Exploring Breath and Movement One

This is a movement, breathing, and attention exercise. The intention is to work with the breath, and understand the breath as not simply a passive activity, but as a form (and source) of movement. It is simple, but can be quite challenging and can be a rich practice. An audio version of this exercise that guides you through it will be produced in the future. For now, simply read it and give it a try. It can take anywhere from five minutes to as long as you would like.

Begin by laying down comfortably on the floor, on your back (face up, or supine, if you prefer one of those terms). If you find this not entirely comfortable (or your floor is very unforgiving) use a yoga mat, blanket, or a towel. You may also find that pulling your legs up so that your feet are some distance from your butt and your knees are up may be more comfortable, or you may wish to put a bolster of some kind under your knees. Adjust yourself into a position that feels reasonably comfortable. You can also perform this exercise while laying in bed. However there is always a danger of falling asleep when laying in bed, and the firmness of the floor can help to provide more immediate feedback for portions of the exercise.

You may have arranged yourself on the floor with your arms laying at your sides. If not, take that position now. Your hands may be palm up, palm down, or in a neutral position, whatever is most comfortable ¹ Lay in this position for a moment,and then bring your attention to your breath.

Don’t make a great effort to change how your breath is moving. Simply breathe in and out, in a natural manner. After a few breaths, think about where your breath is going. What is rising and falling? Is it your belly? Your chest? Some combination of the two? How does that feel? Simply lay there for a minute or two, and keep your attention focused on the rising and falling of whatever part of your torso your breath is moving. This might be ten or fifteen breaths, depending on how slowly or quickly your breathe.

On your next inhale, lift your hands from the floor and place them on your stomach, so that your fingers are near to or point towards your bellybutton and your elbows are resting on the floor. The exact position doesn’t matter, and will vary from person to person, depending on limb length, body size, and many other factors. If you want, and can do so without your elbows leaving the floor, you can loosely interlace your fingers.

A small note here about comfort with our bodies: many people are not entirely happy with their bodies, and some of us have quite uncomfortable or even hostile relationships with parts of our bodies. This can be due simply being unhappy with our weight, gender dysphoria, body dysmorphia, or a variety of other reasons. In this exercise you will be asked to spend a good bit of time with your hands on your stomach or midsection, and to pay quite close attention to the sensations associated with these areas. If you find this to be an uncomfortable experience, you have a couple of options:

Firstly, you can try to work through or past your discomfort, and focus purely on what is being asked of you in the exercise. This will be challenging! But it may help you develop a more neutral relationship with a “problem” body area. The softness or firmness of one’s stomach matters not a whit to this exercise; your breath is indifferent to the matter.

However, if you find that its simply too distracting or taxing to do the exercise as described (which is fine!), you can find ways to alter the exercise. If you intensely dislike the feeling of having your hands in the position suggested, you can slide your hands up your torso to the area of the ribs just below the sternum. This position may also be advisable if you find yourself drifting from the exercise and instead are feeling chuffed about how ripped you are and start wondering if you could feel the definition in your six pack through your clothes if you adjusted your hydration strategy. Regardless of why you might make an adjustment, just know you will likely need to modify the instructions of the exercise to match your position; typically this will be quite simple.

Now, you’ve settled into a comfortable position on the floor, and your hands are on your belly, or torso somewhere or other. Continue breathing in and out, just as you were prior to our small discursion. Now we have some new information, however! Bring your focus from your abdomen to the movement of the hands against the body and against each other, if you interlaced your fingers. What happens when you inhale and exhale? Take a few breaths to observe this set of movements; hands in relation to the body and perhaps in relation to each other, perhaps their position in space.

Now, for the first time, let’s alter our breathing. Still keep the breathe easy and natural, but now think of bringing the breath into the palms of your hands, where they rest against your body, and listen to the interaction between your breath, stomach, and hands. Does this cause some part of you to rise more? Did the movement of your hands against your body change? Does the weight of your hands on abdomen change how you organized your breath?

After you have done this for ten or so breaths, bring your attention to your palms. Feel your abdomen under them. How does it feel? Is it tense? Loose? Soft? Ever changing? Do you feel an increase in the tension or tightness of the abdomen at the end of an inhalation? A slight rebound as this tension acts as a spring the begins exhalation? Do you perhaps feel a slowly building and different kind of tension or pressure in the stomach at the end of an exhalation, before the abdominal muscles relax to allow the diaphragm to lower?

After another ten or so breaths, bring your attention back to the palms of your hands. Feel them rise and fall. Now move your attention down very slightly to your wrists, perhaps focusing on the wrist of your dominant hand first. Do you feel any changes in the articulation of the wrist joint as your breath moves your hands? Keep your attention on your wrists for another ten breaths.

Now, move your attention down your forearm to where your elbow is resting on the floor. As your breath rises and falls, do you feel changes in the elbow joint against the floor? We have begun to move into subtler territory here, so this may be a very faint sensation when you first begin to practice this exercise. However, just the act of trying to listen to your elbows against the floor, of bringing your attention to them is very valuable, even if initially it does not provide a lot of information. It may help to think about how your skin is in direct contact with the surface you are lying on, but your bones can’t be; there are layers of skin muscle, fascia, and other tissue between your bones and the floor. This can be a thin layer, as at the point of the elbow, or thicker, as in virtually everywhere else. In this way, the skin of your elbow will likely remain anchored in place, but the interior of it may be more free to move with your breath.

After ten breaths focused on the elbow, on your next inhalation, lift your hands off your belly and allow them to drop down on to the floor next to your sides as you exhale, with your palms down towards the floor. Laying in this positions, bring your attention to your hands, wrists, elbows, and possibly the shoulder joint, in turns. Breathe, and listen for changes in these parts of your body. Do you feel an increase in tension anywhere? A release as you exhale? A sense of pulling or tightness? After ten or twenty breaths exploring in this position, rotate the palms upward and repeat the investigation. Does this feel the same?

If you are finding it very challenging to get any information about how your breath is relating to your shoulders, no worries! This is likely a new form of attention and listening that you will need to practice to develop. As your internal listening skills improve you can return to the more advanced versions of this exercise that follow the breath into the shoulder, lower back, pelvis, and finally into the legs and feet.

When you are ready to end the exercise, bring your attention back to your elbows. On your next inhale, lift the hands from the floor, and place them palms down against your abdomen as you exhale. Over the course of several breaths, bring your attention to your wrists, then the palms of your hands, and then back into your abdomen itself. In this position, take a few moments to listen to your internal state. How do you feel after this exercise? You may feel peaceful, or you may feel frustrated, or you may notice that you were struggling against some nagging thought or feeling the entire time. How does this feeling relate to your body, in this moment? This might be clear or unclear on any given day, and with any given feeling. The clarity or certainty of the feeling, of your internal state is not so important (at least as far as this exercise is concerned); what matters is taking the time to listen to it as best as your are able in the moment.

When you have finished listening to your internal state, get up in whatever manner is most comfortable for you, drink a glass of water, and return to the rest of your day.