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Further to last week’s post on relaxing tension in the body and mind, I’d like to talk briefly about how the way we breathe is linked to how much relaxation or tension we experience.
When we do zazen the instruction regarding the breath is to let ourselves breathe naturally through the nose without trying to manipulate the breath in any way, and I am not going to suggest we do anything differently when we are meditating.
What I am going to suggest is that you pay some attention to the quality of your breathing as you go about about your daily activities. What is your breathing like when you are feeling relaxed? Is it slow and deep? Are your ribs expanding nicely out to your sides? And what is happening when you feel stressed? I expect you will find that your breath is faster and shallow and maybe your ribcage is frozen. No real problem if this happens infrequently and for short spells. But for a lot of us this rapid and frozen way of breathing has become a habit and can actually be creating more tension.
The good news is that we can train ourselves out of bad habits and into better ones. There’s tons of information out there about improving your breathing (just type breathing into Amazon and you’ll see what I mean) but really, all you need to do to get started is notice your breathing when you are tense and see how you feel after taking a few good old-fashioned deep breaths, breathing slowly and letting your ribs expand to the sides. Does that feel good? Has the amount of tension you feel reduced?
Sometimes just bringing our attention to the breath, without the intention to change it, can be enough to trigger the body to bring itself back into balance by regulating the breath. Any improvement in the way we breathe is going to reduce tension and help us to be more relaxed both on and off the meditation cushion.
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