I’ve been breathing for more than seven decades.
You’d think I’d have it figured out by now.
And yet I can still catch myself sitting at the computer, concentrating on something, barely breathing. Or something gets irritating and suddenly my shoulders are up around my ears and my breath has gotten short and tight.
Nothing is actually chasing me.
My body apparently didn’t get the memo.
That’s one of the things years of Qigong, yoga, movement and teaching have made me much more aware of.
Your breath changes with your life.
Get stressed and notice what happens.
Get angry.
Get scared.
Rush around trying to do six things at once.
Your breathing often changes before you even realize you’re stressed.
The interesting part is that this works in the other direction too.
You can deliberately change your breathing.
I use that all the time.
Not because I believe there is one magical breathing technique everybody should be doing. There are dozens of them, and I’ve played with plenty over the years.
Sometimes I bre…
