Breathing

And so today has arrived and I am waiting for the water to boil for a quick cup of tea before shoving off.

There are so many things I would love to discuss and they come flooding through, but yet I am not sure this is the time to bring them up, what with not necessarily being able to engage in the conversation directly. But I will bring up one and hope some of you will respond.

Breathing. For something that is totally subconscious, it really is an odd thing. I remember taking a theatre class in high school and having the instructor teach us proper breathing. He started by having us lie down on the stage. He said when people are lying down, they breath naturally. Then he had us stand up and breath normally. If we heaved our shoulders up, we were not breathing properly. The he went through the diaphragmatic breathing process.

Well after years of singing in the choir, yoga, meditation and hypnosis, the diaphragmatic way has proven to be a running theme. So this gets to the crux of the matter. When I start a session, I usually have the client take a deep slow breathe and exhale slowly. Then at certain points I may have them try to keep their breathes equal for inhaling and exhaling . Slow and steady. This is also practiced in some forms of Yoga. And as I guide a client to do this, I watch them to calibrate my wording with their actions.

Now during group sessions (even if it is only two), I change the wording to "breath at your own rate, time and speed."

Recently, I had a respiratory therapist say that these deep breathing and relaxing breathing exercises cause people to hyperventilate. She said that inhales are done fast and rapidly and that the ratio of time is for the length of time of an inhale, it should take twice as long or more for the exhale. Fascinating.

So, I was curious if anyone else had any experience with breathing techniques or had words of wisdom along this line?