Wisdom Of A Grunt

Find a fairly comfortable position with the back unsupported.

The first invitation is to just notice the breath as it is,

Not needing to fix or do anything special,

But it's sort of a trick invitation because what are you actually noticing when you're noticing the breath?

You can't ever notice the breath directly.

You can only notice it indirectly in its influence in your perception of your body.

So maybe you're feeling a change of pressure,

A change in temperature,

Muscular movement,

Skeletal movement,

Stretching or relaxing of the skin,

And you might even notice a change in psychological tension,

Sense of relief or psychological tension,

Or even the hint of panic.

You can move or let the attention move fairly quickly in different parts of the body,

Searching out different experiences,

Or you can float the attention at one height or one zone of the body and just let whatever sensations come into your awareness in that region.

It's easy to have an idea that breathing should be more towards the front body,

And depending on our habitual daily patterns,

We might feel,

Oh,

Breathing is more belly or breathing is more chest,

But see if you can let go of those concepts and see if you can feel for breathing at some height level.

So in like 360,

Let's do at the height of the solar plexus.

So it can be the upper belly,

The lower ribs,

The mid back,

And even at that level,

You might even see if you're feeling for any experience of the breath somewhere near the elbows or upper arms.

With some practice,

Most people find an ability to notice some experience of the breath at any part of their skin,

Wherever their attention is floated at,

From head to toe.

But here we're just playing with,

Or maybe you're at that level of subtlety,

But just know that if you let subtlety is by definition something that is not noticed easily.

So if we're just moving around from sensation to sensation that jumps out at you and easily enters the attention or grabs the attention,

That's fine.

But there's a level of practice where there's patience is required and a little bit of time in hanging out someplace where maybe,

Oh,

I don't feel so much.

Is that wrong?

No.

And then just stay with,

Be within uncertainty and see what surfaces into your sensitivity.

I've heard from several sources that our bar,

Our level of insensitivity is that about in daily life,

Is it about 98 percent?

So in daily functioning,

We are only conscious of 2 percent of that,

Which we could be noticing with a little bit of patience and time and attention open to more subtle experiences.

So 98 percent of the sensory world throughout daily activity goes unnoticed.

This obviously isn't wrong because most humans function fairly well at that level of sensitivity.

But what value is there in becoming more sensitized and what are these subtle experiences that we are able to function without understanding and being aware of?

So I usually start my practice with five to 10 minutes of just breath awareness.

But where we move the attention will change our experience.

We can't,

Our attention sensitizes one region or one aspect of our sensory experience,

But it often diminishes our ability to notice and feel some other place.

So I usually start out where it's easiest for me to feel some aspect of breath.

Maybe it'll be in the chest some mornings or it'll be in the belly or sometimes in the throat or sometimes I'm hearing it.

And then the invitation after that is to start to move down to the plexus,

Somewhere in the belly,

The abdomen.

So it can be right now it's easier for me at the plexus,

The navel and above.

And then I invite you over the next several breaths to see if you can lower the attention if it's not already there to notice between the pubic bone and the navel,

But also in the 360.

So maybe at that level in the hips,

The low waist,

Could be the pubic bone,

The sacrum,

Just being open to any sensation indicating the breath.

No right or wrong awareness,

No right or wrong breathing pattern,

Just noticing because usually we are unaware of what the breath is doing when we're about out and about doing daily life.

So it may feel strongly or somewhat weakly that just taking the attention someplace is controlling the breath.

But with the extra sensitivity and the extra vitality that comes with a concentrated awareness,

The breath probably you will notice different things and the breath might change.

So a first invitation is body breath awareness,

Sliding,

Moving into belly breath awareness,

Then dropping down into lower belly and pelvis breath awareness.

There are several natural patterns of breathing that we are aware of.

And I find it worth exploring explicitly because these larger patterns occur on a subtler level on every breath cycle.

The first one is a grunt.

A grunt occurs with the lungs half filled,

But a grunt is the body's wisdom in how to generate pressure and alignment and muscular activity in a way that creates the safest,

Healthiest alignment and the greatest pressure through pressing the gut up against the front of the spine in order to do heavy and possibly dangerous work.

But instead of holding the breath,

If we just pay attention to an exhale down to 12,

10,

8,

5,

Maybe even 3% of an exhale,

So exhaling more and more air out,

Zero would be a complete exhale.

The body will start to activate,

Engage certain muscles and generate an alignment,

Encourage a healthier alignment if it's not already the default.

It will also,

If you get down to 5,

7,

5,

3%,

You'll start to feel a squeezing maybe around the pubic bone,

Maybe something of the genitals,

The perineum,

Some energy around the anus and maybe the tailbone,

Front of the sacrum.

And I'm consciously helping those dynamics here.

The inhale will want to relax those,

So let that happen.

So a conscious,

Attentive exhale down to 12%,

Down to 5,

3,

You don't have to quite go crazy with the zero unless you want to,

But a full,

Complete exhale.

All will start to activate these dynamics of a grunt,

Which if your body isn't already in a alignment where the vertebrae are stacked up in this kind of ideal alignment,

It will either re-support that alignment or encourage towards that alignment.

The inhale releases and the spine will move away from that.

So there is,

We don't,

Sitting straight is not sitting rigid.

The cycle,

The ebb and flow of the inhale-exhale will generate a tension and generate a movement of the spine and some energy around the pubic bone,

Throughout the pelvis,

The hips,

The waist,

Lower belly.

And the inhale will relax away from that and allow an ebbing and flowing.

Often I hear in yoga classes,

Instructors inviting the class to do a deep belly breathing,

But there's at least two and they're very different.

But we're going to play with what I consider the deep belly breath of complete surrender.

So as you're exhaling and contracting,

And you can even play with slightly pressing the wrists or the palms or the fingers into the knees or thighs at the bottom of the exhale and see if that doesn't help activate some of the transverse abdominus muscles and maybe a little bit of the rectus abdominis,

Rectus abdominis,

The lower four layers with all four layers of the muscles,

But the lower aspects of those muscles.

And it also generates a little bit of more tension energy in the lower back as well.

And then on the inhale,

Release as much of the pelvic floor,

The pubis,

The lower back,

Lower belly,

And this is lower belly breathing.

And if the pelvic bowl and the lower belly and waist relax,

Then the inhale cannot move up into the rib cage.

Upper breathing requires a certain support and muscular activity from the pelvis,

Lower belly,

Waist,

Lower back.

So this is fine.

And depending on the alignment of the upper body,

The upper body might just be able to stay in that,

Or it might,

Some people might feel a little bit of a collapse or a loss of openness or support of the upper torso,

But that's okay.

When the next exhale comes,

Go ahead and give it consciously.

It's called breathing,

Slightly strong breathing.

It can still be done in a meditative quality.

You might be able to hear the exhale yourself,

But it's not so strong that your neighbors probably won't be able to hear it.

You can play with a long,

Smooth,

Full,

Firm exhale.

I'm naturally having a little pause here.

And then the release comes when it comes and see if you can let the pelvic floor relax,

And it might drop.

I feel a little bit of relax at the sacrum and then the lower belly.

This could be open the awareness to 360,

Allow the awareness to take in the groin and the hips.

So there's three possibilities,

Strong possibilities for how people are breathing.

One is that their posture and their daily breath never,

And their daily activity never activates these dynamics,

Or if they are,

They're gently done in an unconscious way.

So just working this will be a form of exercise.

You need to strengthen in the pulling in,

Things might need to stretch,

The capacity both to activate and fully relax these muscle groups,

Something to be aware of.

Other people may have this ebb and flow and part of their daily patterns.

And then other people may have tension,

Where it's hard for them to actually relax and release.

The inhale,

If it's a full belly breath,

Will probably be about 25%,

The 30% of your total inhale.

And that's okay.

In order to breathe into the upper body,

There's two different patterns.

One is that people will exhale,

Activate the lower belly dynamics,

Those will relax on the inhale.

But then when through intentionality or consciously inhaling into the upper body,

Those muscles that relax too far will then re-engage so that to support upper torso breathing,

Rib cage breathing.

Or people who have a daily pattern of breathing into the ribs,

When they exhale and activate the support for upper torso breathing,

Instead of going to a full belly breath and relaxing the dynamics needed for support,

They only relax the belly enough to where the support is still engaged.

So then the inhale will move into the rib cage.

So play with the dynamics,

See if you can feel for an exhale,

Engage the grunt dynamics gently,

Firmly,

Maybe with some slightly strong breathing on the inhale,

Relax.

And then notice that if you invite an upper torso breathing,

That does the muscles then re-engage a little bit from the relaxation?

Or is there a balance where the relaxation is just enough to still maintain some support for rib breathing?

When I've moved into the rib breathing,

I then notice that the beginning of the exhale,

In order to support some lower belly and the lower layers of the muscles that support holding the chest up during the exhale,

And we'll talk about that here.

So there's two patterns,

Two predominant patterns of exhale.

In order to get the air out of the lungs,

You need to get the digestive tract,

The gut pulled back and up against the diaphragm.

So as the diaphragm relaxes and moves up into the lung space,

So you either have to tighten the belly and the side waist on an exhale and pushing the gut up to push a relaxed diaphragm into a dome of the lungs.

Or you can let the shoulders come forward and the heart drop down.

And that'll put the upper torso down onto the gut.

So some people require,

In order to exhale,

They have the upper torso collapse in order to support and generate the exhale.

So some people have a little bit of that,

Some people require it fully,

But there's something that I call poise,

Which is a muscular support that will keep the upper torso lifted during the exhale.

And it requires a stronger and healthier lower belly breathing contraction in order to maintain the upper,

The upright poise during the exhale.

So I invite you to very subtly play with inhaling,

Consciously take an inhale that will make it up into the upper belly breathing.

And at the beginning of the exhale,

Slight,

Slight pressure of the palms or wrists at the beginning of the exhale to see if that will help flourish the opening of the upper torso and support that.

Because we often think that,

Oh,

We're trying to open the chest and open the heart through the inhale.

But an inhale creates a vacuum so that although the chest and ribs are expanding,

At the same time,

There is a squeezing of the heart and sternum.

And so the greatest opening of the heart is actually at the beginning of the exhale,

But a lot of people will have a collapse at the beginning of the exhale.

So by just the subtlest energizing of the wrists or hands into the knees,

The very beginning of the exhale,

You might feel a slight flourishing.

And then I also use the hand pressures near the end of the exhale in order to help support the dynamics of the grunt.

At Tantrasaurus,

A book called The Path to Shambhala,

They invite and they encourage people to begin and end the practice with pure belly breathing.

And then slowly taking the awareness up the spinal column,

Maybe a breath or two,

Or even depending on the length of your practice for that day,

A minute or two at each vertebrae building up towards and rib cage,

Side rib,

Armpit,

Collarbone,

Upper chest,

And then throat awareness.

But for the first month or two,

You want to practice more,

Weight your practice more in the lower belly,

In the lower torso,

In the pelvis,

To build that awareness to build that health.

And they suggest that that lower the ability to relax and enjoy the ebb and flow of lower belly breathing is the place of safety and well being.

And that until that ability is engendered,

That you're not going to feel safe and be able to relax and float,

Even if you're on vacation,

That your deep sense of okayness and well being requires this pool of awareness and okayness.

And that the first month of this practice can have a very strong effect on your digestive tract,

Emotional swings.

So please put it to use deep belly,

Belly breath,

Body breath awareness,

Belly breath awareness,

Pelvic bowl breath awareness,

And then gently encouraging upper torso breathing,

Starting at the plexus,

Side ribs,

Armpits,

And a sense of heart opening might be helped with a little bit of pressure of the hands or wrists at both the beginning of the exhale and at the end of the exhale.

At some point in my practice,

I want to do a overall body scan awareness.

You want to take the awareness into the skull or down into the legs,

Depending on your practices.

This can be done part by part,

Or it can be done through a general sweeping scanning.

But I don't want to leave certain regions of the body unattended to before leaving a practice.

And taking four or five breaths back in the full deep belly breathing,

Full surrender opening on the inhale,

And then consciously work an exhale to see if you can feel some squeeze of the pelvic floor.

I'm feeling some of the anus and tailbone as well.

And then releasing from the pelvic floor into the hips,

Waist,

Lower back,

Pubic bone,

Groin,

Maybe even feeling like my lower belly's distending.

The exhale has disappeared.

Oh,

There it comes.

No right or wrong.

Why is the bar,

The level of insensitivity so high?

What can be gained in developing greater sensitivity of lowering our level of insensitivity?

And what are the challenges of becoming a more sensitive,

More conscious,

Aware participant?