-practitioner, which can be done anywhere:
With this in mind, there are ways to breathe more with what you are doing throughout the day to decrease your stress and increase your immunity. Inspired by Peace is in Every Breath, one practice that I will recommend here is Breathe in What your Doing! Exactly What you are Doing! For example, if you are driving home from work and you are stressed about friends or work, take a moment to just notice your breath while your driving. Yes, driving seems like a hectic task--but your actually concentrating more on driving than your usual day dreaming. Simultaneously, you are taking more control over your breath and using it as a physiological reset. You can breath in through your nose and out through your mouth, noticing each breath inhale and exhale, while also being mentally awake behind the wheel. Noticing your breath while driving should not be so distracting that it takes away from driving (IF IT IS STOP), actually the oxygenation from breathing should help you drive better or more accurately.
A lot of people think that meditation is supposed to stop your thoughts and you must have a clear mind. Yet, this isn't very true, as there is force in stopping--which takes up space in the mind. The goal in meditation isn't force: instead it is presence and allowance. Allow your thoughts to run in your mind, but do not interact
with them--and if you do, catch yourself and focus back on your breath. A
way to catch yourself can be through using a mantra such as "in and out" or
"inhale/exhale." Eventually, after doing this for awhile your brain
should clear up more and you will have less thoughts. At first to the
new practitioner, this work can seem daunting or boring, yet over time
the work gets much easier. Over time, it gets easier to sit at home and
breathe for ten minutes, improving your entire day immensely.
Breathwork becomes its own form of mental detox and purification,
purifying the mind and body, improving overall health. For practitioners: knowing your breathe as the key to your body, can become the key to your magic.
Note on Breathwork: People do not know how to breathe correctly. When you breathe, do your shoulders rise? Take note of this because this is incorrect breathing technique! This type of breathing actually restricts your lungs from properly expanding. The proper way to breathe is through Diaphragmatic Breathing, which means you breathe into your Diaphragm not into your rib cage. For example, take a deep breath with a deep inhale and an exhale, notice if your shoulder rose. Now try breathing into your belly button, where your tummy on the inhale goes far out and expands widely, then with the exhale, allow your stomach to return into your body. This diagram below is from Make Health Happen by Erike Peper, Katherine H. Gibney, and Catherine F. Holt. The section on this work in on pages 61-71. Dr. Peper is an amazing professor I had the honor of learning from at SFSU and he taught me about this technique. I remember learning this technique and using it in meditation when I suffered very badly from self-image and menstrual cramps.
As a female-bodied person child performer, I have always been encouraged in American culture to have a flat stomach. From this, when I started this breathing practice into my stomach, it felt very unnaturally. I went to an hour group meditation class to try to tackle this simple practice--breathe into your diaphragm and not your rib cage--breathing in correct healthy form. In this exercise, I actually cried and was brought back to a lot of emotion. I think this emotional reaction was from a lot of old pain of being a young performer--where I had to look and be a certain way often to be seen as beautiful. Physically I had to hold myself together, always be prepared to perform, and hold a specific prized physical image. People of all body types suffer from our very strict social norms around health and weight. Reverting our bodies to their past or natural form can bring up psychological triggers--especially if your body was shamed in the past. When I had this trigger in practice, I allowed myself to be vulnerable in this group meditation, I cried amongst strangers and remembered to breathe slowly. I did not fall apart, I survived this inner storm of physical and emotional intensity, with the breath as the key to my heart--and ultimately my spirit. Everyone can do this--humans are built to breathe and feel.
Diaphragmatic breathing can help with menstrual cramps, gastritis, abdominal pain, IBS, and other physiological ailments (Peper, 62). This breathing technique is so restorative to illness because the person is allowing their inner organs to relax, open, and release--without restrictions physically. It is as though you are allowing your legs to stretch out, when your legs had VERY TIGHT pants on them for a VERY LONG time! As someone who has been stuck in bed due to a menstrual cycle, this breathing technique proved to be extremely helpful. Really breathing deep into your stomach, expanding the tummy without clothing restrictions at the waist, and slowly breathing back out, naturally aligns the body work more efficiently--as it can and should.
As I said before with my story, this simple yet deep exercise, can move a lot of qi around in your body. This can cause some inner chaos when first starting, especially if you are not used to it or heavy trauma within the solar plexus or sacral area. Like I did in story above, you can breathe through this at first uncomfortable sensation. Remember you are human and you are built for this physical and deep connective work. So: be gentle with yourself, take your time, and breathe through the emotions.
I hope this piece provides you with some sort of rest during an extremely chaotic time where taking a breath seems difficult. It can feel very hard to catch a breath when the world is changing so fast and the air you breathe is full of smoke and disease. I am deeply fascinated that the more trees we cut, fires arise, and oil we frack--the more sick we become. It is as though our industrial society is a cannibalistic snake, eating itself, through it's exploitations (read more about this in To Be a Water Protector by Winona LaDuke) But don't worry--breathing help at least a little bit starting with you, cleansing the negative affects of these horrid symptoms of our culture.
🌬Keep breathing--Skål!
References
Peper, Erik, et al. Make Health Happen: Training Yourself to Create Wellness. 2nd ed., Kendall/Hunt, 2002.
