Breathe!

In my last letter I talked about your physical structure (i.e. how posture affects mood & emotion), the second of 3 meta-regulators of mental, physical, and emotional control that design mind-body connection and collectively comprise your Jedi toolkit - the first being your eyes (i.e. how attention dictates mental state), and the third being your breath.

Today I’m rounding out our little series with a deeper look at your breath.

“He took my breath away.”
“I can’t catch my breath.”
“Breathe easy.”

With just a few words we not only gain insight into the depth, cadence, and location of the speaker's breath, but also their psychoemotional state - in awe or in love, anxious or nervous, calm and relaxed.

The breath, like your eyes and your structure, expresses the truth of your thought and the feeling of your heart. In the untrained novice, breathing carries mindless expression, betraying your internal state. In the mind-body master, the breath unlocks the final gate of self-mastery. It’s the hardest gate to unlock, but also the most rewarding.

Recall from my last two letters the critical insight that our other keys - your eyes, your structure - not only express your thoughts and emotions, but are also grand regulators - resets - of thoughts and emotions. They mediate the passage of information from our minds to our environments and back again. For the most part their usage is unconscious, and while they constantly take in and process environmental information, for most people most of the time they translate one's internal landscape to the world without intentionality.

But with a modicum of awareness of one’s mind-body state and the desire to shift it, redirecting the eyes to focus attention and organizing structural alignment of the body to counter the force of gravity (also known as good posture) help reclaim control over one’s mind and breach long-held compulsive patterns of thoughts and action.

The eyes and one's structure are powerhouse tools... but the breath is the mother of all regulators.

From the moment you take your first breath until the moment you take your last, breathing is both constant as well as constantly in flux. It binds us to impermanence, and when we direct our awareness to it, our minds are able to reunite with the flux of time - with the present.

In the novice, this can provide momentary connection, but generally reverts back to mental musing and distraction after a few breaths.

In the Lay Jedi, one’s breath becomes an anchor that focuses the mind and stabilizes emotions, despite the turbulent waters ebbing and flowing all around.

While there are levels to this game, and even the placement of the eyes and the setting of one’s structure can range from adequate to masterful, the breath requires mechanical facilitation that requires practice - posture that allows space for the lungs to expand, a relaxed (if not released) diaphragm that allows for fullness of breath as well as breath control, and relaxation of the abdominals and lower back, the liberation of which creates space for the lungs to expand through the torso.

Before one can even begin the conversation of breath and mind-body control, these skills must be accessed. In Weightlessness Training, and during the early weeks of The Weightlessness Process 12-Week Program in particular, meditation metrics measuring and developing concentration and awareness aren’t even introduced until abdominal (or diaphragmatic) breathing, rather than chest breathing, is accessed, because meditative efforts are wasted without it.

That said, these shouldn’t require more than a few weeks to a couples months to gain adequate control over, and unlock one’s ability to access present state awareness via the breath. After that, we’re in the domain of self-mastery, and inching our way along the spectrum of concentration, awareness, and mind-body integration.

Terror.
Heartbreak.
Trauma.

There are times when stress testing is a necessary component of mind-body assessment and cultivating somatic competence. Too many train in the isolated confines of nature, temples, and serene studios - environments that couldn’t be farther from the real world pressures that test us - and so develop false, potentially delusional, levels of confidence around their mind-body development.

It is stress that breaks us down.
It is also stress that builds, and inoculates us against those same real world pressures.

But it does something more.

Over the years I’ve worked with truly colorful people, many of whom have had experiences they should have been spared from. In moments where we pressure test - running various simulations that add mind-body stress and trigger clear somatic deterioration (the eyes wander or drop, the shoulders round, and the breath rises in the chest) - some of these individuals were transported to times and places as vivid in our moment of pressure as it was when they were under gunfire, physically assaulted, literally drowning, or facing the collapsing of their identity through loss of love, success, or career. They recall sensations, the colors, the scents, the sharpening or deteriorating of focus… but they recall something more.

The breath.
That breath.
That same breath.

Stuck in the chest, unmoving, unable to access fullness or depth - heartbreak.
Pounding, suppressed, insufficient when under duress - helplessness.

When pressure pushes one’s mind to the limits of resourcefulness, and body to the limits of action, the body… never forgets. And no matter how hard the mind tries to lock it away or cage it from the rest of life, the breath alone is all that’s needed to unlock that cage and revive that story that refuses to die.

And if allowed to flow as consequence to feeling without awareness of or control over it’s oscillation then health, deep healing, and performance are chimeras - illusions of change that live unchecked until life places us back in the lion’s den.

While that might be disappointing to some, the Lay Jedi acknowledges this reality as the beginning of the conversation, not the end. For just as the breath relays, betrays, and stores our highest of highs and lowest of lows, for the conscious cultivator it’s also the key to infinite energy, explosive power, violent adaptability, momentary connection, and deep, lasting healing.

Paired with focus of the eyes and structure of the body, the breath is your grand mind-body reset - true neural - giving you access to the infinite from one moment to the next.

And here is your crash course in the power of your breath, my dear reader.
Please play along.

I want you to take one to two minutes to think about your day. What lies ahead that you’re not entirely comfortable with? What are you anticipating? What have your carried forward from yesterday that you’d rather not hold onto. Take just a few moments to look at that, to see it in your minds eye. What feelings does it elicit? And what, pray tell, did those thoughts and emotions just do to your breath?

Now, for the next few moments, perhaps even minutes, soften your gaze, retract your shoulders, and relax your abdomen. Allow your breath to lengthen and deepen. And with that depth, observe.

Observe your breath. Observe the feeling of the seat beneath you. The temperature in your room. The sounds, perhaps even soft sights - no single sense dominating your perception. Receive it all.

Breathe.

Now… tell me, in those few moments of awareness - your attention directed with intention, your breath abdominal, and your awareness inclusive… where were your problems?

In those moments, where was your anxiety? Your anticipation? Your frustration? Your anger?

Those thoughts and fears exist between your ears, and are only carried forward from one moment to the next by your attachment to, or expectation of, outcomes that generate meaning and importance in your life.

But they need not be.

Your breath has already given you its wisdom - that life is change, reality is in flux, and this moment is fundamentally new.

The Lay Jedi not only derives her power from the discipline of training, but also through access to novelty - the gift of seeing what is, right here, right now, rather that seeing through the veiled perception of egocentric desire and stored memory.

Her power lies in the practiced reflex to inquire - AM I WEIGHTLESS?

For while the breath is a tool well cultivated in serene settings, that’s not where it shines.

Your breath binds you to the present - it fuels you for battle, it softens you for love, and it heals your deepest wounds. But you must remember it. You must cultivate it. And you must use it with intention… RIGHT NOW.

The novice will allocate time, attention and effort when it’s easy - listening to a guided app, sitting in a yoga studio, walking in the mountains. And these ARE valuable practices.

But the Lay Jedi will apply it - awareness and regulation of the breath - countless times throughout the day, occasions big or small, impatience in traffic or staring down the barrel of a gun.

THIS IS THE MOMENT.

Fix your gaze.
Set your structure.
Breathe deeply.

Take back your control, and…

Be Weightless!

Tom Fazio
Weightlessness | Mind Body Performance