One thing I’ve been puzzled about while working with my physical therapist is the focus she maintains on how I breathe. She has taught me a number of breathing exercises. One of the first was square breathing, where you breathe in counting to four, hold counting to four, exhale counting to four, and then hold for four beats before slowly inhaling again. Whenever she reminds me to slow down, she lowers her hands and closes her eyes like she is worshipping a deity.
I dutifully practice everything in our sessions when she is leading me. Then I go home and promptly forget the instructions I’ve written down. What’s the point, I keep asking? How can breathing help me with my walking?
But one day this week, I had an experience that I think might be a game changer.
My husband and I started our daily walk with me feeling emboldened, since the previous day we had completed the entire loop out and back on the nature trail. Remembering that I had done this fairly easily, I was counting on repeating the feat. I didn’t want to turn my feet around at the halfway point like I do sometimes.
On this day, I was feeling strong and balanced. And as we rounded the first of two curves, for some reason, I began to intentionally breath deeper into my lower body. I decided that I wanted to breathe into the place my Tai Chi Chih practice names as the Dantien. It felt different to have my focus of attention below my naval as opposed to my arms or legs. I walked on, keeping this focus.
This is different, I thought.
“How is it different?” another voice popped up inside – a voice I attributed to my editor, who asks questions like that.
Attempting to put into words what the difference was I said to myself, “I’m breathing into my trunk.”
I kept breathing and walked strongly up the last hill on our route, the one that I usually whine about being so difficult. I felt so different. It felt like I was operating on more oxygen and that my arms and legs were along for the ride but they weren’t doing the work.
It was amazing!
Maybe, I thought, I need to rethink my resistance to learning about breathing in the way my physical therapist thinks about it. Her ideas have merit because they remind me that breathing is important. In Tai Chi Chih, there’s not much focus on the mechanics of breathing. In TCC we simply picture the breath reaching two inches below the navel – a location called the Dantien.
So I can enhance my TCC wisdom by learning from the physical therapist the mechanics of breathing. And my work with the physical therapist will be more successful if I keep more of an open mind and do my homework.
Do you ever consider what your breath can do for you?
IMAGE: This grinning skeleton in my room adds a touch of reality to my daily life and reminds me that my lungs are well protected.
