The Breath: Anchoring your Mind into the Present Moment

You go to a fancy restaurant and order a meal cooked by a world-famous chef. The ambience is beautiful and the meal is delicious. But what do we crave when we seek comfort? A nourishing home-cooked meal. Our relationship with our own breath is similar. We barely notice it, take it for granted as we go about our lives. And yet it’s always there waiting for us, a place we can come back to when our senses are overstimulated. The breath is the foundation of a yoga practice. From simply observing the natural rhythm of the breath to breathing more consciously, using it to enhance the physical practice and preparing the mind for meditation.

But we don’t see it talked about much in the mainstream yoga-inspired fitness/exercise world. Alignment and anatomy are essential to ensure a safe yoga practice - but in narrowing the definition of yoga to a set of movements, the breath gets pushed to the background. It’s what makes yoga different from any other movement practice. By uniting the body and mind, the breath brings us into the present moment, to be fully aware.

Just try this simple experiment, in a seated or standing position:

Step 1: Raise both your arms from the front, and then lower the arms down. Do this about 4 to 6 times.

Step 2: Now raise both your arms from the front, as you do this feel what happens to the body. Feel the chest as you raise the arms, and all along the spine. Lower you arms down and feel and notice what happens. Do these 4 to 6 times.

Step 3: Now consciously inhale, breath in slowly as you raise the arms from the front. Connect the breath with the movement, and extend the inhale to your capacity. Exhale consciously and slowly as you lower the arms. Do this 4 to 6 times. As you’re moving with the breath, observe how the breath supports each movement.

Which of the three helped you move with more awareness? Which brought more mindfulness to the movement? How did you feel after each of the steps?

This is what we do in a traditional breath-centered yoga class. There maybe exceptions, especially in yoga therapy. For example, in case of very shallow breathing or breathing issues – the conscious breath can be replaced with sound. Visualisation can also be useful. The physical practice (asana) is just one dimension of a yoga practice. And we need a bridge that will connect this physical dimension towards more subtler practices that require us to the channelize and direct the mind – the breath acts as this invisible bridge.