Just Breathe

A common misunderstanding I've come across is that your lungs expand because they're full of air.

This might seem like a pedantic point, but it's the other way round. As you expand your lungs through movement of the ribcage and diaphragm, the air pressure within your lungs decreases, this causes the surrounding air to push it's way into the lungs to equalize the pressure. It's a pressure gradient, from high to low.

You don't "suck" air in, it pushes it's way in as an after effect of movement of the torso, a movement Alexander termed True Primary Movement in his early career. And then as the torso resets and the lungs contract, you give the air back. You have a relationship with your environment. All functionality is a relationship with the environment, you have no personal functionality when it comes to movement.

The sensation you feel through your nose and mouth isn't breathing, it's the aftereffects of breathing, which is torso movement. Judge the freedom of your breathing by the freedom of the torso to move. The whole torso! The ribs and diaphragm articulate with the spine causing a wave of movement to travel along it's length. This another reason why posture isn't position, it's a movement. If you stiffen your spine your breathing is restricted.

All you can do to improve your breathing is learn to reduce any restriction to movement of the torso.

As trite as it's come to sound, the Buddhist view that all is one is spot on. There's no such thing as functioning without an environment to function in. It's the environment that provides the functioning. Forget Psychophysical Unity, we have Self/environment unity. That's my definition for functioning and for being. Can't function without being, can't be without functioning.