First Breath, Last Breath, and Every One in Between
True breathing is like a flower blooming. If we hold our breath, the bud never opens.
—Chungliang Al Huang
Here on Earth, we spend our lives submerged in a shallow sea of oxygen that surrounds our tiny blue planet. Nearly all of the life on our planet needs air in some form to survive. It is the food that every cell in our body feeds upon. Every breath we take allows us a few more moments of life.
At birth, writes Dr. Frederick Leboyer in his classic, Birth Without Violence, “There is a tidal wave of sensation, surpassing anything we can imagine. A sensory experience so vast we can barely conceive of it.”
In its first moment on Earth, a baby reflexively draws its first lungful of air, a process that’s repeated countless times a day. That first breath is the most significant transition a human will experience, second only to dying, and from that moment forward, the breath holds great expectation and promise.
The breath is the mechanism that carries us from the quiet, safety, comfort, and life support of the mother’s womb into a world of light, sound, touch, taste, and smell. “It crosses a threshold,” says Leboyer, an early proponent of natural childbirth, and begins a lifelong process with big implications. “To breathe is to be in accord with creation,” he says, “to be in harmony with the Universal, with its eternal motion.”
In utero, the baby’s breathing is handled via the placenta. Upon arrival, circulation takes a new route—the lungs. For Leboyer, it means “the infant chooses the path of autonomy, of independence, of freedom.” It’s important to understand this air-fueled awakening, if only to grasp the fundamental power of the breath. It ignites in that first lungful of air an engine that powers the body, thoughts, emotions, and accomplishments throughout life. It is the key process, our primary system, a core component that should be used to its utmost.
Yet, as we age, as we buckle to the weight of living, we forget its importance. Like an old habit, we endure the slow decline, and sometimes are not aware of the consequences and toll it takes. We lose strength and will, and become increasingly sedentary. We allow the stresses of everyday life—not to mention a myriad of extraordinary stresses, like deaths of loved ones, failed relationships and divorce, financial misfortune, etc.—to compound in our bodies to toxic levels. We counteract those with distraction—alcohol and drugs, cigarettes, and other unhealthy lifestyles. We look for solutions, often in the wrong places.
It’s a habit that can be broken. Many times, when one returns to a root or core level, an answer can be found. Think about the unfettered life of the newborn. Basic needs are met; no bad habits or patterns are yet established. Each breath is natural, unforced, and holds the promise of potential. Perhaps by paying mindful attention to this fundamental human function, we once again breathe like a baby, and derive its huge benefits.
Deepak Chopra, a progenitor of East-West studies of medicine, says that it’s not only possible but necessary to return to this seminal way of breathing. Breath awareness and its control are beneficial for not only physical health, but mental, emotional, and spiritual health as well.
“When we come into the world, the first thing we do is breathe. And when we leave this world the last thing we do is breathe,” Chopra says. “At that moment we stop thinking as well. Breath is not ours; it’s not just taking in oxygen from the atmosphere. It’s the life force of the universe. We are not actually breathing. The universe breathes and we are part of the breath of the universe.”
It’s a humbling thought, and necessary to understand how critical breathing is—above and beyond simple life sustenance. If every breath is important (and, certainly, it is), why don’t we take better care of each one, and derive its maximum benefit?
Nature, in all her infinite wisdom, takes care of the baby during the transition from womb to world. During that arduous process, the infant is receiving oxygen from two sources—its own lungs and from the umbilical cord, which continues to supply oxygen to the baby (hence the urgency for the mother to continue to breathe regularly during the push).
Were we but that lucky to continue to have a backup system as we age. Instead we must employ methods to remind ourselves to return to that simple state of breathing, to practice it, to guard its very functionality. It will impact everything you do, from sustaining and improving your physical health, your body’s ability to heal, and your physical performance in everything from athletics to sex, to mental improvements like reducing stress, increasing clarity, creativity, and productivity, and even to the deepest reaches of your emotional health and well-being, including quests for deeper spiritual understanding. From your first breath on the planet, to the very last one you’ll take as you transition to whatever’s next, the breath can be your conduit, your engine, your magic carpet.
Making the change from an unconscious breather to a mindful, conscious breather may well be the single most important change you can make in your life, simply because it affects everything you do. In the next section of the book, we’ll introduce you to a method that will help you break bad habits, build and instill new ones, and help you discover the absolute power of the breath. This is ancient art and new science, but worth discovering for yourself. And the roads are many, as we’ll show you in subsequent chapters how that power of the breath can be employed. We hope to set you on your own path of mindful-breath discovery.
The benefits are bountiful. We’ve interviewed and studied breathing experts from all walks, disciplines and pursuits, people such as Deepak Chopra, mountain climber Ed Viesturs, tai chi master Chungliang Al Huang, and many others. All share the same deduction: Breathing correctly matters. Together the ancient wisdom and the growing body of scientific evidence build a compelling case for how breathing impacts your life. And believe it or not, you have control over each and every breath.
Let Your Body Breathe
The impact of the breath extends into every aspect of life and shows itself at the root of human function. Ancient teachers, sages, yogis, and martial artists discovered its power and developed disciplines around it with yoga and qigong and karate, among so many other practices. Understanding the breath means understanding the human machine and how each breath can be used to develop and control the body. Breathing forms the foundations of meditation, contemplative thought and prayer, but it is also informing science and medicine, as conscious breathing proves its mettle as a tool to fight stress, build up immunity to disease, and heal the body in many ways.
The process of breathing may appear quite simple, but is in fact a complex function rooted in our body’s ability to take in oxygen and perform a dynamic conversion of air to life-sustaining energy, of invigorating red blood cells with a constant fresh oxygen supply, and casting off waste-filled carbon dioxide. “An individual can go days without water and hours without sleep,” says Rob Nagel, in Body By Design, “but only five or six minutes without air.”
During times of stress—and that can be anything from lack of sleep, screaming kids, or a bad day at work to physical confrontations, overwork, or being chased by lions—we become shallow chest breathers, which stimulates the sympathetic nervous system’s fight-or-flight response, a response we’ll speak of often. It makes the body react as if it’s in a state of emergency and produces a buildup of stress-related chemicals such as adrenaline and lactic acid. While necessary to protect us from immediate danger, researchers have found that prolonged shallow, rapid breathing can make us feel chronically anxious, fatigued, or disoriented and contributes to stress-related and stress-affected disorders such as PMS, menstrual cramps, headaches, migraines, insomnia, high blood pressure, asthma, back pain, and allergies.
Though it’s tough to remember when you’re being chased by a predator (including your boss), proper breathing is done from the belly, or diaphragm. When you breathe deeply, your diaphragm drops down, and your belly swells outward. Breathing this way expands your ribs and the muscles in the lower back, opening up more space. That gets more oxygen to the body, slows down your heart, and triggers the parasympathetic nervous system, which is where feelings of relaxation and calm originate. Half the battle toward better breathing is just a simple understanding of what must occur for drawing an optimal breath. If you are engaged with your breathing, of drawing each full breath, you will open up an entirely new world of potential.
Mind and Body
The breath is pivotal in the mind-body connection. One can’t perform without the other. It is a bridge to join the two, which greatly enhances how we perform. “Breathing is my drug,” says Debbie Rosas, one of the originators of fusion-based fitness, and the co-founder of the world-popular and Portland, Oregon–based NIA, a nonimpact aerobics fitness method. “I use the breath to enhance the awareness of sensation in my body.” According to Rosas, by developing this awareness and learning how to use our bodies to their full potential, we can live better and longer, and age more gracefully.
In any kind of human performance, breathing touches every one of our pursuits. Think about it: Without control of the breath, no great feats could be accomplished. With breath awareness, there can be better performance, clarity of purpose, of thought, of action. The Zone, of which so many athletes and various performers speak and which we’ll explore in a later chapter, simply cannot be experienced without all of your cylinders firing in perfect harmony, and it absolutely begins with harmony in the breath.
This Thing Called the Spirit
Breathing’s reach extends into the spirit, too. Regardless of your faith or belief, there can be a profound spiritual aspect, or at least appreciation for, the fact that we are free-thinking, willful animated beings. The breath has been documented so often and so profoundly throughout man’s recorded history, and in so many deeply revered religious and spiritual texts. We humans hold the ability to be thoughtful, sentient, aware, insightful, curious, sensitive, creative. We can experience great, though often extremely personal, moments of clarity and focus, with the profound ability to dream and make those dreams reality.
Mindful breaths return us to the present moment. In each breath, there is no regret or longing for yesterday, or consternation over how we’ll do tomorrow. It is here, it is now, and it is rife with potential.
As Sufi master Hidayat Inayat Khan said, “Breath is the most important power regulating the course of our lives; or in other words, breath is life itself. Therefore, those who ignore the mysteries of breath are regrettably deprived of the basic knowledge of life, from a scientific point of view as well as from the angle of spiritual insight. Either one has control over the breath, in which case one acquires a humble hold over the unknown, or one is unfortunately led by the uncontrolled power of one’s own life-giving breath.”
The Final Breath
Even as we approach the end of life, the breath plays a magnificent role. Marcella Brady, a longtime hospice worker, attends to the dying. It is her life’s work to help patients with life’s inevitable final act and her mission to guide them through the most peaceful, dignified death possible, the way they intend it to happen.
“The breath,” she says, “is as important in dying as it is in life. It reflects the state of your consciousness.” A good life with no regrets? Or a life of struggle that ends with unfinished business? Understanding the end of life, as that final breath approaches, can be profound and is worth exploration, for both the living, who must deal with loss, grief, and a sense of mortality, and the dying, who in that moment let go of life.
Breathing for the Moment
Ultimately what we hope to show you is the importance of being conscious of your breath and staying in the moment that each new breath affords. It is a simple yet valuable perception.
“The only breath that you can actually pay attention to is the one you’re now engaged with,” says Saki Santorelli, director of the Mind Body Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center and the author of Heal Thy Self: Lessons on Mindfulness in Medicine. “It’s a very useful way for people to begin to ground themselves in the present moment. In that sense it begins to keep things a lot simpler. If you can begin to do that in this fleeting something we call the present moment, the future begins to take care of itself. But if you’re shooting off into the future, or spinning your wheels backwards into the past, we have many less resources to bring to bear on the present moment which is actually where it’s all happening. It’s the only moment we’re alive, it’s the moment that we feel stressed, it’s the moment we feel eased, it’s all happening here, now.”
We will stress this concept many times in many ways throughout the ensuing pages. If you are engaged with your breathing, of drawing each full breath, you will open up an entirely new world of potential.
In an excellent paper entitled “Just As Long As I Have Breath,” the Rev. David Takahashi Morris writes, “In every cycle of breath, between the emptying and the inflowing, there is a moment of absolute calm, an instant when history comes to an end. Then, the yearning begins, the divine discontent, the lungs praying to be filled, the body longing to be animated by spirit.”
The most important lesson is to learn to be aware of your breath; to understand its greater implications for your mind, body, and spirit; and use it to find a simple place from which to move through life. It will enrich everything you do.