Last month I was at a workshop with master teacher Jessica Wolf in Lucerne. In her „Art of Breathing“, Jessica Wolf combines the Alexander Technique with Carl Stough‘s Breathing Coordination. We explored breath through movement and touch and experienced the different shape shiftings of breathing, depending on thought and body position.
From the many insights I gained during the workshop, the one that stayed with me was „the return of the inhale“. The premise in Jessica Wolf‘s teaching is that breathing does not „begin“ with an inhale but with an exhale. The exhale is the start of the journey, the inhale the return. Jessica said “you never have to “take” another breath in your life.
As Jessica was talking about this, I thought of the return of the inhale like a homecoming. I imagined a man walking away from a house set in a garden and a woman standing by the door, watching him leave. It was a sunny morning. In my „ideal home“ scene, both the woman and the man trusted that he would return and that they would be together again. Leaving and returning were similar and different at the same time. It was like the movement of breathing itself: the air goes, and is gone and then it returns and is there and then it goes again.
As I imagined this idyllic scene, I felt anxious. I was breathing high in my chest and tensing my belly. Having focussed on the exhale more than I normally do, I realised that my own associations about the themes the exhale brings with it: departing, releasing, letting go, giving away, were shaping my breathing. I found exhaling really challenging. Thanks to this breath exploration I‘d made an important discovery about myself and about my breathing.
I don‘t yet know how to incorporate the idea of the return of the inhale into my breathing practice but I‘m grateful for the inspiration, or maybe I should say expiration, and am looking forward to exploring it further.