When exploring breathing practices, the emphasis can often be on what you are doing.
For instance, you might be asked to breathe in for a particular count, extend the out-breath, breathe into a particular part of your body or follow a prescribed pattern of breathing for a duration of time.
There is value in exploring breathing in these different ways. But for me, something equally important can be overlooked in this way of approaching breathing.
What can we actually sense as we breathe?
When I teach Somatic Breathing, the sensory experience of breathing is as important as the movement itself. Breathing is not simply a motor activity – something our muscles do. It is also something we can sense from within.
And the more we become able to sense, the more possibilities we may begin to discover.
How do you know that you are breathing?
This is a question I often ask when teaching:
How do you know that you are actually breathing?
It sounds ridiculously obvious.
We’re breathing, so surely we know we’re breathing.
But how?
Perhaps you feel air passing through your nostrils.
Perhaps you notice your chest rising and falling.
Perhaps you feel movement somewhere around your abdomen.
Already, you’re no longer thinking about breathing. You are beginning to notice how breathing is actually experienced.
And there may be considerably more to sense.
Can you feel movement at the sides of your ribs?
What happens around your back?
Do you sense breathing equally on your left and right sides?
What happens around your shoulders, spine, pelvis or head?
Where does an in-breath seem to begin?
How do you know when it has become an out-breath?
And there isn’t a correct answer to any of these questions.
The questions simply give us different ways of sensing something that is already happening.
Expanding our sensory map
One way I think about this is as a kind of sensory map.
Imagine having a map of a town that contains only a handful of its streets. In reality, the town itself is there in its entirety. It hasn’t disappeared. The streets included on the map aren’t necessarily more important than everything else. They are simply the parts represented on the map.
Our experience of breathing can be similar.
We may be very familiar with certain sensations whilst being almost completely unaware of others.
As our ability to sense develops, the map begins to change as more details are included.
This doesn’t mean that we need to feel everything or that a more detailed map is somehow a better achievement.
It simply gives us more information.
And with more information come different possibilities.
Try it for yourself
Take a moment to notice your breathing as it is now.
There is no need to change it.
Where do you sense your in-breath?
What tells you that you are breathing in?
Then notice the out-breath.
What tells you that you are breathing out?
Can you sense how long each takes?
Does one feel longer than the other?
Where in your body do you notice movement?
What happens at the front of you?
At the sides?
At the back?
You don’t need to search for a particular sensation. Simply notice what is available to you.
Then stop paying deliberate attention to your breathing for a while.
Allow your attention to go elsewhere.
And when you’re ready, return to your breathing.
What do you notice now?
Has anything changed?
Perhaps it has.
Perhaps it hasn’t.
Perhaps you’re simply aware of something you hadn’t noticed before.
All of those are possibilities.
Sensing and movement belong together
This relationship between sensing and movement is central to somatic development.
We don’t move independently of sensation. Sensory awareness is continually participating in how movement is organised and developed.
Breathing is also involved in this sensory-motor relating.
As we explore different sensations, movements and possibilities in breathing, we are not simply trying to perform a breathing technique more successfully.
We are giving ourselves more information to work with.
A part of the ribs that previously seemed absent from our experience may become noticeable.
A difference between the two sides may become clearer.
We may discover that breathing changes when we alter our position, move an arm, turn our head or shift our attention.
In this way, breathing can change without us deliberately trying to change it.
This is one of the things I find particularly interesting about Somatic Breathing.
Rather than always asking:
How should I breathe?
we can begin with a different question:
What can I sense?
More possibilities rather than a better breath
For me, Somatic Breathing isn’t about developing ‘the’ ideal way of breathing.
Breathing changes constantly.
It changes when you sleep, walk, talk, laugh, concentrate, rest, relax, become excited or encounter something unexpected.
We require that variability.
In Somatic Breathing, we explore different possibilities and notice what happens.
What changes if the in-breath becomes a little longer?
What happens if we allow the out-breath more time?
What can we sense if we breathe through the nose, the mouth or both?
What happens when we change position?
What happens when we move?
Each variation gives us another experience.
And each experience can reveal something that wasn’t previously part of our sensory-motor mapping.
Breathing as a living experience
For me, this is where Somatic Breathing becomes much more than the application of ‘breathing techniques’.
Breathing is alive.
It is continually changing in relationship with what I am doing, sensing and experiencing.
When I become more sensitive to those changes, breathing becomes less something I am trying to perform ‘correctly’ and more an ongoing, developing experience of being alive.
In Somatic Breathing sessions you can notice.
You can vary.
You can respond.
And sometimes you can simply experience breathing reorganising automatically.
The question then ceases to be:
Am I breathing correctly?
and instead is:
What is possible for me now as I breathe?
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