“Okay everyone, let’s all focus on our breath.”
It is an instruction we almost always hear at the beginning of a meditation or yoga class. It seems like an important and vital thing to do, but few teachers go into the specifics of exactly why we are focusing on the breath in the first place.
If you too have tried to notice your breath but got distracted by thinking to yourself, “why do we focus so much on the breath?”, you are not alone. Many people do not realize there are quite a few reasons why the breath is such an important tool in our practice.
Here are some of the reasons yoga and meditation teachers focus so much on the breath.
1. It is universal
If you are reading this right now, it means you are alive. If you are alive, it means you are breathing.
A major reason yoga and meditation teachers focus on the breath is because we all have it; it is fundamental to the human experience.
2. It is uncontroversial
How would you feel if you walked into a yoga class and your teacher said, “Okay everyone, let us all surrender to Krishna”? Some people might be very keen on the idea while others might balk.
It would be the same thing too if a meditation teacher told students to focus on death, or God, or kundalini. While many students might enjoy these concepts and actually go to a workshop specifically for it, it is inevitable that some will feel ostracized or that the teacher is forcing a religion onto them.
The breath is a fairly uncontroversial thing to focus on and techniques around the breath can be easily brought into any school, corporate office, or temple.
3. It is relaxing
The breath is an incredible odometer for the body. If we are stressed, whether physically or emotionally, the pace of our breath will increase. By being aware of our breath, we gain an important level of self-awareness of how much stress we are inviting into our life.
By intentionally slowing down the breath, we naturally relax. In our increasingly face-paced and stress-inducing society, listening to our breath for a few times every day can bring us more peace of mind.
4. It takes you into the present moment
You are breathing right now, not yesterday and not tomorrow. That means if you are focusing on your breath, you are automatically cultivating presence.
In other words, listening to one’s breath is a way a teacher might “trick” their students to being in the present moment!
5. It cultivates interoception
Did you know that you have many more senses than the 5 you were taught in school? Beyond touch, taste, hearing, smelling and seeing, we also have proprioceptors, thermoreceptors, and baroreceptors, for sensing our body, temperature, and blood pressure, respectively.
Another incredibly important sense that I encourage all of my students to know about, is interoception: the perception of sensations from inside the body.
Focusing on the breath cultivates this level of interoception and deepens the mind-body connection. It shifts our attention away from the mind and into the body, into our source of aliveness.
6. It is a gateway to stillness
The physiological process of breathing has a very unique place in our nervous system: it is both voluntary and involuntary. Unlike our digestive system, for example, which happens entirely on its own, we can control our breath when we want to.
So, during our meditation and yoga practice, we start by intentionally focusing on the breath. The more we do that, the more the mind attunes to the breath. Soon, the breath switches from voluntary to involuntary, and our mind goes right along with it, becoming peaceful while we rest in the stillness.
7. It has strong spiritual symbolism
Of course, there is more to the breath than it just being a physiological process. It also has strong metaphorical, spiritual and religious symbolism. You will find numerous references to the breath across almost all of the world’s religious and spiritual traditions.
In Judeo-Christian beliefs, God “breathed the soul” into Adam. In yoga cosmology, the breath takes in the flow of pranic energy. Pranayama, the control of prana through breathwork, is an entire practice in and of itself. In shamanistic traditions, breath has a profound healing force and connects us closely to spirit, a practice often integrated with medicinal plants like tobacco.
The breath can also be a beautiful metaphor for human experience; as we inhale into fullness and exhale into emptiness, there is much wisdom to be found in the breath. One of my favorite quotes to read in classes comes from Lama Surya Das, who writes,
We exhale, and we let go of the old moment. In so doing, we let go of the person we used to be. We inhale and breathe in the moment that is becoming. We welcome the person we are becoming.
So, there you have it: seven reasons why a meditation or yoga teacher might tell you to focus on the breath.
What does the breath mean to you? What have you gained by listening to the breath? Comment below.
