Breathing
Undercover Yoga 3 Become an Exhaler II
Become an Exhaler in bed in the morning
666 words will take you a good 3 minutes to read
Let’s, at least, imagine you are in bed and are deliciously awakening with greater ease as I taught in my December article Undercover Yoga I.
If you have also read and explored the February BBB you deserve the treat now; before breakfast.
This morning allow your next exhale to become slower again. Follow its sensations all the way to the end and feel what happens.
1 of 2 things happens
You have either taken a long time observing your very slow and steady exhale and really “exhausted” the oxygen content in your blood to such a degree that the inhale comes surging in as if you turned on an inner vacuum.
[To be precise, it is not the lack of O2 but the abundance of CO2 that triggers the inhalation]
…Or you followed your slower exhale to its end but less extensively and you dropped into a moment where ‘nothing’ was happening; the natural pause between exhale and inhale.
Exploring the opposite to reach our goal with even more ease
There is also a pause at the end of your inhale as the body turns around to release the air back out. Can you find it?
In our stressed bodies though, that one is often misused for holding our breath and tightening our muscles even more. This default pattern/stress response is exactly what I hope to soften within your nervous system by alerting and shifting your awareness to focus on the whole-body-pleasure that lies in an extended exhale.
The genius of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais’ Method offers itself at this point to expand your brains sense of what I am proposing.
Please do tighten up [your shoulders and chest, neck and jaw] on purpose as you inhale normally and hold it right there for just a moment… Release your breath easily. Be gentle and “Stay within the limits of pleasure!” – as Mia Segal my first Feldenkrais Trainer always said.
It is key here not to force anything so your experience will inform your cognition positively. Try to do it with even less effort the next time. Good! Play with it another 2-3 times, each time finding more ways to do less.
Now feel into your body for any changes in the way you lie in your bed. Your body’s inner organization increases with this kind of gentle exploration. Paying attention to details in this way allows our inner intelligence to release unnecessary muscle action.
So you may find places like your neck, back or shoulders that have sunken more into your pillows or just a general sense of feeling nicer, without needing to put any specification on it. Feeling around for any shifts as you rest [even if you do not notice anything different] is boosting your awareness and deepening your learning.
If you know what you do – you can do what you want – paraphrasing Dr. Feldenkrais
Nothin’ happenin’
After this little [de]tour to get to our goal of naturally deeper exhales I like you to play with that slower exhale a few more times. You might really begin to like it, especially the space created by the pause. As you explore and hang out in ‘nothin’ happenin’, notice what is happening to your whole sense of your self.
That Healing Feeling
Breathing normally now, permit your attention to spread throughout your whole body with ease. What do you notice first?
Still that old tightness? Energy follows attention, so gently find and keep your focus and receptivity with the good, expansive, warm, spacious, lighter, flowing pleasurably releasing sensations.
Each time you look for those healing feelings you become a little bit more familiar with your bodies’ natural ability to let go.
If you have already done a few of these mindful exhales last night, [see BBB Feb.2010] your body more willingly shows your mind now how it can release even the relentless grip in your neck and shoulders, your forehead, jaw and belly, as well as around your back and hips.
Welcome your self healing capacity!
Have a great day!
Thank you for reading.
With a smile
Sabine
For next month’s 1st Birthday Celebration of Blogging my Body Bliss I might offer the “Nothin’ Happenin’ Meditation” to you
I love to hear from you and invite your feedback, comments and your own experiences.
My gratitude for non-stop learning goes to all my clients and teachers and I trust You also will benefit from reading and feeling.
You ONLY have to let the soft animal of your body love what is loves
– Mary Oliver
The author doesn’t take any responsibility for any possible consequences that might occur from your thoughts and actions.
Sabine Grandke-Taft
Embodiment Expert and Workshop Leader
for more information please go to
Creative Commons License
Sabine Grandke-Taft holds the copyright for her Blog but allows you to copy and distribute her work provided you give her credit and link back to her website www.radiantembodiment.com Thank you very much.
Become an Exhaler – Undercover Yoga 2
629 words will take you about 3 min, to read and give you a whole night of sweet sleep
Become an Exhaler I – in bed tonight
Expanding on the delicious morning ‘let-go’ from my December BBB Undercover Yoga 1 here is what you could play with tonight when you are softly covered in your bed.
For just a moment feel into what’s normally happening to your breathing when you remember you hear or see something stressful on TV, Radio, on the road, at the office, happening with your child, or when that person is on the line.
You probably recount a quick inhale “hhiiiiii” and than – - – you kept it right in. Your chin slid backwards and tensed up your neck slightly more with tension spreading into your shoulders and [at least] down your whole spine. Any further breaths go by un-noticeably and there never seems to be a release through a deep exhale. Hhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh…
If you just embodied what I was describing – that HHHaaaaahhh – “valley”, was very nice and needed, wasn’t it?
I was describing a very mild enactment of our ancient startle reflex http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startle_reaction that has become a “normal” tension pattern piling up inside throughout each day. You may not have felt much of this until you begin to pay attention to these tightening responses that accumulate throughout your body during your day.
The startle reflex developed as a survival skill through thousands of years of evolution beginning with our animal ancestors and I see it as part of the freeze [play possum] strategy to avoid “being lunch”.
This clever and automated response obviously worked or we would not be here. It is still run by your “reptilian brain”.
A very useful reflex for some of those extreme life threatening situations we do encounter, but not very supportive when our “normal” daily stressors themselves become its constant trigger. In other words: when quick inhalation-tension without satisfying exhalation-release has become just another pattern that’s adding even more vigilance to our western stressed-out bodies and minds. OOOaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh
Just on the side; here’s another interesting food for thought. Ask somebody to exhale – they inhale first…. But that’s for another blog
“Exhalers live longer” –
This is one of the most foundational ideas I explore with all my clients.
Allow your exhale to be your main focus.
The slower we breathe – the longer we live – they say in Yoga.
For tonight’s comforting exploration your exhale does not need to be longer or stronger. Just notice your normal exhale! Curious isn’t it? Exhales automatically become longer when you pay attention to them. No strength needed - just sensing. You may find a release in your body, a let go, a softening of your chest and belly – and then – just an empty space —-before the next inhale cascades in ….
Your bed right now is the luscious haven of opportunity to set your internal stage for the whole night. Feel your body, bones, organs and muscles in the warm embrace we already explored in the December BBB.
Notice how noticing a longer/slower exhale relaxes you, even if only a tiny piece of your body softens. That’s it!
Your heart rate will slow down as well. Good!
Play with it again. You can feel how your bodies weight sinks towards your mattress, how your shoulders are moving away from your ears to where they can rest. No need to keep your head up any longer. [In Germany we say: hold your ears stiff… same up-tightness] This frees up your neck and even your jaw, your spine, your belly and your pelvis.
Luxuriate in another exhale. Can you feel how you are beginning to let go deeper? Look for a sense of slow flow and softening inside your tissues as you rel-ease your day.
I wish you a good night and very sweet dreams!
With a delicious exhale
Sabine
Onward with Undercover Yoga
Next months Themes include:
Become an Exhaler in the morning
Schlappe Noodle Fun
Life Spirals
Touch for Pleasure
Ocean Motion in your Hips
Disclaimer
Please! Whatever you do – Stay within the limits of pleasure. Make it simple and easy.
The author doesn’t take any responsibility for any possible consequences that might occur from your thoughts and actions.
Sabine Grandke-Taft
Embodiment Expert and Workshop Leader
for more information please go to
www.RadiantEmbodiment.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/sabinegrandketaft
Creative Commons License
Sabine Grandke-Taft holds the copyright for her blog but allows you to copy and distribute her work provided you give me credit and link back to my website www.radiantembodiment.com Thank you very much.
Pleasure 2010? – Undercover Yoga 1!
584 words will take you about 3 min reading time
I dedicate myself to the Recovery of Pleasure for this New Year:
Pleasure in every form to energize my health, my relationships and my work.
To seduce You by Your Own pleasure I’ll offer delicious “Undercover Yoga” that I am developing throughout my book on Feminine Radiance.
But first let’s begin this ‘hidden’ journey into the Revival of our Senses by
Exploring the Stress Bat – Race Rat
How many mornings do you awake tightening up immediately intruded by all the thoughts that come flying into your mind like bats returning home to their empty cavern at dawn? Things you could hopefully and did deliciously release during your sleep. But now they invade the sanctuary of your innocently expanded Self, just to dangle their shadows down from the ceiling inside your head occupying the otherwise blissfully clear space.
I have noticed in those precious moments juuuust between being still asleep and awake that none of these thought bats where there yet. I am one with the total free flow of my em-bodied state.
Only during the following moments concepts ideas words and the old problems come bursting back into my head one by one. I used to think that that was me and I tightened automatically even before getting up. Each morning the mind is successfully diverting our attention away from our sense of wholeness and the physical experience that we are actually only here, inside our spacious body and our cozy warm bed.
Without this realization, stress that’s overshadowing our mind starts oozing into our body. Mental contraction leads to emotional and consequently physical tension. It thrusts aside and numbs our physical pleasure perception. The rest of our day [and our New Year] we’re back glued to the old stress track rat race with everybody else. Schwup-dee-vup!
Self-Compassion follows
The double Catch
For most of us body tension got chronic and can not just release over night. A continual elevation of muscle tone causes our primal brain stem [our survival expert] to suspect looming danger. Over time while trying to suppress the growing jeopardy of this self-perpetuating interior alarm mechanism we get really good at restricting our breathing. Take a breath – More on this below and in February…
Wake up to your senses; get unstuck from the rat race for your own life inspired by your passionate pleasure.
Undercover Yoga 1 – December’s Pleasure of Warmth
You are just waking up. It’s cold and dark out there and your day is packed. –“Don’t jump out of bed – Simmer.”– Robert Blythe[?]
How could the rest of your day unfold with a pleasurable sense of yourself? Answer: You relax into it right here while you drink in the delicious warmth under your covers with a deep inhale. Let every cell of your body lovingly expand to receive these nurturing and luscious feelings through all of your skin.
As your exhale expands notice how your body’s softening also relieves your mind. Allow yourself luxuriously to sink into your warmth one more time. Drop into your pillows. AAAHHHH! �
Look for a sense of release and expansion – a slight increase of sensation in your 3D body. MMMMMMMHHH!
Use your mind for noticing this loving kind of self-awareness more often and…you have left the rat race behind with a radiant smile.
Welcome! 
Join me each month in my Essential Undercover Explorations.
Themes include:
Become an Exhaler
Schlappe Noodle Fun
Life Spirals
Touch for Pleasure
Ocean Motion in your Hips
Happy New Year
Sabine
Disclaimer
Please! Whatever you do – Stay within the limits of pleasure. Make it simple and easy.
The author doesn’t take any responsibility for any possible consequences that might occur from your thoughts and actions.
Sabine Grandke-Taft
Embodiment Expert and Workshop Leader
for more information please go to
www.RadiantEmbodiment.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/sabinegrandketaft
Creative Commons License
Sabine Grandke-Taft holds the copyright for her blog but allows you to copy and distribute her work provided you give me credit and link back to my website www.radiantembodiment.com Thank you very much.
Disguised Pleasure
PLEASURE in 500 words?
Contemplations on the most important experience of our life
501 words will take you less than minutes to read
Since the early springtime I was invited to teach 2 workshops in New Zealand.
What a wonderful exciting intense work pleasure! The 9 month of planning and re-planning, organizing and promoting zoomed by like that jet that was going to get me there in just 13 hours.
It was the 21st of September – that day I always remember… [- Rolling Stones]
On that Monday morning of my flight – All my bags are packed; I’m ready to go… [- John Denver] I finally got phone contact with the organizers in Kiwi Land. They still had nobody signed up for the weekends AND only 2 people who signed up for the free introductory evenings — I had been under the impression those had filled up…
Under new im-pressions my bodies’ enthusiastic flow of achievement evaporated at the inhale. I experienced myself go physically through the Startle Reflex first phase [Ex-Tension]. I finally ex-haled ex-hausted [phase II, Languish] I closed my mouth – I sat down.
Now my mind desperately began trying to wrap itself around the Unexpected, the Impossible. Only my ‘old friends’ jetted in – self-judgment, failure, inadequacy… Before they could take complete crippling control over the unusual beckoning void inside my head I also perceived a new voice like a beam of life light – Self Compassion! AAAAHHH!
“BUT what about my trip, the new country……..!” – My mind kept interfering with notoriously agaonizing disbelief.
I heard myself laughing– Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans… [- John Lennon]
The unbearable space of freedom dawned on me.
3 weeks of unscheduled time?!
This jolt in the plow line of my field of professional desire returned me to feel this present moment. I landed at the heart of life.
10 min later I called back to cancel my trip.
There’s a crack in everything – that’s how the light gets in… [- Lenard Cohen]
Another few exhales later my mind integrated enough into my body, noticing space inside, feeling my feet on the ground and my whole spines’ smooth unwinding. I made another phone call.
Was it the September, my readiness, the crack, divine planning or all together? The Big Sur cabin where I have had the absolute pleasure last year to write on my book was available for a full 2 weeks! YEAH!
During the week I had left to get down there I released more illusions on running my life, relaxed, reconnected, repacked. I was also able to schedule just enough individual sessions and classes to earn exactly the amount for the cabin rent.
Only when I sat in the harvest moon bathed bathtub on the deck of my cabin in the Red Woods over the deep canyon I remembered how sometime during the busy frenzy of this summer I had wished for the money and time to write on my book this year.
“Be careful what you ask for!”
I learned to trust the mystery of the river of life.
With smiles of gratitude
Sabine
Disclaimer
Please! Whatever you do – Stay within the limits of pleasure. Make it simple and easy.
The author doesn’t take any responsibility for any possible consequences that might occur from your thoughts and actions.
Sabine Grandke-Taft
Embodiment Expert and Workshop Leader
for more information please go to
http://www.linkedin.com/in/sabinegrandketaft
Creative Commons License
Sabine Grandke-Taft holds the copyright for her blog but allows you to copy and distribute her work provided you give me credit and link back to my website www.radiantembodiment.com Thank you very much.
On Breathing Your Own Life
As he slumped forward to take of his shoe he released a suppressed huffing sound as if it caused him pain to pull up his leg.
I asked and my client said with a pale sigh that this was always the same problem with his lack of being able to breathe. Jack, now in his mid 30’s, had learned early on in his difficult childhood that he could survive when he would only breathe a wee bit into his stomach. I am sure you can reflect on that way of breathing that we can barely see or feel.
We all know how it is when we are scared and better try to be invisible – our whole body contracts. Our chest tightens and all our muscles clench up simultaneously as we make our-Selves shrink. In its extreme our ability to just stop our body and withdraw from life is called “playing Possum”. It is a brilliant capacity of our ancient survival mechanisms.
Following the roots of your human instincts you can watch animals in the wild use a total “freeze” often very successfully in case of immediate danger. The attacker looses interest in a “dead” body and later the survivor wakes up, shakes off the experience and has lunch instead of being lunch. The often daily threat does not seem to have any lasting effects. Our human experience is different.
As kids many of us have learned to take refuge by limiting our vital expressions in Jack’s way and keeping ourselves just invisible enough to get through – sometimes for many years.
I call it survival breathing – receiving and moving just the bare minimum to stay alive; in contrast to allowing life to breath us fully.
Growing out of the dependence of childhood our life has often invited and allowed us to begin exploring more of our individual Selves. BUT – if that excellent strategy that has secured your survival for so long has taken over as an unconscious habitual pattern of limiting your Self you never really get to enjoy your life either – the way you somewhere know deep inside is possible. On more or less severe levels I know this to be true for myself as well as for most of us.
You can imagine that relaxing and breathing more freely is one of the most important prerequisites for your aliveness to radiate.
In that moment Jack’s habit of letting only tiny survival breaths into his belly did not work any more because his thigh was now pressing into his abdomen.
The constriction pattern in his body had also gotten hold of other life situations. Jack had already told me about his agony in the line at Pete’s coffee for instance. He finds himself expecting that all the other people there are thinking badly of him. It gets harder and harder to breathe because his freeze/self-judgment pattern can not allow him to soften any space in his chest and permit air in. Caught in this internal trap it is very difficult to feel ones body rooted and find a relaxed sense of clear Self- assessment.
By pulling up his leg on my chair he had taken the space away for his belly to expand the usual bit and so his old fear of not breathing “right – again” puffed out.
On one side [note]:
I need to point out that opening our body to a greater extend than we usually feel safe with [especially in the front around our heart just by taking in a deeper breath] can bring up a lot of emotion: one being the real fear of being seen, feeling unprotected, vulnerable and influenced by everything coming our way. So with our familiar protective survival instinct we tend to rather stay “safe”, contracted and put up with feeling quite miserable like my client. When we deeply honor this aspect of our truth our self-compassion softens our body-mind enough to begin stirring again. Notice your own breathing right now. May be you can feel a little release.
On the other side:
In the habit of very restricted breathing [and therefore a reduced experience of our energy] our body and our mind seem to loose contact and forget how our ribs can actually move and thus allow fresh air to fill all of the vastness of our lungs – I am talking not only about the most obvious spaces on both sides of our chest bone in the front. Re-member also the quarters of your lungs underneath your armpits on the sides and the huge expanse of the lung tissue in your back that reaches from the top of your shoulder blades almost all the way down to your waste line.
Did you know that your lungs live just as close to the surface in your back as they are in your front?
Feel it!
When you explore with your finger tips in-between your ribs [lets say underneath your right nipple or behind your left clavicle] you are feeling through muscles right onto your lung tissue. Equally so in your back – your lungs are snug up to the inside of your ribs filling the whole lumen of your rib cage. Right now I am experiencing my ribs moving when I lean against the backrest of my chair and exhale-inhale into that area.
I asked my client if he would like to explore. “Yes!” He sat down on a stool and felt his upper belly and lower ribs with both hands. The belly swells with inhaling and gets smaller with every exhale. Rising – Falling; Expansion – Contraction – the rhythm of life right at our fingertips. When he paid attention he began to feel that his lower ribs could also move up and apart when air filled the lung tissue that is waiting underneath. Jack got curious.
In the few months Jack’s been coming for sessions his main complaints have been the problems caused by his compromised breathing and how he would often totally forget to “do it”. When that happens he also has to feel the consequences of the lack of oxygen and motion right away – more physical and emotional tension, low energy, and fear all the way to anxiety and all the way to depression with tons of self-judgment. – A total recall of that “old darkness” that does not serve him any longer.
With small movements and his awareness he then explored the opening and closing of different parts of his whole rib cage. Some time later he was leaning his front on a big soft pillow and his forehead was resting on some folded towels. I was now gently touching his back and the spaces in-between his ribs feeling how the tissues were softening and his breathing was beginning to enter new spaces naturally.
After inviting one side of his back in this way I let him feel for any different sensations. Compared to the other side he noticed more space and a sense of warmth. Later when I began to integrate both sides he all of a sudden said: “This is really wonderful to be able to feel my breathing so easily and relaxed.” Jack was experiencing a whole new in-side. He was amazed. For me this was one of the very first times he had noticed and spontaneously expressed a positive feeling in his body.
As Jack was getting ready to leave our session he voiced his usual hesitation to trust that his mind could remember to use his newly found space for breathing. Remember life’s rhythm of expansion –contraction? So naturally his mind went back into the old tightly beaten groove of “having to do it” and “it better be right”. I listened intently noticing his now rosy cheeks and his eyes that had cleared up since he had arrived.
Next, he was talking energetically about something else as he rather swiftly and without any effort in breathing lifted his leg up high to put his shoe back on. No agony, no fear, no interruption of his life, just a natural flow. He did not even seem to notice. Now I smiled and pointed to his leg. That’s when he woke up to the ease and natural intelligence his body was just living.
At our next session Jack told me he had gone to Pete’s coffee for a tea afterwards … With a smile he had noticed his thought: “I guess I am feeling better than any of these people here.”
I invite your feedback, comments and your own experiences.
My gratitude for non-stop learning goes to all my clients and teachers and I trust You also will benefit from reading and feeling.
All names have been changed to honor the privacy of my clients. Still, the stories are written with their permission.
Thank you for reading
Love and light
Sabine
You ONLY have to let the soft animal of your body love what is loves
– Mary Oliver
The author doesn’t take any responsibility for any possible consequences that might occur from your thoughts and actions.
Sabine Grandke-Taft
Embodiment Expert and Workshop Leader
for more information please go to
Creative Commons License
