Bring the air to your left little toe

Bring the air to your left little toe. How?

Yoga teaching language on breathing

photo by Jordan Whitt

Since I started Leslie Kaminoff‘s Yoga Anatomy course I’ve been exploring some of the teaching language we use in yoga. I remember being in some really beautiful yoga classes and hearing the teacher say “bring the air into” the part of the body we are stretching at that moment. I found it to be a very helpful remark, although I had no idea how one can literally do that. I always took it as a metaphoric remark which meant to bring my consciousness to a specific part of my body. Sometimes I would imagine a little mouth on ie. my left toe and visualize it taking in air while expanding and taking out air while contracting. And funnily enough, it would always bring energy to that part of the body, which I noticed as a feeling of heat or a tinkling feeling.

The truth be told is that you can’t actually consciously bring the air into your left toe. You can bring it only into your lungs. Your circulation system will do the rest for you. But you can’t consciously do that. You can bring your attention, awareness, consciousness to your left toe…but not the oxygen exchange by simply thinking of it.

So what do those yoga teachers mean when they use such language?

According to Leslie Kaminoff, it is important to make a distinction between bringing air into your body and experiencing the breath. The air comes only into your lungs where all gas exchange happens. Breath, on the other hand, can be defined as the shape change of the body when this gas exchange in the lungs occur. When you breathe, your body changes shape: ie. your rib cage expands or contracts, your belly moves, your pelvic diaphragm follows. When you are focused enough you can notice this change in your body shape also in the less obvious places such as your neck, throat, forehead, pelvic floor, legs. This is what the breath is. A change in shape in your body.

When breath is seen in this way, then comments such as “Bring your breath to your pelvic floor” make sense again. They mean become aware of the shape change that is occurring in your pelvic floor as a result of your breathing. Or they could even mean to consciously create shape change in your pelvic floor while you breathe.

Is this just a bunch of semantics? Maybe. But I also believe that when the breath is seen in this way, then you can also notice what kind of breathing patterns you have. Does your body always change shape in the exact same way, potentially indicating being stuck in a breathing pattern? Do you have the freedom to breathe in many different ways depending on what situation you find yourself? Our breath is supposed to be a free changing movement that reflects both our biologies and biographies. It is a movement that is created both as a result of our lives, and can also be consciously controlled, released, or changed.

Pinelopi is a sivananda Yoga teacher based in Berlin. She specializes in Hatha Yoga, Pregnancy Yoga, yoga for beginners and business yoga.

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