Guided Practice:
Breathing into the whole body—or specific parts of the body—can be a powerful way of “waking up” the soma to itself.
Let’s take a moment to explain what I mean by “breathing into the body” by following one particular example: breathing into the feet.
Sometimes when I give this prompt, “breathe in and out through your feet,” people’s first instinct is to feel the breath come in through their mouth/nose, and then visualize it traveling down their body to the feet. There’s value in this exercise, but it’s not what I’m talking about.
What I’m talking about is cultivating a sense that the breath is drawing in through your feet and exhaling out from your feet. Imagine all the pores on your feet are drawing in breath, and find that feeling.
It’s the same move when I say “breathe through the whole body”; it’s not “feel your breath spread from your nose to the whole body,” it should feel more like “inhaling through every pore on your body at once, exhaling through every pore on your body at once.”
This experience is intuitive and easy for many people, somewhat hard to grasp for others. Try it for at least a couple 10-20 minute sessions for yourself; if you still have trouble finding it, try Reverse-Engineering Whole-Body Breath.
This breathing pairs very well with the second kind of body scan we mentioned in Two Ways a Body-Scan Feels. While allowing awareness to move up and down your body, take entire sessions to breathe intentionally and deeply in and out through each part of your body.
Inhale through the feet, exhale through the feet. Repeat 5-20 times.
Inhale through the heels, exhale through the heels. Repeat 5-20 times.
Inhale through the ankles, exhale through the ankles. Repeat 5-20 times.
Inhale through the shins, exhale through the…
Go over the entire body, in different levels of granularity depending on what’s calling for your attention today.
If and when you’re able, it can be incredibly nourishing and enlivening to breathe like this through the whole body at once for entire sessions, or just for a few minutes at the beginning of a session.
Possibilities here include: