The role of the breath in posture work
By Marc Woolford
Marc is a teacher trained in the tradition inspired by the late Vanda
Scaravelli. Here he elaborates on
what he will be teaching at the OGT day in November.
The breath needs to be treated with a great deal of respect – nothing is to be
gained from straining to pull the inhalation in and pushing to force the
exhalation out. This leads only to stress and conflict between body and mind –
the very conflict that yoga is meant to heal.
Yet we are all, at least to some degree, restricted in our
breathing. Some of us are unable to breathe in fully because of the postural
habit of hanging heavily from the spine. Some of us are incapable of allowing
the exhalation to leave fully because we are busy holding ourselves up. Most of
us are restricted in both directions in some way. One of the purposes of
breathing practise is to redress this very human condition, with the further
(quite advanced) intention of being able to take what we discover into our
postural work. (Just breathe!).
Our postural habits are intimately related to our breathing
patterns, which in turn are defined by our very individual personal physical and
emotional history. To change our breathing patterns is a profound thing to do
and needs to be approached with a great deal of steadiness and calm. So first of
all on the ongoing training day we will simply be investigating the various
choices that we have in our breathing, and finding out for ourselves what our
personal preferences and difficulties are.
This will inform us of the unconscious choices we are likely
to make when we are doing anything else, including posture work. There will also
be some anatomical and physiological descriptions of the various breathing
mechanisms we have at our disposal whilst we are investigating them. These will
help build an accurate experiential picture of what is actually going on.
Understanding the choices we have available will give us the opportunity to
explore those choices within some key postures. So we can decide for ourselves
which are the most appropriate breathing mechanisms for whatever we decide to
do.
In theory, if there were no habitual breathing patterns in
place, the most supportive pattern would automatically
engage simply in response to what we are doing. We have after all evolved to
move and breathe. So once discovered, the emphasis will be in just encouraging
the most useful breathing to develop because of what we are doing, not despite
of it!
I think most of us at some point have experienced the
sensation of 'floating' on an inhalation. Some of us may also have had the
slightly more elusive experience of completely letting the breath go and
noticing ourselves grow taller without any apparent effort. Both these
experiences are
simply what occurs when we have structural balance – and most significantly when
that balance runs through the
structure of the spine. If our breathing patterns allow that balance to remain
steady throughout the cycle of the breath, then we have the experience of
floating upright and growing as we breathe. Of course, when we do something more
demanding out of the direct line of gravity, it is very easy to lose the sense
of support running through the axis of the spine. So we will automatically hold
ourselves up with the inherently stronger superficial muscle structures (which
would be the reason for tight knees, hips, ham strings, and shoulders, as well
as back ache and stiff necks). To find a sense of central support throughout the
cycle of the breath is to truly experience support coming from the movements at
the very core of the body and limbs. In many ways this can be far more intense,
but it has the advantage of building a strength that leaves us free to
breathe.....
marc woolford ( www.yogawithmarc.com
)
From Yoga Scotland Issue 24 Page 6 - Reformatted to suite the web page.
