Well before I started my 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training (aka YTT), I was very breath-curious. One of the things I looked forward to most when starting YTT was actually the breath component. So when we had the first pranayama (yogic breath work1), I was SO stoked.
During that first lesson, we did some exercises to feel breath in our bodies, one of which was hands on ribs, and trying to feel our hands get further apart on inhale and back to closer on exhale. 2 It was surprisingly tricky, but I managed to get a little bit and felt pretty decent about things.3
I spent a lot of time practicing prananyam as YTT continued. After graduating, I pretty much immediately went into another program for the pelvic floor, which to my absolute pleasureeeeee is actually really about breathing. Breath mechanics, science, the whole chain.4
During this second training, the focus shifted to 360 breathing. Far beyond the yogic scope, the pelvic floor breathing is all about the entire abdominal canister expanding in 360 degrees with inhale, and going back on exhale.5
Since then, I have focused a lot on 360 breathing, specifically ribs. I also frequently cue students in my yoga classes to place their hands on the sides of their ribs, to try to feel and breathe into the full rib cage. It sounds simple, but holy balls, it is a lot.
Yesterday I got hit with the rumblings of a vestibular migraine (storms, ugh) and while I was starting to feel well enough that lying down was annoying but sitting up was too much, I decided to play around with my breathing.6 I rested my hands on my ribs. I added ujjayi7 because it helps slow the flow of breath, allowing for a bit more intention.
And OMFG.
My ribs inflated. In 360.
The expansion!
It felt insane. I hadn’t lain down and focused on it specifically in a while (only really testing in seated or standing) and the change was massive.
My immediate thought was that I had to alert the world. My next thought was that there were maybe two people who would 1) know what I was even talking about and 2) be remotely as elated as me.
I’m fascinated by the idea of 360 breathing and the incredible effects it has. And, on top of that, it got me thinking beyond the abdominal canister to the more abstract container.
Yoga is a lot of things to a lot of people and I am unqualified to speak to most of those. But for myself, yoga is a practice in equanimity—creating space inside our personal container to allow for all our internal experiences.8
I have recently noticed that as I have expanded my personal container, growing in my yoga, I have grown in 360.
When I first learned about equanimity, I was going through a really hard time. Last year was the hardest and most intense year of my life for a lot of reasons. Hearing about the way yoga could grow my personal container became a huge source of comfort. I could find space to feel really, really bad things. Hard things. Scary things. I could find the space inside myself to have some distance (eventually).
I got through last year, through the really hard things. I found growth and space and the ability to hold the heaviest shadows.
But over the past few weeks I realized that my growth wasn’t only in that one direction. I didn’t only grow towards the shadows.
I grew into the light, too.
Each step I took to grow myself to feel (and sustain the feeling of) the hard things, I unknowingly took a step to feel really wonderful things. Things I hadn’t even had on my radar for a long, long time because the hard stuff was so consuming.
I grew my container in every direction—the ability to hold pain is balanced with the ability to hold pleasure; sadness, joy; fear, safety; hurt, trust. (And just ask me about anger—ha!)
I have a lot of thoughts about this, about why and how.9 But when I felt the joy of an expansive 360 breath—relished the joy of growth—I realized that the same practice that brought me that expansion in my abdominal canister also brought expansion in my personal container.
It’s been a long process. A very long unraveling, deconstructing, forging, rebuilding process. It is nowhere close to being done—this is the lifelong work, after all. But it’s a profound pleasure to take a moment, to experience and appreciate the growth.
The breath.
The expansion.
Sending you so much love.10 <3
oversimplification alert
oversimplification alert
pure excitement because i fucking love breathwork
more on this, because i also fucking love the pelvic floor
you know this is an oversimplification by now… right?
as one does
a pranayam technique that increases pressure in the abdominal canister
way oversimplification alert. equanimity cannot fit in the container of a short lil blog post. (see what I did there?) but go read a book. ;)
stay tuned…?
I really wanted to say “breath”, but that’s weird, right? i get a weird visual… i’ll come up with something better :P