from YOGA IN THE ADIRONDACKS...
Befriend the Breath
by Susanne Murtha
susanne@yogaintheadirondacks.com
When I experience life’s challenges, my automatic response is to suppress them and look at them only when they become uncomfortable enough to demand my attention. What I’ve learned through the practice of Yoga is that the more that I can observe challenges and feel them fully, the more I can accept them and welcome the blessings and growth they bring. This CD, Befriend the Breath: Explorations of the Breath, Chair Yoga and Guided Relaxation, was created from this premise and from my special relationship with Alice Dunkley, who lives with COPD.
Working with Alice has been a gift to me. Our most amazing private session happened when I introduced her to the practice of “Sensing Opposites” in the body (a practice which is on the CD). I guided Alice to allow her awareness to settle on an area in her body that was calling for attention, to feel it fully — noticing its qualities. I intentionally left it up to Alice to select the area.
Continuing the process, I asked her to step back and scan for an area with qualities that felt opposite of that first area, and to feel its qualities. Then I asked her to move her attention back and forth between these two qualities—and finally to feel and observe both at the same time. At this stage, the mind cannot focus on both qualities, and it shifts into a meditative state (alpha brainwaves). Alice shared with me that she was initially drawn to the discomfort in her hip, and that the opposite quality of comfort was her breathing. At the end of the experience she had comfort in both areas. I found it extraordinary that Alice’s place of comfort was her breath even though she has only 18% lung function!
The Befriend the Breath CD includes many tools to improve your life with COPD. Throughout the practice there is an emphasis on postural alignment and breath awareness. We explore a segmented breath pattern that has worked for Alice, allowing her to shift her inhalation from irregular to smooth-flowing. Synchronizing breath and movement develops the breath and also concentration — the first stage of meditation. Developing a comfortable maximum length of breath will allow your breath to flow to its full capacity without stress — which can be a benefit during your lung-function tests. During the movement part of the CD, we actively engage our abdominal muscles and strengthen them by doing squats, twists, and leg lifts. Strong abdominals are especially important because of their connection to the primary breathing muscle — the diaphragm. The upper body movements on the CD increase energy flow. They also release tension in chronically contracted chest muscles and in the accessory muscles for breathing, which are used more when the body compensates for the challenges of COPD. The CD culminates with the practice of Integrative Restoration — a guided relaxation that induces profound meditation that will integrate your experience and nourish the healing, rejuvenative systems of your body.
Befriend the Breath guides you in a way that feels supportive to your unique breath, level of energy, range of motion and available time. The CD is marked with optional starting points to help you create the practice that is compatible with how you are feeling. Yoga teaches that our life-force energy, called prana, is related to the breath but is so much more. By working with extraordinary people living with COPD such as Alice — full of spirit and making a difference in spite of their challenges—I have learned firsthand the truth of this ancient teaching.