One of my greatest joys is when a yoga student tells me that their yoga practice is making them deal with life’s stressors in different ways.
For example, a woman told me that a coworker called her with an urgent problem, and she responded by simply taking a few slow breaths. She didn’t even think about it---her new daily yoga practice made it automatic. As a result, she didn’t get into a tense situation with her coworker.
Slowing down the breath is one of the most radical things I have learned in yoga. It is true that breathing more slowly in poses makes them easier and more sustainable. But how we breathe is about way more than our poses, but about how we approach our whole lives. When I worked in a hospital emergency room, I could see which staff had learned to breathe evenly.
In addition to practicing the poses with steady, sustained breath, we can also practice pranayama, in which we learn to change the duration, timing, and location of the breath. This is a subtle and deep practice with great long term benefits.
My wish for all of us is that we can do our yoga poses with easeful breath, that we can practice pranayama with attentiveness, and then walk into the day ready to inhale and exhale along with all of life around us.
