Renowned breathing expert offers a guide to conscious breathing with techniques for loosening patterns of constriction, reducing stress, and alleviating tension.

Breath moves in wavelike motions. When breath flows freely within the body, we live in a natural state of harmony, making choices that enhance well-being and generate energy.Each individual breath travels through us in a unique way depending on its flow, texture, speed, and patterning. Like a leaf falling from a tree that spirals to the ground, waves of breath travel through the airways of the body in a spiraling motion. This is the way air moves, the way breath moves, and the way oceans, rivers, and lakes move, too. When we tighten our passageways and compromise our breathing, our health suffers.

Most of us are born with the ability to breathe freely and naturally, but as the years go by, our breathing becomes labored-compromised by fear, disappointment, trauma, and pollutants. So we contract our breathing body and create ways that feel protective of our vulnerable selves but actually constrict the oxygen intake and thus the nourishment our body receives.