The Beautiful Breath

I'm reading "The Breathing Book" by Donna Farhi, and I have to tell you that if you have any interest in your breath and how you breathe, where you hold or resist your breathing, or what muscles and body areas move with natural breath, you should read this book. It's beautiful. The first chapter has a description of breath that is so wonderful, so clear and calm that I want to write it on the wall opposite my yoga mat using colourful jiffy markers: "The inhalation is born out of the stillness of the pause and the exhalation dissolves into it." Simple, but elegant and significant for me. Breathing is something that we all take for granted. Breathing just happens all the time automatically, sure, but our postures, emotional states, external environments and more all have an affect on how we breathe. I'm a rapid, shallow breather. I've known this for years, so I've been working on it with breathing exercises (there are some tremendous inquiries in Donna's book) and also by simply being aware of my breath, my posture, my stress during moments of my day. Take right now, for example. What's your breath like? Mine is a bit laboured and restricted because I've adopted an easier way to sit at my desk on my exercise ball (yep, the ones supposed to help you sit taller and get better core strength). My body is as smart as my brain, me thinks, because I've been finding myself stabilizing my body and therefore the ball with my heels jammed between the edge of the ball and the floor. I can then easily repeat the nasty pattern of hunching over the keyboard with my shoulders approaching my ears. It's funny how such a bad posture can be comfortable - for a while until your upper back feels like it needs to be peeled back like a banana. So, back to the breath. Hunched and crunched doesn't allow my breath to venture in and out very well or very deep. [Release heels from ball, sit up tall using my abdominal muscles, lower shoulders down]. What's the breath like now? Hmmm... funny how it comes and goes much smoother, and it is easy to breath in more air. I feel refreshed. I also feel like doing yoga instead of sitting here at the computer. "Hello yoga mat. I love you."