Natural Breathing- How I Reset My Shortness of Breath and Tamed a Feral Cat
- John Wilson
- 2 days ago
- 13 min read
Much has been said and done around the question of "how to breath" as if it would not occur naturally and without our direct intervention. With the interest in yoga to the west has come many breathing techniques, likewise with eastern martial arts, and even western sports. Despite all of this interest in breath there are still a lot of different opinions floating around and not all of them agree. I have explored quite a few different practices from different traditions like many people in this day and age. Even back in the days when Ida Rolf was alive and practicing she was known to have said that working with breathing is difficult because so many people have tinkered with it by the time they have come to you that it is hard to make any meaningful changes. Despite this she designed the first step in the Rolfing 10 series to address restrictions in breathing, because it was vital to making positive changes, so it must be important.
Learning to Control the Breath
I first began doing breathing exercises while practicing Aikido in my early 20's. We did Ki breathing regularly, to increase vital energy (Ki) and to expand the ability to take in more air. My air capacity did increase and I found it therapeutic. It was a very intense point in my spiritual development too, really the beginning, and I would meditate and do Ki breathing up to 30 min at a time, often twice a day. To be fair to the tradition, I was probably doing it more forceful than it was taught to me, sort of like I did everything, but it felt good and I believed it was helping my Aikido practice as well. This also led me to experiment with other breathing exercises found in yoga and other spiritual practices. I was interested in many things.
My interest in many forms of development, both spiritual and not, led me to G.I. Gurdjieff's teachings on consciousness and attention. In his autobiography Meetings With Remarkable Men, he writes of traveling around the east seeking wisdom. He meets with a Sufi, an Islamic mystic, who recommends that he stops his yogic breathing exercises stating that the body has a very precise balance of substances like air, and the substances within air, so to deliberately try to control it is liable to do harm unless the individual is a complete master, knowing everything about themselves.
As I took a deeper interested in Gurdjieff's teaching, and eventually sought out and started working with Gurdjieff groups this was a hard pill to swallow, but as this tradition is not based on faith and it is encouraged that one should personally confirm everything before believing it, I carried on with my breathing exercises.
I continued on with my Eastern studies as well, I was by then an Anthropology major at the University of Texas, and I spent a good bit of time in the Asian Studies department focusing on ancient India. My own experimenting with yoga along with my interest in the occult, led me to some of the writings of Robert Svoboda and his account of a Tantric teacher he became a student of in India. His teacher, Vimalananda seemed to have a keen and unusual insight into spiritual development, by no means main stream, and he gave the impression that he really understood something. When Vimalananda found out that Svoboda was doing yogic breathing exercises (pranayama) he told him to stop. He went on to explain that if it is done wrong over a period of time it can cause issues like an enlarged heart, or even a herniated diaphragm. This stopped me in my tracks, as I had began to developed pain in my solar plexus region, basically in the center of my diaphragm. What struck me too is that Svoboda had reported the same issue.
Learning Not to Control My Breath
This was beginning to convince me that I might be doing harm to myself. Although we still did Ki breathing at the Aikido dojo infrequently, I eventually stopped doing breathing exercises daily at home. I continued with seated meditation, as that is something we do in our Gurdjieff groups, ideally daily, but certainly not without missing days. In addition I continued to explore other traditions on the side while working with The Gurdjieff Foundation, eventually moving to San Francisco to work with a larger group. At some point I found myself on a Buddhist retreat in California, Vipassana to be specific. The first thing we began working with is Anapana breathing. This a practice of meditating on breath, without altering it. I found this very difficult. When ever I brought my attention to my breath, I would automatically begin breathing deeper. More so, it seemed that when I was trying to focus my attention on anything I began breathing deeper. Although this observation certainly registered to me, I did not think too much of it, and continued on with the retreat, eventually doing another one in the Himalayas while in India.
Many years later I found myself in Colorado, studying at the Rolf Institute and working with the Gurdjieff Foundation locally. After doing morning meditation with my partner at the time, she asked me if I was doing breathing exercises. I was surprised and answered no, but on reflection it must have been no- not intentionally. I had come to find that so many years of doing special breathing while trying to concentrate on moves in Aikido, and in meditation, that I had picked up a habit of breathing very deep breaths when trying to concentrate. This was totally embedded and mostly unconscious. Along with this I had also noticed a general shortness of breath, which I blamed on the altitude in Colorado, but it never really went away.
Years went by and I wondered if it was possible to find a more natural way to breath again, but I still had a suspicion that I had some sort of pulmonary issue. While assisting with classes at the Rolf Institute the subject of breathing would come up sometimes and a few people brought up James Nestor's book Breath. This book approaches breath and breathing exercises from many angles. One of the important concepts mentioned in the book is that it is important to have a certain amount of carbon dioxide in the body for oxygen absorption. Another important idea is that the brain has chemical receptors that detect the amount of CO2 in the body and causes the body to respond accordingly. If those receptors become increasingly intolerant of CO2 level they send the message that the body needs more air and a developing an increased hunger for air will occur, causing shortness of breath and a more frequent need to inhale as a feeling of suffocating sets in. Nestor even went on to explore a treatment used for this, in which he had to take in air from a tank with higher amounts of CO2 than normal. The air had enough oxygen to keep him breathing but the doctor said that he will feel like he is suffocating, and Nestor wrote that it was true, and one of the most unpleasant experiences he has had in his life.
Along with the role of CO2 in the metabolism of O2, Nestor also wrote about athletes and coaches experimenting with breathing more shallow (hypoventilation) while doing sport activities. One Olympic trainer in particular had a team of runners who excelled over the rest. While reading this it occurred to me that I have discovered this not only in deep meditation, but also while trying to relax in the sauna. In both cases I noticed a long time ago that the key to deep relaxation is not to breath more deeply, but to breath more shallow. This happens naturally when deeper states are reached in meditation, just like in sleep, but in sauna it must be cultivated actively. There is a certain state of surrender that must be reached when in a hot sauna, a relaxation of the muscles, and a letting go. One might be tempted to breath deeper and even tense up when faced with the challenge of intense heat, and I have seen people in sauna breathing so deeply that it looked like they were going to pass out, but you don't see the Russians who go there- Sauna Professionals- doing that, and I found out naturally that the key is relaxation and allowing the breath to calm down until it becomes very shallow.
I found out both from my Rolfing training and from books on somatic psychology, along with Nestor's book, that the In Breath is connected to the sympathetic nervous system (Fight or Flight), and the out breath is connected to the parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest). To calm the nervous system down, the Out Breath should be the focus, not the In Breath. This is important to a practice like Rolfing because a person is more resistant to change when their sympathetic nervous system is activated, so less is possible when the client is too worked up. I came to understand that my shortness of breath and hunger for more and more air was related to the CO2 intolerance I had cultivated over the years through emphasizing deep In Breaths in meditation and martial arts, and this was tied to a nervous system that was more on high alert.
The Answer was Right Under my Nose
With more information in my immediate attention, I began working gently with my breath while doing seated meditation in the morning, seeing if I can try to break the habitual association between concentrating and deep breathing, and gently resisting my immediate hunger for air. I had begun a morning habit of reading some material for spiritual development during coffee and after meditation to give me something insightful to reflect on throughout the day, just a page or so nothing too much. At this point I picked a book with the journal writings of Jeanne De Salzmann entitled The Reality of Being, a deeply esoteric work by one of G.I. Gurdjieff's most important students, not very good as an introduction to Gurdjieff's ideas though. I have read this book before, more than once, but a book this dense with deep material will have certain things that speak to you and many things that escape you. Anything this deep can be read over and over again, every time gaining something new and marveling how it escaped you the first time.
There it was in black and white, over and over again, Madame De Salzmann, that's how her students referred to her, continued though out her journals to speak of the importance of allowing the out breath its full course and not rushing the In Breath. I know this must have made some impact on me before, but the amount of times she returned to this subject now really struck home with me. Along with focusing on the Out Breath, she gave exercises in sensation as well. Here is a passage:
"I participate in life through breathing. I feel I am in my breathing. I do not let myself breath naturally. I inhale but never exhale fully. I want to intervene, unable to accept the movement of life as it is.
I need to observe whether I breath from the chest or from lower down, from the diaphragm, and see what is not right with my breathing. I do not let the breathing take place freely: either I resist or I force it to be more complete. In both cases it is an intervention. And even if I know what is needed and try, I never succeed completely in letting it be. Even when I believe I am simply watching the breathing, I intervene. It is my way of watching that is not right. I cannot prevent my "I" from believing it is more intelligent than the life force that is contained in my breathing.
I do not know what I am when I breathe. I do not see that the act of breathing is always modified by images, ideas and emotions that come from the ego. I must learn to let my respiration take place so that its rhythm is not modified. I have to come to a state in which my habitual "I" does not intervene. I will never succeed in this without feeling the center of gravity in my abdomen. It is a real event to let the breathing take place by itself, on its own. I participate in something larger. I am part of this experience, which transforms me. (The Reality of Being- Jeanne De Salzmann, p 145-146)
Working more with the out breath, allowing the Out Breath its full expression, and not rushing into an In Breath began to teach me some things. Focus on the In Breath, which I always used to do, is not necessary and the quality of the Out Breath, and the pause before the In Breath, will determine the quality of the In Breath itself. The In Breath will happen naturally if we can allow the Out Breath to be more natural, but this took some time. In the beginning and for quite some time, I would find myself gasping for air and rushing into another In Breath. I began to suspect I did have some sort of breathing issue, so I had some pulmonary tests done and everything seemed to be normal. I continued to try allowing the Out Breath its full expression and I was reminded regularly by Madam De Salzmann's journals, of which I read a page or two daily.
"The perceptible breath is not the true breath, that is the current which animates inhalation and exhalation. We are aware of the air but not the current which is imperceptible." - Jeanne De Salzmann
Ben, Socializing my Wild Child
All of this brings me to the second part of my story, my pets. I had adopted two feral kittens from a friend's animal shelter, only somewhat socialized but a bonded pair. They got along perfectly, but with humans it was another matter. I had started working in Boulder assisting classes at the Rolf Institute only a couple days after I adopted them, so I remember getting up early for work and leaving two feral kittens hiding under my bed. I know they came out to play because they would trash my apartment while I was gone, which is perfectly normal kitten behavior. My girl started to socialize herself in a short time, but the boy would only socialize with his sister and not let anyone touch him. Any attempt to capture him at all would turn into a scuffle, bloodying up my hands and arms in a surprisingly short period of time. Over the course of the next year I tried to capture him daily, when I could, and brush him in the bed of his cat tree, the only place he acted like he was not terrified and even that took a while. With persistence at some point, I started to hear him purr, and he began to roll around and express joy in being brushed, as I started slipping in some petting by hand. This took much longer than I ever expected, at least 7 months. Any attempt to hold him would either result in a struggle or a complete shutdown, and wrapping him up in a towel to safely hold him seemed near impossible for me.
Neither of these cats seemed like they will ever be lap cats, but I continued to try to handle them both to desensitize them to it. The girl put up with it, the boy just shut down, which was not what I wanted. I started capturing him, gently around the same time every evening. While commuting through rush hour traffic to the Rolf Institute over the next year I was coming home tired, often spending hours in my car every day due to the traffic. I came home stressed, knowing that I needed to make some food and get up early to do it all again in the morning. I would pursue Ben until he gave in, which was sooner and sooner every time, and lay down with him on my chest. My shortness of breath seemed to be getting better by now, and I would take this as a moment to pause and rest before preparing for the next day. Focusing on the out breath allowed me a moment of calm and the weight of this small 11 lb cat on my chest seemed to allow my breath to take a fuller course out. Sometimes I had the TV. on in the back ground, and found that it annoyed me a bit, and he would not relax either, so I started turning the TV. off and focusing on relaxing my body along with allowing my breath to take its natural course and become more shallow. Pretty soon there was a change.
At some point Ben started purring for the first time while holding him, only while laying down with him on my chest. He not only started purring, he started rubbing against my neck and chin, he was starting to act like a house cat. I was rediscovering a more natural way to breath, in moments throughout the day, in morning meditation, and while connecting with my once more feral animal- still not a lap cat- but after 2 years of trying to socialize a somewhat wild animal, it was a big victory for both of us. He was sensitive to my inner state, when I was not relaxed, neither was he. Ben would only relax when I was calm and centered.
I had mentioned earlier that Ida Rolf commented on the fact the working with breath was difficult with people because so many people had already been altering the way they breath for so long that they don't know what breathing better means. It has been my observation that most people think that breathing better means chugging more air like better hydration means chugging more water, which is also not necessarily good, but even with less so with deep breathing. Part of a Rolfers role in helping people with their breath is to address fascial restrictions limiting breath, and find out what is not allowing them to breath with ease. It could be the whole sheath of connective tissue that wraps around the torso, the external fascial sheath, it could be the shoulder girdles compressing against the rib cage, it could even be restriction in the hips. The important thing to understand, if that the body has an innate wisdom, and somewhere deep down it knows how to perform instinctive functions like breathing. If we can allow this inner wisdom to take over, then we have discovered something.
In summary, the act of breathing naturally is the act of allowing, not doing. For many of us it is a journey to return to a more natural way. This also depends on the circumstances, Gurdjieff's Sufi teacher mentioned that if one wanted to change the tempo of the breath, one should do different physical exercises and it will happen naturally. The bottom line is, the body knows how to breath, but this intrinsic wisdom can be distorted by life experiences, and by deliberate practices. Doing some yogic breathing like pranayama here and there may not be overtly harmful, but doing it too much may be. Leave all that on the yoga mat, or just leave it to the yogis. At the end of the day, I feel that all my clients are on a quest to become more natural again, to find their true physical way of being. It is my job a Rolfer to help the natural wisdom of the body unfold, and the rest will take place in daily life, without the need for intervention. We are born with a blue print that will unfold on its own with the right influences. In being human it is our birth right.
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