Our lovely Breath

Where body meets spirit, and the invisible becomes intimate

There is something in us that breathes long before we believe to understand what living means. Something that holds us when everything else falls apart. Breath is the most intimate companion, the most loyal, the most patient - and strangely, the most overlooked. This writing is a small pilgrimage back to that quiet miracle. To remember its wisdom. To feel how it connects body and spirit, matter and the unnameable. To marvel at the life moving through us even when we do nothing.

I took my time to write about something that is our very first and last movement in this physical body. Something so self-evident that it becomes invisible to us. Forgotten. That isn’t necessarily a contradiction, but simply how life works. And the breath shows us exactly that. Although I normally write very personally, in this case I will also add more information than usual - simply to make you marvel, wonder, and linger in this mystery.

When we are born, everyone in the room waits for it: the first inhale, unsupported by the mother’s womb, often followed by an intense exhale that sometimes roars as a scream, like a little tiger. If I am not mistaken it is only after “the scream” where everybody truly relaxes?! From that point on, the breath becomes our constant companion, one which never leaves us except when our body leaves this world.

At the beginning, inhale and exhale are a harmonious coming and going, like ebb and flood touching the earth and the sky equally. Deep belly breathing - like in animals - is naturally present, the body subtle and receptive. Open. Over time, exposed to countless stimuli - sensory, emotional, social - through our parents, friends, school, society, and the system we live in, the breath often starts to change. To distort. The body closes and contracts more. Dysbalances of many kinds set in: muscular, hormonal, emotional. Not to speak of our hearts. Living with an open heart becomes almost irrelevant. All of that is adaptation, though not necessarily a healthy one.

In most societies, especially Western ones that still insist on the dominance of thinking, the intellectual mind, rigid definitions of success, and manipulation through our capacity to feel fear - many of these forces, when not examined more closely, are dysfunctional in their as-if-isolated form.

Sometimes I feel it this way when I look at the larger scale: If our society were breath, there would be almost only inhale. A “having more, filling more,” which functionally leads to hyperventilation. In its extreme - only inhale - it means death. Life needs both. Expansion and contraction. Action and pause. Inhale and exhale.

The inhale is directly related to the sympathetic branch of our nervous system - the part that stands for action, for fight-or-flight responses. The exhale is directly related to the parasympathetic branch and the ventral vagus nerve, allowing for rest, digest, and repair. Physically, mentally, emotionally. And as sidenote: opposed to other vital functions in the body, the breath takes an exceptional stance- it is both involuntary and voluntary.

And yet, if you look at the most common saying when someone wants to calm down or interrupt an immediate reaction, the focus is still the inhale: “Take a deep breath.” With this command, most people gasp for air like a stranded fish, trying to get as much oxygen in as possible. Almost no one says, “Inhale, and then allow your exhale to be long and soft,” which is what actually creates the calming effect in the system.

Besides that - and I wasn’t aware of it for a long time despite being a yoga teacher and having practiced classical pranayama such as Nadi Shodhana, Kapalabhati, Viloma, and so on - the focus on oxygen as the key to better breathing is very short-sighted.

Before I come to a personal story, and before offering you a simple practice through an audio I recorded (I'll redirect you at the end of this blogentry to my substack post in that regards), I’d like to deepen the scientific side of breath a little and hand you some sweet facts that are nothing but marvellous. And in traditional spiritual regards, here a beautiful company and remembrance post of VedicSoul I highly recommend.

In a German book titled Atmen - heilt, entspannt, zentriert by Ralph Skuban, there is extensive information about the extent to which the breath influences us and how swiftly it reacts to even the slightest changes inside and outside.

The chemistry of breathing

If we look beneath the skin, beneath muscle and memory, breath becomes a quiet alchemy - a choreography between gases, cells, blood, and the rhythm of the nervous system. What we call inhale and exhale is, on a chemical level, a constant negotiation of life.

When we inhale, oxygen enters the lungs and slips into our bloodstream. Not all of it is used - the body takes only what it needs in that moment: sometimes a third, sometimes more, sometimes less. The rest returns to the world on the next exhale. Oxygen is not a possession. It is a conversation.

And the exhale - oh, how underestimated it is. With it we release carbon dioxide, yes, but CO₂ is not simply “waste.” It is the key that allows oxygen to be delivered to our cells in the first place. Without enough CO₂ in the blood, oxygen clings too tightly to hemoglobin and cannot enter the tissues. Too little CO₂, and the body becomes more tense, more acidic, more contracted.

This is one of the most beautiful paradoxes of breath: We need the exhale to receive.

Skuban describes this so clearly - how CO₂ is not the villain we were taught to fear, but a regulating force, a chemical whisper that tells our system:You may soften. You may open. The world does not need to be held by your ribs alone. Breath, in its truest nature, is balance. Chemistry becomes tenderness. Biology becomes a teaching.

Three wonder-facts about breath (for a moment of marvel)

1. Your breath is older than you.Every molecule of oxygen you inhale has been inside oceans, mountains, forests, and countless other beings. Some of it once lived inside dinosaurs. Breath is the oldest inheritance we receive moment by moment.

2. You take roughly 670 million breaths in a lifetime - each one a tiny universe born, dissolved, reborn.

3. The diaphragm moves about 10 centimeters up and down with a deep breath - more than any other muscle inside us - like an inner heartbeat of the skies. And one saying about the diaphragm I find especially beautiful, being referred to as “The trampoline of the heart”

And the pause, oh the pause…

In June 2015, I attended a beautiful retreat on an old Turkish sailboat near Bodrum. The retreat was a collaboration between two masters in their fields. One was Luka Leppard, the founder of Tula Yoga - an amazing passive yoga practice where the receiver is moved through the air by the practitioner. The other was UK “Breath Guru” Alan Dolan.

We floated through crystalline waters, had early morning dives, soul food on deck, walks on land accessible only by boat - and of course, practice.

Alan’s breathing technique, and he truly is a master - humble, kind, deeply experienced - aimed at creating a circular breath. Inhale and exhale began to connect seamlessly. It is a practice that often stirs massive emotion that has been stuck in the body.

I came from a very long period of unstucking emotions - all of them - so what I actually needed was rest. Pause. The still point. The practice sent my nervous system ablaze, my body contracting again.

So I told Alan. I told him that at this point in my life - even if the technique is efficient - I did not need efficiency, but balance. A return to a natural breath, one that carries more knowing than all my ideas of it ever will. With no goal. With no specific outcome.

I told him, with tears in my eyes - as I was once again the one not following the “how-to” - that I wanted to feel it like I could feel the hills in the sparse morning light, breathing. The moon reflecting on a still, glasslike surface of water, breathing. Lying stretched out in that velvet water - being carried, being breathed.

He understood immediately. And finally I allowed myself to just be. My breath to just be. To linger in the still point until an impulse to breathe further arose on its own.

There are many techniques in different traditions or settings, and at times they can be beneficial. I practice some of them concretely when needed. But what I realised for myself is this: There is nothing more beautiful than allowing the breath to be.To accompany the breath, as it accompanies us. To explore it. To cherish it. All of it.

2 practical tips: 1. As written above, when breathing consciously, place a little more attention on the exhale. Attention is enough- no effort is needed. Most of us live more in doing or action mode (which corresponds with the inhale) than in letting be or letting go (the exhale).

2. Diaphragmatic breathing (belly breathing): Although it is our natural way of breathing, many of us have lost this capacity by relying more on the secondary breathing muscles of the chest. Inflating the belly can feel unfamiliar or even uncomfortable, as if pushing against resistance.

Instead, bring your attention to your ribs - especially the 11th and 12th floating ribs located at waist height, slightly toward the back. Because they are not connected to the sternum, their range of motion is the greatest. Allow them to gently expand and open to the sides as you inhale, and to soften back toward the midline as you exhale. This supports a fully three-dimensional diaphragmatic breath, without the need to forcefully inflate the belly.

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Thank you for arriving all the way here, into this soft corner of your inner world.

May this piece serve as a small invitation to meet your breath the way you would meet something sacred: with curiosity, with patience, with no need to change anything.

May it reconnect you to the still point beneath thought.

May it remind you that you are being breathed, always.

With love

Karin PS: For a short meditation, exploring your breath, please visit my substack post where I included an audio. You can find it HERE