Listen To Your Breath

TL;DR. Your breath reports how you actually are, more honestly than your face or your own idea about yourself. Nearly all breath techniques asks you to control it. This post does the opposite. For two minutes a day, don't change your breath. Just watch it and name what it's doing: high, held, jagged, or long. Then set an inner wish to want it to settle. It usually does, on its own, without you pushing any air anywhere. The listening to your breath is the skill. The settling follows.

So…

You already know how to breathe. So this is not going to teach you to breathe in any particular way

Almost every article on stress has a breathing bit, and most of them tell you the same three things. Slow down. Breathe from your belly. Count. Do box breathing. You've tried it. It works for about four minutes and then you forget, because it's one more thing to do and you already have too many.

We're going to do the opposite of adding a thing to do.

Your breath has been talking all day, all your life, without a break. Fast or slow, smooth or jagged, high in your chest or low in your gut. Every one of those is a word. Your breath is the most honest report you own about how you actually are. More honest than your face, which you've trained. More honest than your own opinion of yourself.

But, you've never been taught the language of breath. So it's been speaking the whole time and you haven't been listening.

Learning to understand the vocabulary is the whole thing. The shifting comes later, and it comes easier than you'd think, because most of the work was the listening.

Breath is the first thing you can actually reach for. You can notice your attention, but you can't grab it and move it. Not yet. Breath you can feel, watch, and eventually work with without force. And it's always there. You're never without it. It's the one instrument on your body that reads the dial and turns it, both at once, and nobody showed you where it was.

The old way I did it

I have to tell you something or else this will sound like it comes from a calm person.

I started sitting as a kid. Count the breath, lengthen it, hold it here, release it there. I did it for years and got good at it. I could make my breath do what I wanted. And I never once listened to it. Not one time did it occur to me to just watch and ask what it was telling me. I was too busy running it.

So when I say watch before you touch, I'm not saying it from wisdom. I spent twelve years doing the reverse and got very little out of it. Turning it around out of necessity was almost embarrassing. Like finding out someone you'd worked next to for years had been talking to you the whole time and you'd had earbuds in.

Six things to feel for

Here's enough of the language to get you started. Six common things to feel for. Once you've felt a couple you'll start catching the rest on your own.

High and shallow. The breath sits up in the top of the chest and doesn't go far. Quick, small, not much movement below the collarbones. This is the breath of someone braced. Low-grade alarm, running in the background, often for so long the person doesn't know it's there. If this is your normal, you may have stopped noticing you're bracing. A lot of people who carry a lot live here.

Held. Not breathing out. You'll catch yourself at the end of an in-breath, just sitting on it, not letting go. People do this when they're concentrating, and when they're waiting for something bad, and the body doesn't tell those two apart. Watch for it right before you open an email you've been dreading.

Fast and jagged. Quick and uneven, catching on itself, no smooth line to it. This is a system that's been pushed past where it wants to be. Something's too much. The breath is the first place it shows, usually before you have any words for what's wrong.

Smooth and low. The breath drops down into the belly and moves in a long even line, unhurried. This is what you're like when nothing's grabbing you. Most people meet this breath rarely and don't recognize it as their own. When you find it in the two-minute sit, mark the day. That's the resting state you're learning your way back to.

The sigh. Every so often the body takes one big breath and lets it out long, all on its own, without asking you. That may not be sadness, though it can come with it. That's a reset. The body clearing a backlog, dumping held tension in one move. It's one of the few genuinely automatic repairs you've got. If you start sighing more once you begin watching, nothing's wrong. Something's unclenching.

The double inhale. Two in-breaths stacked, a big one and then a small catch on top, before the air goes out. You've felt this in the minutes after you've been upset, once the worst has passed. You'll also feel it when you're not upset at all. When you're holding something together in the car before you walk in, keeping it in. The double inhale is the body doing what a release would have done, because you won't let the rest happen. Catch yourself in two or three of these over the next week and go, oh, that one, that's what that is.

The practice

First, watch

Two minutes. A chair. Phone in the other room.

First, sit, set a timer, and find out where you are. Just locate yourself. That's the ground.

Now add one thing. Watching. While you're finding where you are, also find your breath. Don't change it. This is the simple but hard instruction and the whole point. Do not slow it down. Do not deepen it. Do not do the belly thing. Do not force your breath in any way. Just watch it, the way you'd watch something breathing that isn't you, and name what it's doing. High. Held. Jagged. Long. Whatever it is.

You'll want to fix it. The second you notice it's shallow you'll want to take a big correcting breath. That urge to fix is worth watching too. Let the breath be the way it is. Just keep reading it.

Then, shift

Here's the part that surprises people. Somewhere in there, once you've been watching a while, let yourself want it to settle. Not do anything. Just silently wish it would. Keep watching, keep your hands off it, and hold the small wish that it slows down.

It will. Mostly on its own. Not every time and not on command, but often enough that you'll feel it happen and not be able to point to the moment you did it. Because you didn't. Attention does this. When you watch your breath closely and gently want it to ease, it eases, and you never had to push a single lungful of air anywhere.

That's the thing the other tutorials skip. They have you forcing the exhale like a job. You're going to do almost nothing and watch it work better.

That's the practice. Find where you are. Find the breath. Read it. Want it to settle. Watch it settle.

Now you are communicating with your breath. But keep it to 80 parts listening and 20 parts telling.

If you want support

Do this for a week and you'll notice something. The reading is the easy part. The hard part is what you do with what you read, especially when the breath that keeps showing up is braced, held, or jagged, and it's been that way for years.

That's the work I do with people. Learning to read what your body has been telling you all along, and to respond to it instead of bypassing it.

If that's the kind of thing you want help with, book a free discovery call.