| | This thread has lain quiet for several months, but reading it the other day got me to thinking about how I dealt with similar questions when I encountered them, so I thought I might share a few observations here. Apologies for the longish post, and for stating what is probably obvious to many, especially the MDs around here.
When I first started out with the breath I tended to simply define an in-breath as the period when a significant volume of air was moving in, and an out-breath similarly as air moving out. This by default leaves “no-breath” gaps between the in and the out. Gradually, however, I came to realize there is a lot more going on between these two periods, and that my “in” and “out” boundaries were probably incorrectly defined. A few observations about the physiology of our breathing can help develop more awareness of the complete process.
The main muscle driving breathing is of course the diaphragm. This is a wide, fairly thin membrane of muscle and connective tissue that sits horizontally at the bottom of the ribcage and is connected to the ribs all around, front, side and rear. The ribcage thus becomes a kind of basket, with the diaphragm as its bottom, although there is one opening in the diaphragm membrane to provide a conduit for plumbing to get food down to stomach and intestines below. The diaphragm membrane is not really flat horizontally; rather, it is dome-shaped, rising up into the chest cavity with the lungs and heart lying above the dome.
The main driving force of an in-breath is the flexing of the diaphragm muscle, a flatting and lowering of the dome. This has two main effects. First, the volume of the ribcage/diaphragm basket is enlarged, and the ambient pressure outside the body pushes air into the lungs. Second, the lowering of the dome presses downward on the abdominal cavity, which is essentially a bag of guts containing stomach, intestines, and other organs of digestion and reproduction below.
If you’re reasonably relaxed, the in-breath pushing downward on the diaphragm leads to an expansion of the girth of the abdomen. A common misconception is that air is actually being drawn into the lower abdomen, but in fact, air goes no further than the bottom of the lungs, which is only a hand’s breadth below the nipples. Abdominal sensations of in-breathing are simply pressures and motions associated with the flattening of the diaphragm at the top of the abdominal cavity.
A secondary muscular force involved in an in-breath is the expansion of the ribcage. The ribs are semi-circular, and most of them are connected at the rear to the spinal vertebrae and at the front to the sternum, or breastbone. (The lowest few ribs are not really fully connected at the front.) These connections are hinged front and rear, and the ribs can move up and down a small amount. Picture a bucket of paint with its wire handle hanging down to the side and swinging up and down. An upward swinging motion of the ribs has the effect of enlarging the volume of the ribcage a bit, augmenting the effect of the diaphragm in drawing air into the lungs.
Contrary to what many people imagine, the arms are not connected to the spine/ribcage assembly at the shoulders. The big, triangular scapula bone which forms the back portion of the shoulder joint actually lies loosely on top of the ribcage, knitted in to nearby ribs in many directions by muscles and connective tissue, but with no bone to bone contact to anything other than the humerus bone of the upper arm and the clavicles, or collarbones, left and right across the top of the chest. The clavicle, in turn, articulates at a joint at the top of the breastbone, just a few inches below the larynx. This is in fact the only direct connection of the arm to the main part of the rest of the skeleton, just a few inches below your chin! If your breathing is nice and relaxed, the shoulders will be rising and falling gently, hinging at the clavicle- to accommodate the hinged-bucket handle rising and falling of the ribs, as described above.
Thus there is quite a variety of muscular activity and skeletal motion going on, all of which provides sensation for meditative attention. Most prominent is the action of the diaphragm, followed by the hinging of the ribs. The is also a girdle of muscles around the entire lower abdominal cavity, and these muscles are almost always at some low level of gentle tension to maintain form, posture and balance when standing or seated. This tension of the girdle will normally be pulsing slightly in sync with the diaphragmatic breathing motion, to accommodate the expansion and contraction of the belly. All this can be felt. Similarly, with most relaxed breathing, there are very subtle tightening and loosening actions of numerous small muscles in the throat, mouth and face, all of which provide more sensation for awareness.
In addition to sensations arising from active muscular activity, breathing also results in passive pushing and tugging motions in muscles, skin, organs, and other tissues extending well beyond the central areas of the breathing process. If you pay attention, these are perceptible in face and neck, back and front of the thoracic and abdominal/pelvic regions, and even well down the arms and legs.
In addition to the sensations of active and passive physical motion of tissues, you also have air moving around, providing gentle but perceptible sensations of both friction and pressure, within the lungs proper, the trachea feeding the lungs, the throat, sinuses, and nasal cavities, nostrils and upper lip, and even subtle pressures transmitted into the inner ear.
Now regarding the between breath spaces, paying careful attention to these sensations of air movement helps us see far beyond the core actions of in-breath and out-breath. Picture the swirl of smoke exhaled by a cigarette smoker, or maybe the cloud of dust motes after the sweep of a broom across a sunlit floor. After the main motion ceases, there is still plenty of movement, with eddies, backwashes, whirlpools and other turbulent motions. Though subtle, this movement is actually much more complex and rich in sensation than are the basic in and out breaths, and it is all readily perceptible once you start looking for it.
In the same way, the passive and active movement of muscles and other tissues are really still quite busy during the gaps, with ricochet and recoil effects after a given in or out breath, as well as tensions building up preparatory to triggering the next main breath movement.
Indeed, once you learn to perceive it, there is actually a lot more richness of sensation available for awareness between the main ins and outs than during them. It becomes difficult to arbitrarily draw a line between “in” and “out” for simple naming purposes, but once you learn to tune into all this, you’ll never again lack for sensations to notice “between the breaths.”
Finally, having written all this out, I offer a warning about getting distracted thinking too much about all this. Once you get the hang of noticing it all, you’ll really want to just forget all the physiology and just breath and notice, or breath and concentrate, or whatever. I might paraphrase from some well-known musician’s advice, variously attributed to both Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, which goes something like “learn all the technique you possibly can, then forget it all and just play jazz.”
Hope some here find this helpful. |