A Different Kind of Medicine
Exploring the power of the breath and its healing capacity
“Breath is a tool with which to explore the truth about oneself” – S.N. Goenka
The first time I experienced the joy of breathing was while I was scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef in 2010. As I descended into the deep blue, I became intimately aware of how my breath was directly affecting the quality of my experience. When I felt calm, my breath was soft and slow and I would feel more relaxed and in control. When I felt nervous, my breath was hard and fast and I would feel more tense and uneasy.
This was not only affecting how I felt underwater but it was also determining the time I could spend down there too. On the same tank of air, I lasted a rather dismal 20 minutes while the rest of my group lasted 55. Apart from feeling embarrassed at being escorted back to the boat 30 minutes before everyone else, I was also bummed to have paid the same amount for a third of the experience.
Once everyone had resurfaced and was safely back onboard, my instructor comforted me by saying that, “Experienced divers tend to breathe slower, deeper breaths in and out so their air lasts much longer. Newer divers like you, on the other hand, tend to breathe shorter, sharper breaths so your air runs out much faster.”
Luckily, because I had signed up for another dive 45 minutes later I could test his theory out. And he was right. As my breath slowed down, I lasted twice as long.
Years later I learned the significance of this in terms of health, happiness, and the longevity of our lives too.
Since that awesome day 13 years ago, I have breathed close to 66 million breaths. And before that, there were 110 million more. In the years between then and now, I have become a scuba diving instructor, teaching hundreds of students all over the Caribbean. I have also become a Kundalini yoga teacher and a breathwork facilitator. It didn’t seem to matter which path I took though, or which language each practice originated in, the culture they belonged to, or how old each technique was because in their own unique way, they all said that slow, deep breathing supports long-term health and short, sharp breathing does not.
Breathing hasn’t always been easy for me, though. For two-thirds of my life, I was wary of it.
My older brother had asthma growing up so watching his breath get weaker and weaker while his airways closed up was a scary thing, especially because it all seemed to happen so fast. One minute we were playing football outside and the next minute he was scrambling for his inhaler. The real panic set in when he couldn’t remember where he’d left it.
I experienced a similar terror when I was having an anxiety attack. Like most children, I suppressed certain emotions such as anger and sadness in childhood in order to get by. However, over time, these unprocessed emotions turned into anxiety and they plagued me throughout much of early adulthood.
I never would have subscribed to 20 years of anxiety if I’d known better but because that’s exactly what happened I was faced with a decision. To ignore it until it rendered me powerless on some idle Tuesday or find a way to live with it better in day-to-day life.
My experiences underwater and the subsequent insights I received about how the breath can slow things down gave me courage to choose the latter. And ever since then, I’ve been on a journey of healing, firstly for myself and then to support others.
We’re never alone in this life. The breath is the one thing that connects all 8 billion of us humans together. And when it comes to the breath, roughly half of us will inhale at the same time and roughly half of us will exhale at the same time.
This, for the average person, occurs every 3.3 seconds.
Each one of those breaths, regardless of where they’re breathed in the world or the age, gender, status, or health condition of the body who breathes them, will activate all ten systems in the body — skeletal, muscular, nervous, endocrine, cardiovascular, lymphatic, respiratory, digestive, urinary, and reproductive. For each breath forms the density of bones, teeth, and sheaths of muscle, it repairs, maintains, and regulates organ functionality, it aids digestion, it adds and subtracts weight, it directly communicates with the nervous system, it regulates the body’s temperature, removes toxins, releases hormones and endorphins known to cause stress and relaxation, and balances the body’s pH levels. It does this breath after breath, from birth until death, every single moment we are alive, and it never ever stops.
Some breaths cause inflammation and fatigue. Others, if sustained long enough, can change bone structure and cause heart failure. What I unknowingly found out while I was scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef back in 2010 was a truth that not only forms the foundations of my own life but of life itself. And that is that the quality of our breath directly affects the quality of our lives. But perhaps more importantly, we’re the ones in control of the outcome.
Awakening An Ancient Future
During my first breathwork session many years ago, as each new breath flooded my lungs, everything started to tingle and dissolve, including my anxiety. It was a bizarre feeling, one that felt like I was simultaneously moving backward in time and forward in space as if travelling to a place so familiar yet so foreign.
In that moment I realised I’d found something that could finally help my troubled mind find peace.
I won’t lie to you now though and say that every breathwork session since then has been a blissful journey into oneness that I first experienced because it hasn’t. Working with the breath can reveal all kinds of layers and depths to one’s life and more often than not it does. So, along the way, I’ve encountered a fair amount of resistance too. However, what I’ve come to appreciate more than ever before is that the lows, as much as the highs, are an essential part of the process. So, just like anything worth pursuing in life, exploring the breath is a journey. One that I’ve found to be so incredibly rich and rewarding, uplifting and empowering, tender and illuminating. And I wouldn’t change it for the world.
This is the medicine of the breath and it’s an honour to breathe it with you.
If you’ve been inspired and want to learn more, check out the technique that changed my life here.
I know I’m biassed, but I’d highly recommend it :)