Tara Stiles talks about how breathing and body awareness work together in yoga practice. She emphasizes softening the body and freeing your breath as foundational to the work, arguing that when your breath opens up, your body follows.
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If you could recommend the most important breath for people to learn who are listening to the show right now. There's all kinds of yogic breathing and pranayama, closing nostrils. I mean, you know, all that stuff, you have to pick one that you think people should learn. What would it be?
Yeah, I don't even know if this is a thing called, you know, codified in a thing. But I think, you know, to soften first. You know, there's this great principle of softness. And if you just allow yourself to be movable, bendable in your joints first, but then an emotional softness, relaxing a little bit, then all of a sudden your breath starts to move your body naturally, your breath gets bigger, more full. For me, it feels like I'm opening a door for myself instead of banging my head against the door. So that natural deep breath that simply exists with when you're aware enough to slow down and soften. And then all of a sudden it feels like the Tai Chi ball. You're a big globe expanding in all directions and softening and releasing. And I think all of the yogic breathings are great for different things if you want to manipulate or control or build heat or calm down or focus. But really that just act of softening, sort of before anything happens, softening, and then notice your big breath just. You don't even have to breathe deeper. It just is there. You just get out of the way, which I think is so, you know, mind blowing, at least for me.
So there's a switch that you can throw in your body, and it is like the soften switch. And it's not one that I was at all familiar with when I was a young entrepreneur and people would say, soften. I'm like, what do you mean, soften? Like, I already am, right? So eventually, probably through the practice of yoga and maybe some other personal dev stuff, I finally figured it out. So I automatically, as you say this, you know, I go to take a deep breath right before, like a half a second before there's a thing. I don't know, I'd feel it from like my throat down to my gut, where it softens. And then you take the breath versus just taking the breath without softening. But you have to have muscle awareness. And my first three years of yoga was like, oh, my God, I can't believe I have a muscle there because I've never. I never learned how to address the muscle like you. You don't have a neurological connection, just, oh, that weird thing that's behind your scapula or whatever. And so I went through this weird kind of neurological growth process of, you know, understanding, wow, there's all this addressable tissue and muscle and things, and all of a sudden I could do poses I couldn't do before. But I think it actually changes your brain when you do it. How long does it normally take when someone starts doing a regular yoga practice before they finally realize, oh, I do have muscles there that I can use. Oh, and I have my softening switch. Is this like a six month thing? Was I just a slow learner? How long does it take?
I am suspicious that, I mean, I think, of course everyone's different, but, you know, just in the people I've seen over the years, as soon as they decide to do what you're talking about, it happens really fast. So you notice a change in feeling, of course, right away. And then, you know, your body catches up pretty quickly. But I think you could be doing yoga for years and nothing happens if you don't do what you're talking about right now because you're just doing the poses. And you could be trying really hard and have all of this great dedication, but, you know, you're still just wearing yourself out at the end of the day and exhausting yourself. But, you know, I. I kind of feel like when. When people do what you're talking about, it happens pretty.
