From the first moment that you arrive on earth until the moment you die, you breathe. The Tao Te Ching notes in Chapter 55 that an infant can cry all day without getting hoarse because its breath is in balance. We were born breathing naturally but over time most of us lost the knack. What passes for ‘normal’ breathing leaves us only partly alive. There’s no special skill involved in Natural Breathing – just a little bit of knowledge and a fair amount of awareness.
The Air That You Breathe is not just a romantic song made famous by the Hollies, it’s also your first gift from the Universe. Without the specific combination of elements that make up our atmosphere, humans simply wouldn’t be alive. It is also part of our deep connection to the Universe itself. When we breathe in, we absorb, feed on and alter the air around us. When we breathe out, we return transformed elements into the great mix of universal energy at the elemental level. Breathing is universal, both as a physical constant among animals and as a realization of our Universal connection.
Within that constant lies great diversity not only between species and individuals but between situations and our attitudes toward them. Otters typically hold their breath for 8 minutes because they spend so much time underwater. Humans typically take between 12 and 20 breaths a minute. Our breath as we walk through a forest marveling at beautiful trees is more relaxed than during a nervous walk when we’re late for a meeting. Our breath when we feel hail and healthy flows freely. When we’re suffering from a chest cold, we suffer and struggle.
It’s a spectrum. The breath of casual jogging feeds precious energy to our bodies, but speed up too much and you can end up quite literally ‘out of breath’ gasping and, again, struggling.
The relaxed breath of deep sleep can become a tight gasp when you’re jarred awake by a nightmare. Your breathing on a tropical beach feels different than your breathing on a cold winter’s day. And it goes on – situations may not be infinite but there are a lot of them.
Given our constant need for breath and the myriad situations that can influence our breathing throughout our lives, it’s important that we return to Natural breathing to move beyond what has become our constricted Normal high chested breathing. When you breathe naturally you just get more life from the air that you breathe.
Taken straight from Tai Chi Chuan For Everyone at TaiChiClass.org, here’s how:
Start with an attitude of Relaxation. Place your hands over your abdomen.
Breathe in through your nose. Place the tip of your tongue on the palate at the top of your mouth.
Relax the diaphragm at the bottom of your lungs so you can feel your abdomen expand as you inhale.
Continue inhaling, feeling the air filling your lungs from the bottom up. Feel your ribs expand all the way up to the base of your shoulders as your entire chest cavity fills with air.
When you’re completely full, pause for just a second or two, just enough to feel your fullness.
Open your mouth and slowly exhale, drawing your abdomen in, pushing the air from the bottom of your chest cavity until you have emptied your lungs.
Repeat for the rest of your life, which should be longer if you do this.
For Natural Breathing it’s not vital that you breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. For Natural breathing, all that matters is that you breathe fully. If you can’t easily breathe through your nose, then use your mouth. Breathe in the way that’s most free.
Breathing through both nose and mouth helps my awareness of creating a microcosmic orbit, a circular pattern of gently moving energy within my body that connects me to the macrocosmic orbit of the greater universe outside me. You can create that awareness regardless. The specific organ takes a back seat to the awareness.
Awareness is consciousness so if we’re consistently aware of our breath, we’re growing our awareness of our own being and of its place in both the small world right in front of us and the big world all around us.
Like so many of your most basic human functions, breathing can either be an unconscious survival mechanism or a fully aware tool on your way to living your highest universal nature.