We yoga teachers talk about breath a fair amount, and I may have said the following before: ”Make space for breath.”
For some reason, when I said this in a class the other day, it landed fresh and new for me. A lovely alternative to the well-meaning exhortation “Remember to breathe,” I find “Make space for breath” to be a shade different from other ways we might call attention to the breath. (The problem being that when we call attention to the breath, we often end up changing it, and not always for the better.)
Perhaps I’m splitting hairs and almost any way in which we bring our breathing into our conscious awareness is equally effective, but I don’t think so. As a student (whether the student of a teacher or guiding myself through a practice), “Remember to breathe” puts something on my to-do list. One more thing to remember, one more thing to potentially forget.
As a recovering perfectionist, when I hear “Remember to breathe,” my tendency is to admonish myself for having forgotten.
When I make space for breath, it relieves me of that. When I make space for breath, I can notice that the breath comes. It just comes to me. I don’t have to remember to do it.
Although “Make space for breath” might sound a touch poetic, it is also a very literal, physical reality. It is actually what is happening in the body’s breathing mechanism.
Here’s what happens: when the diaphragm draws down and the ribs draw outward, the space inside the lungs is increased. This creates a pressure differential between the inside of the lungs and the atmosphere outside, and that’s what draws air in. It’s because of physics.
I am no expert in physics, but here is the simple thing I have come to understand: the space comes first.
Put another way, when we increase the volume of the lungs, the atmosphere rushes in, because the atmosphere is a gas and gases are always “trying” to equalize pressure. Pressure depends upon volume. Create more volume, and pressures “want” to change, to equalize inside and outside. In a sense, the atmosphere “pushes” the breath into the space we create in the lungs. Air “wants” to go in, once we increase the volume inside.
In a sense, the atmosphere does it all on its own, once we create the conditions. The necessary condition is increased space inside the lungs. How do we create that? The respiratory muscles move: diaphragm down, ribs outwards and and upwards.
Let’s keep tracing it back… What makes the respiratory muscles move? A reflexive impulse that is deep in the unconscious. It works when we are sleeping, unconscious. So I (in the way I normally conceive of my “self”) don’t need to instigate this life-giving cascade of events that is the breath. It arises without the conscious layer of my brain needing to be involved at all. This executive, conscious part of my brain works so hard for most of the day, isn’t it nice when it can rest?
Another way in which we can make space for the breath is in the dimension of time. When we give the breath space in the sense of letting it take more time, we tend to drop into a calmer state. Are you curious about why? I was, and in my training I learned that it partly has to do with the response that the heart has to a slow, long breath.
A slow, long breath not only slows the heart, it brings heart rate variability (or HRV as it is known) into a more favorable ratio, inbreath to outbreath. Did you know that our heart doesn’t (and shouldn’t) beat at the same rate on our inbreathe and our out breath? If you have ever heard the advice “Let your exhalations lengthen,” that’s because the heart beats slower on exhalations. Lengthen your outbreath, and you slow your heart, making you feel calmer.
There is complex science behind all of this, but frankly, we don’t need to know it. Have you ever felt a sense of calm in a yoga class when the active part of the class is done and you are resting in savasana, breathing slowly? It might be enough to know that there are very cool biological processes behind this feeling, and it might be best to acknowledge them and then just enjoy their effects.
For those wanting to know more, there is another level on which a long, slow breath is beneficial, and that is the chemical. It has to do with the balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the blood, which is, amazingly, changes when we take different types of breaths. More or less of these chemicals in the blood has a direct affect upon our cells. In another complex, intricate, and delicate but robust cascade, we are literally giving our cells what they need when we breathe in certain ways, slower and longer generally being the more favorable way.
It’s an incredible system. And the whole dance is behind a translucent curtain, to use a metaphor. From our conscious perspective, behind the curtain are all these unconscious and vital processes, doing their dance. They play out whether we pay attention to them or not, but since this curtain is translucent and not opaque, we can also notice them and respond. The dancers behind the screen respond to us in turn, and the dance is between and among us, all those different parts of us.
So whether you want to get poetic or technical, there is a lot to explore here. Give it a try in your next yoga class: Take breathing off your to-do list. You might be able to experience it more directly if you aren’t trying to remember to do it. Instead, make contact with it in the moment. Make space for it, take time with it. You might enjoy it more.