Full Length of the Breath

A Mini Practice for the Rest of Your Week

My preferred setting for some breath-inducing yoga

This morning as I was driving back from the coffee shop I was thinking about two things:

1. How much I hate “classic” hot yoga¹

2. The juicy relief and restfulness of a full inhale and exhale without anyone rushing me

As most thoughts do, these insights landed together in my mind. I was driving home begrudgingly wondering if the soreness in my various joint areas were a sign of me leveling up my fitness, or of a careless form of cult-y yoga pushing me beyond my own sense of boundaries under the guise of progress. I was very humanly ruminating on my general annoyance with classic hot yoga as I realized I wasn’t exactly sure what bothered me about it.

I could break this whole thing down for you in a play-by-play of petty thoughts but I think the most important realization that came out of it was this— Classic Hot Yoga is a formula. Formulas are great for tracking progress since they are, by nature, the same every time. However, formulaic structure often leaves little room for listening to the body and the breath to drive the movement. Deviating from the formula of the rigidly dogmatic setting of a 105 degree, 40% humidity yoga studio creates an artificial environment to control your breath and body from the top down instead of from the bottom (or diaphragm up).

Blah, blah, blah, I understand the benefits. I even enjoy them². But they don’t feel juicy to me. They don’t fill my cup—they take energy from it.

In this day and age, we’re constantly in situations where we are being asked to change our bodies, minds, hearts, and heads from the top down. Where we are asked to fit into the previously created structure. In some cases, our culture has even created environments where we unintentionally stop breathing all together because we’re low-key stressed to the core—hello email apnea! It is very rare that our dominant culture creates environments that facilitate a curiosity around "what feels good in my body right now?” and “how can I go at the speed my nervous system is asking for?“

A Mini Practice

For a mini-mindfulness practice this week I invite all of us to get curious about our breath. Not the productive breath. Not the breath for a six-pack-abs or one that’s guaranteed to guide you lazily into enlightenment. Not the accidental hypoxia we might experience while checking emails.

Just your regular breath.

Once a day, I invite all of us to create enough space to move through all four stages of the breath³ and just notice where each one wants to naturally begin, and where each stage naturally wants to end. I invite us to notice where the stages of the breath overlap. I invite us to notice the part that might intrinsically feel really good.

For me, this looks like really slowing down for a moment or two.

One of the reasons I hate Classic Hot Yoga is because my juiciest breaths are a fucking thousand times slower than the average person. I like a big, huge six to eight count in. I love the feeling of holding my breath at the top until the exhale naturally needs to escape my nose because there’s nowhere else for it to go. I couldn’t even tell you how long the exhale takes me because it feels so delicious I can’t be bothered to count.

I’d love to hear about your juciest breath this week.
I’d love to hear about how long it takes you to really enjoy it.
I’d love to hear about what part of dominant culture you’re pushing back against in order to really slide into that breath.

Let yourself be curious.
Let me know what happens.

With love, gratitude, and only 2 more weeks before I can cancel my hot yoga trial membership so I don’t lose money on it⁴,

Dagny Rose

This sub-section of The Art of Rest, is all about—you guessed it—The Rest.

As a trained sleep scientist and mindfulness teacher & researcher, here we explore the everything related to rest. Whether we are unpacking the newest evidence-based sleep health tips, exploring day-to-day tools for bolstering and protecting rest, or diving into a world of dreams, “The Rest” is going to regularly touch into what a restful life is, and how to move towards one⁵

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Looking For A Personalized Way to Optimize Your Rest?

Exciting announcement! My books are now open again for the hibernation season! I am looking forward to giving winter guidance around sleep health & nervous system regulation around stress. I offer individualized 1:1 guidance for those who want to use rest as a way to expand their creativity to just need a tune up all the way towards those who are dealing with chronic rest related issues. Shoot me an email at dagnyrose@theartofrest.me to inquire about getting started.

1. Which always feels like a funny re-branding for me to talk about Bikram since he ended up being a totally, no-good, very bad dude. I can wrap my head around the idea of a person who did bad things can also have produced something that benefits people. But what I can’t quite wrap my head around is people not re-thinking the surrounding environment and cultures that create environments and social situations that are ripe for power-dynamics where people are less able to speak up about their needs—body or otherwise. Cults are everywhere these days folks. Seek safely y’all, lol

2. For the purposes of this article I’m being melodramatic to prove a point. It was also the authentic crankiness I felt during the conception of this blog topic.

3. Meaning: The in-breath, the pause at the top, the out-breath, and the pause at the bottom.

4. Because on top of being dramatic, I am also cheap and stubborn.

Here in The Rest, we love building regenerative community and believe in learning from scientists, health care workers, dreamers, therapists and space holders of all types. If you have a person in your life who has helped you find a deeper sense of rest that you’d like to see featured, please email me at dagnyrose@theartofrest.me to connect us.

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