The Psychology of Breath: From Panic to Peace in Four Counts
When the god Shiva breathes in, a universe is created; when he breathes out, it dissolves. When the Daoist immortals used breath magic, they could walk on clouds and heal the sick, Christian mystics used breath-linked prayers because they knew that God breathed life into the world.
You’re walking alone at night back to the safety and security of your home. It’s a new moon and the council are saving money by turning off streetlights and you can’t remember the last time you saw any police presence in this part of town. To the Sufis, breath is the vehicle of divine speech. So what’s so important about this simple thing we do? Apart from the fact that each breath is a reset button for a death that’s only two minutes away?
From the divine to the everyday, breath carries power.
Your steps quicken as you hear a noise behind you. Plenty of people have reasons for being out at this time, no drama, no need for paranoia. Then, as one corner after another, the footsteps behind remain and perhaps even quicken with your breathing as your heart beats in your chest, in your ears, throughout your entire body, pumping adrenaline.
You’re closer to home now but the footsteps keep the beat. You can hear the other person breathing. You imagine their hot breath on your exposed neck, sending the cold grip of terror throughout your body. There’s home. You can see the light that you left on.
In a panic, eyes fixed on the door, you fumble with your keys, eventually ramming them home, twisting the mechanism and slamming the door with your back. You’re breathing. Hard. And will be for some time.
If you prefer a more gentle scenario maybe imagine an evening of passion with the person of your desire. Different scenario, same effects in some ways - breathing, heart, release, recovery.
Our bodies respond automatically to all kinds of different environmental stimulus and often correctly. Other times we might feel fear or passion where others wouldn’t. Think about a phobia for example. Why, people might ask, are you freaking out? It’s a clown for goodness sake!
We can’t control the outside as much as we’d like. There’s often a mismatch between the environment we want and the one that we’re in. Then our body responds, sometimes in extreme ways. Sometimes in such an overblown manner that life becomes unliveable. We have to learn to control the response. Or at least to keep it to manageable levels.
You can control what scares you. It’s based on deeply buried history - either inherited such as the ancestral fear of snakes or spiders, or it’s buried experience such as trauma or challenging events that happened when you learned about how the world works. If someone criticises you, you may not hear the intention to make things better, you’d hear your parents arguing, or the teacher that you were terrified of aged 5.
You also can’t control your heart. If you’re in a life threatening situation you want it to beat harder, you want it pump adrenaline to give you a better chance of escape or conquest. You want to be able to perform at your best and the heart knows it.
The one thing can start to control without any training or special insight is the one thing that has been part of meditation culture for 3000 years, maybe more. Breathing.
The breath is the essential link between the inner and the outer. It’s often the first responder to changing circumstances in all extreme emotions. It’s also the one thing that operates automatically and continuously but that can be taken over by your conscious mind at any point. Unlike the independent heart.
If you can control your breathing, you can control your thoughts, your responses your behaviour. This doesn’t happen automatically but all meditation cultures know that it’s the best starting point.
One way we can take back control of our bodies in any situation is by controlling our breathing using counts. You don’t have to be a monk or a mystic to do it either. You can do something called box breathing for example. This just involves breathing in a count (four, say) then hold for the same count, breath out for the same and then rest without breath for the same. You can do it longer if you need to - 8 counts, 12 counts, even 30 counts. Do this several times and watch your whole inner landscape transform.
If you’re in a challenging environment or tough circumstance, you might feel fear or discomfort. If you’re walking home alone and feel scared, of course be vigilant, but also practice your breathing. Stay in control, help the body (the parasympathetic nervous system) by soothing the inner world. Of course, if you don’t that in the second, more loving scenario, then you’re into the realms of popular tantra and that’s a whole other article. There’s lots of ways of being more like the gods.
For a quick demonstration go to https://youtu.be/Nb2PYwmeIik
or
https://www.tiktok.com/@philipjohngrant/video/7519087818958736662