Category: Breathwork

A breath token is a breathing exploration that I develop for friends & clients and send out as a gift.
In 2020 the breath tokens are about connecting breath and sound.

Sounding „O“

Let‘s begin with sensing where we have contact: on the chair, or on the floor, for example. We sense the weight of our body, letting it sink towards the ground. Let‘s stroke along the body walls to fully arrive in our body and its boundaries. We can accompany the stroking with gentle humming, moving the mouth.

Let’s now explore imagining, shaping, speaking and sounding an “O”. We repeat the exploration three times or as often as we like.

Tip: When we rest after the exploration, I find it helpful to always lay the hands in the same position, for example, both hands on the belly, or one hand on the belly and one hand on the back to notice the changes in the breath movement.

If there is little or no sensation, that‘s perfectly alright. We can focus on our hands resting on the torso or whatever it is that we’re experiencing.

A breath token is a breathing exploration that I develop for friends & clients and send out as a gift.
In 2020 the breath tokens are about connecting breath and sound.

Sounding „A“

Let‘s begin with sensing where we have contact: on the chair, or on the floor, for example. We sense the weight of our body, letting it sink towards the ground. Let‘s stroke along the body walls to fully arrive in our body and its boundaries. We can accompany the stroking with gentle humming, moving the mouth.

Let’s now explore imagining, shaping, speaking and sounding an “A”. Repeat the exploration three times or as often as you like.

Tip: When we rest after the exploration, I find it helpful to always lay the hands in the same position, for example, both hands on the belly, or one hand on the belly and one hand on the back to notice the changes in the breath movement.

If there is little or no sensation, that‘s perfectly alright. We can focus on our hands resting on the torso or whatever it is that we’re experiencing.

Revisiting

Now that we‘re coming to the end of the year, rather than add a new exploration, let‘s revisit a breath exercise that resonated with us, that felt good, brought joy or comfort.
“Slo-Mo ball in the back” from July, “The body as vessel” from May and “Rolling the back of the head” from March are favourites of mine, for example.
Let‘s repeat an exploration and sense how something has the same or a different effect, how we’ve changed within the repetition. What’s changed and what’s stayed the same? Let’s meet it with acceptance, let’s meet ourselves with acceptance, receiving ourselves as we are.

I wish you all a good transition into the new year. Let’s stay in touch. Let’s be breathed.

A breath token is a breathing exploration that I develop for friends & clients and send out as a gift.

Forward Bends
As breath teacher Carola Speads says, “any forward bend, no matter how small, will widen the chest and stimulate breathing.”
We can bend forwards in child’s pose, sit cross-legged and prop ourselves up on our elbows on the floor, holding the head in our hands or lie on top of gymnastic ball, for example. Let’s choose a reasonably comfortable position, so that we can stay in it for a while and notice what changes. The whole torso potentially relaxes, stretches and widens and can thus accommodate a wider range of breath movements.
When we want a break, let’s come up slowly, head last, and sense the quality of the first breath in the upright position. If we like, we can repeat this several times, deepening the relaxation and breathing.

This week I was at the Mexican Day of the Dead Festival in Berlin. With two other somatic practitioners, Mónica Toimil Robert and Frauke Felsch, and two Papiermaché skeletons, we did a movement session for schoolchildren.
One of the characteristics of the dead is that what remains of them, visibly and palpably, are the bones. So it was Mónica‘s idea to do something around bones, to create a „skeleton dance“.

I started off with „knocking on the bones“, sensing the structure of the individual bones from the skull to the feet and back up again. Monica then invited the children to move the individual bones, developing into a dance, where in effect, the bones danced with each other.

A breath token is a breathing exploration that I develop for friends & clients and send out as a gift.

Rolling from shoulderblade to shoulderblade

Yesterday I was walking in the forest where I live and leant against a tree. I could feel the bones of my shoulderblades against the wood and began rolling from one shoulderblade to the other. As my sensation of my upper back increased, I rolled from one outer tip of the shoulder blade to the other, as if I were sensing my wingspan. The rolling motion and the gentle stretch of the back muscles softened and opened my chest. I imagined creating space for my heart, enveloped by the lungs, and the heart expanding, pulsing more freely against the pleura and the diaphragm. It made me glad and so I invite you to join me. You can do this pretty much anywhere, against a wall, the back of a sofa or a seat on the train. And, of course, back to back with a partner.

In his article in the The American Journal of Psychology, Stephen David Edwards of the University of Zululand, takes us on a journey of spiritual healing traditions and contemporary practices with the breath. „Psychology is originally and essentially concerned with the breath, energy, consciousness, soul or spirit of life that leaves a person at death and continues in some other form.“ Instead of just naming various breathing methods for health, excercise and sport, he explains the psychology behind them. From breathing through a Zulu diviner to an increase in grunting in tennis players, this makes for an interesting read.

A breath token is a breathing exploration that I develop for friends & clients and send out as a gift.

Clasping the shoulder to become alert
I read more and more about breathing techniques and how they‘re supposed to help with regulating ourselves, usually calming down or being alert. 

We don‘t need a breathing technique for either. I‘d like to propose a simple touch that has a “waking-up” effect without unneccessarily interfering with the self-regulatory breathing mechanism. (This is just one example, there are countless other possibilities)