This dynamic process does not belong to us. It is a cycle triggered without any intervention of the mind and sustained beyond our control. Yet we can intervene through voluntary muscles which shrink or expand spaces and impose shapes.

This duality can be difficult to accept at times. All our work on breathing, the changes we are seeking and the control we are striving to acquire should never relegate breathing to a possession – under the ownership of the Ego or a creation of the mind. When breathing loses its natural rhythm and spontaneous dynamism, it loses its linking function and rapidly becomes an ill-adapted response to our needs « here and now ».

Unicity and balance are the features of healthy breathing. For all parts of the body to live and breathe fully, the chest must be stripped of its armour, the face must allow the passages (nostrils, pharynx, glottis…) to loosen, and the spine must recover its wholeness and flexibility, so as to track the wave of breath as it wells up from the abdomen, travels right through the body and unfurls across the face.

If nothing is there to impede this dynamic process, breathing can remain free and adapt to the reality of both worlds while meeting our needs, intentions, activities, emotional states and relationships. It faithfully shadows our physical life as well as the subtlechanges in our emotional life.