Hi there,
Take your attention to your breath, the natural breath that you might not even have noticed before this moment. Don't change it, or force it into a box of what you think it should be. Just let it be for a moment. Listen. What is it saying? Does the spiral bring you inward, or out?
I learned a new word recently for a concept that's been lingering in the back of my awareness. It's interesting how learning a word can bring an idea to life.
Complementarity. Lots of different fields of study use this word in slightly different ways, but it came to me via Ursula Wirtz, a Jungian analyst, who writes about complementarity in her book Trauma and Beyond. The idea is that two seemingly opposing things not only can work together to a common good, but that both are required.
When we think about breathing in the context of Buteyko, functional breathing, or breathing retraining, there is an idea that we need to fix the breath, that something is broken. That might be true. However, it is also true that you are not broken, that your breath is a link from your unconscious self to your conscious self, that your breathing is a message from your soul to your brain. If we jump to fixing it before hearing what it has to say, we are missing something important.
This doesn't mean that functional breathing is thrown out the window. It just means that it is balanced with an idea of breathing that might seem to be in opposition. Not either/or, but both/and.
So what does this mean about teaching breathing in a yogic setting? This is what Finding Kevala Pranayama is all about. What is breathing? How do we breathe? How do we hear the breath? And how can we teach it with more intelligence and wisdom in our yoga classes?
I'm excited about this course. It's the coming together of nearly 20 years of thinking about breathing. We'll deep dive into a daily pranayama practice and we'll learn the science of breath. There will be times to practice for yourself, and times to consider how to teach others. Readings will consist of peer-reviewed research articles and poetry. You will direct your breath, and you will listen to it as well.
I hope that you'll join me for 11 weeks starting January 12, Wednesdays 1–2 pm ET. Space is limited, so please sign-up soon.
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Finding Kevala Pranayama
January 12 – March 23, 2022
Wednesdays 1 – 2 PM ET
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50 hours of CE with the Yoga Alliance can be earned through this course.
If you think of someone who might be interested in this,
please forward this email to them.
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