Breathing

Breathing is our most vital activity...it sustains us...it is what keeps us alive.

I often talk about remembering to breathe in class...more than that, to consciously work with our breath to access the dynamic range of our bodies. Releasing breath to release tension, to open joints, to soften into the floor, to propel us through space.

In yoga practice, the cultivation of breath, or pranayama, is one of the eight "limbs" or stages of focus. It often takes much longer to find, than finding the "poses" or asanas, probably because the breath is so connected to our emotions. Look at the patterns of breath when we are anxious or fearful, the way it is more rapid and shallow.

Right now, move away from this screen, or put down your device, and take five long slow breaths.























What happened?

You took the time to notice your living, breathing body.

You may have let go of muscular tension, of thinking, of propelling yourself into the places where you are not and need not be (in things past, in expectations future, in spaces virtual and impersonal).

You opened yourself to the potential that can sustain you as a dancer and as a human being, the realisation that your breath is oxygen entering your bloodstream, moving around your body, and moving back out into the air....air that moves into other bodies, plants, weather patterns, tides...that, through breathing, we are connected to everything and it sustains us.

Air is a matrix that joins all life together.

"About 1% of the air we breathe is made up of argon, an inert gas. Because it is inert, it is breathed  in and out without becoming a part of our bodies or entering into metabolic transformations... these argon atoms mix with the atmosphere and spread around the planet in such a way that each breath you take includes at least 15 atoms of argon released in that one (of your breaths) 

a year earlier."

(David Suzuki, The Sacred Balance, p. 37)

Every breath covers the area of a tennis court, 40 times greater than that of the skin—moving through the film of the 300 million alveoli of the lungs.

(Tufnell & Crickmay, Body, Space, Image, p.23)