lesson #6:
coasting
Welcome to Lesson #6 of Breathe Deeper [Level 1].
Up until this point, a wide variety of muscles have been activated and deactivated in order to make you bigger — to expand your volume — to inhale!
Additionally, the first 5 techniques were all paired with one single inhale.
That is, this series has taught you to breathe in while simultaneously completing a ‘Plunger Breath’, ‘Accordion Breath’, ‘Syringe Breath’, ‘Spinal Jack’, and ‘Part the White Sea’ all at once.
This combination is intense and can cause discomfort, often because the energy that builds up in your body is mistaken for anxiety.
(Note: what you feel is not anxiety— it’s raw life-force building up and moving through your body. Prāna. Qi. Aliveness! Nevertheless, I won’t deny that inhaling in this way can get rather uncomfortable. After all, aliveness can be quite painful when you’ve been feeling deadness for so long.)
Fear not! The next two techniques will help balance you out.
You’re probably familiar with the idea of coasting in a car or on the ski slopes: you take your foot off the gas, put the vehicle in neutral, and let yourself ride off of the momentum you’ve created.
That’s basically what we’re doing in this ‘Coasting’ technique.
When you reach the top of your breath — aka when you cannot possibly fit more breath into your diaphragm, ribs, chest, shoulders, neck, back…and when you cannot possibly get your posture any more perfect…and when you cannot split your body any more in half…that’s when you apply this technique!
‘Coasting’ has two steps:
- Close off your airway so that no breath escapes your lungs.
- Completely relax everything except your spine.
Closing off your airway is super simple: just use your glottis (muscle near your vocal chords) to cover up your trachea such that the breath can’t move through it. No need to overthink this; you use this flap all the time when you talk, swallow, or breathe.
Relaxing everything except your spine is a bit more challenging…
Why? Because certain areas of your body have been stressed for so long that you probably don’t know how to relax them.
For example…if your neck has been chronically tense for the last ~20 years, why would it change now? After all, if releasing muscular tension were as simple as your ego telling a muscle to “stop being so freaking tense,” you would already be the most relaxed human on Earth.
So how do you get your body to consciously relax?
Shorter answer: You get your body to consciously relax through trial and error.
Your body speaks in a language you aren’t quite fluent in yet — a language of hormones, neurotransmitters, and Universal willpower.
It’s a bit of a paradox, but you simply won’t know what relaxation feels like in a certain area until it relaxes. That’s just how it goes.
Here’s another way to think about it: it took you years to develop your native tongue and decades to master it. But now that you have, it’s absolutely effortless. You understand these words without strain — without doing anything!
Learning to release tension from your body is no different. It will take some attempts, but eventually relaxation will become your default state.
Longer answer: There are helpful techniques to speed up this trial and error process. They will be explained in detail in Levels 3 and 4 of the Breathe Deeper. Slower. Easier. series.
Okay! That’s all for now. Enjoy the remaining few lessons.
– Ethan ॐ
P.S. ‘Coasting’ makes sense on another level. Follow my logic here:
- Volume = Length * Width * Height
- Flexing a muscle shortens it (think flexing your quads or biceps to hinge your knee or elbow)
- Relaxing a muscle lengthens it (think relaxing the base of your skull to lengthen the back of your neck)
- Therefore: relaxing muscles → lengthens muscles → increases your volume → inhale
P.P.S. If Levels 3 and 4 aren’t out yet, make sure to sign up for my email list to get updates on their release date!
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13
practice
audios
and much more...
- accordion breathing
- syringe breathing
- spherical breathing
- part the white sea
- coasting
- radiating
- sponge breathing
- scrubbing
and much more...
- accordion breathing
- syringe breathing
- spherical breathing
- part the white sea
- coasting
- radiating
- sponge breathing
- scrubbing
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