Yoga Poetry Radio Tina Laurel Lee

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For this episode of yoga poetry radio I want to talk about trusting in the incremental change that happens with yoga. I understand faith as incremental change that builds the confidence that your actions will have positive outcomes. It took me a good long while to have a felt-sense of this definition. This podcast is the story of that change.
Begin in a seated posture that is comfortable for you. Ground yourself by bringing your attention to your contact with your seat, whatever and wherever that is. Be it seated on a chair, or on the floor with a cushion, or a folded blanket to lift your hips. Whatever you choose do it consciously with the utmost care and concern for this amazing vessel that is your flesh and bones. Draw your awareness into your spine and stack each vertebra, one on top of the other. Feel the muscles of your spine gather in and the space that is created along its whole snaky length. Practice this awareness of your backbone in order to build strength and integrity.
Have you heard the Anne Lamott quote that goes “the opposite of faith is not doubt but certainty”? It is with that idea I begin. The full quote from the book called Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith which I pulled from Goodreads is this:
“The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns. Faith also means reaching deeply within, for the sense one was born with, the sense, for example, to go for a walk.”
My growing up experience with faith was an exercise in trying to feel certain. That is what I understood the pastor to be telling me as I sat in the pew, or the Sunday school teacher from my school desk and as a child of the ‘70s who moved between communities and loved them all, I was certain that certainty got you nowhere. Certainty would have been and exercise in hatred, anger and discontent. I saw that my future relied on my ability to shapeshift, reload, and engender whatever form served whatever location I was in.
It wasn’t until I came to MBSR (that is mindfulness based stress reduction practice) at common ground meditation center in 2016 and learned to see how I was relating to practice, that I began to discover how supportive this embodied understanding of faith was. Sitting on the mat and bringing your attention back to the present moment again and again by finding some anchor or another to return to, like your breath.
So let’s engage it here. Exhale all the air from your lungs. Inhale through your nose. Open mouth exhale. One more time. In through the nose and out through the mouth. Seal your lips and let your breathing be natural. Awareness to your tummy. Relax your stomach out on the inhale and draw it in on the exhale. Match the length of your inhales to the length of your exhales and stay with your breath.
How are you relating to this practice right now? Is it interesting or boring? Is it painful or pleasant? Do you crave moments like this or are you here about of duty?
Can you see how the object of meditation moves from your ground to your spine, to your breath, and, with the questions, there is the move to the observer self. How are you relating to the moment right now?
Faith is a relationship to the moment that needs time to build, the coming back again and again, to your heart-space and feeding it by opening it and letting gratitude for everything that got you to this exact moment in time come in, or opening it and letting exactly what is going on now be known.
Adjust your shoulder blades to open your heart space right now. Lift shoulders to your ears, gently contract, and then lower them back down. Find gratitude for the slide of tissues and the release of tension as you do it again. Can you feel your breath right there at your heart space? Drawing the breath in through your heart and let the exhale spreading out along the back side of your body, easing a

Welcome to Yoga Poetry Radio. Today we are going to practice a breath that is called “cyclic hyperventilation” by the scientists and academics. It incorporates some elements of yoga’s Agni Sara and also a Tibetan style breath called Tummo popularized by Wim Hof. This podcast is a health aware companion to my newsletter on loss and liberation called Songs of Forgiveness. I invite you to click through to the show notes and check out my writing. I post my letters with the phases of the moon and I invite you to subscribe and travel time along with me.
Expect this breath to feel awkward at first but it requires no special equipment.
We begin the practice of Diaphragmatic Breathing. Draw your attention to your diaphragm, the jellyfish-like muscle that is nestled at the base of your ribcage. Parallel to that is your pelvic floor, a hammock of muscles at the base of your spine. These two muscle frameworks create the bottom and top of the canister of your torso. They move in tandem to each other when you breathe. The diaphragm on the inhale and in turn compresses and flattens the pelvic floor to create the vacuum in your chest that draws the breath in. When you press the air out both structures move upwards respectively.
Practice being aware of this right now. Allow your belly to relax and expand outwards on your inhale. Pull everything, belly and pelvic floor, inward and upward as you exhale. Be conscious of this movement during the next few minutes while I explain Cyclic Hyperventilation. This consciousness of breathing with awareness of the pelvic floor is is a therapy in and of itself. Be aware of this all day long, through all activities, and it will have the biggest change of anything on your life.
Cyclic Hyperventilation has been studied extensively in recent years in thanks to the amazing cold-temperature feats of Wim Hof. He has used breathing to withstand hypothermia and frostbite and even E.coli in one particular study. We will breathe all the way in through the nose. This gives you the benefits of nasal nitric oxide production, which is necessary to your heart. And all the way out through the mouth to really exhale all the carbon dioxide from your lungs. This breath will allow you to hold the out breath for longer and through the process release of hormones and cytokines which help regulate your immune system and reduce inflammation.
Read more about this in the resources linked below in the show notes.
In addition, during the hold, we can explore the practice of Agni Sara here, which is a semi-involuntary muscular pandiculation. The tummy, when the breath empties out and the diaphragm pulls up under the ribs, naturally pulls back into the spine in an abdominal contraction. This has been used as postpartum therapy in the National Healthcare programs of France and Spain and will strengthen and rehabilitate core and pelvic floor health after birth and realign displaced organs after pregnancy. To set up the conditions for Agni Sara, you tuck your chin while holding on the out breath. Lengthen your spine and pull your diaphragm up under your ribs. Here your stomach may hollow out and you can connect to that feeling of the drawing upwards of your pelvic floor.
If this does not happen for you in this first practice, not to worry, with continued practice and proper awareness, it will.
Find the book Breath, linked below. In the chapter entitled “Hold It” Nestor makes the case that Carbon Dioxide Therapies had long been studied and proclaimed to be helpful, but somehow that knowledge was lost in the 1950s as the hopes of new pill-form promises took its place.
That is all to say that the breathing practice I share today has been proven by many peer-reviewed studies.
As Andrew Huberman, YouTube phenom and professor at Stanford, podcast linked below, says the protocol for this practice is about 30 breaths, for about 3 cycles. This does not need to be an exact practice. Begin this as an exploration, doing the bes

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.tinalaurellee.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.tinalaurellee.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.tinalaurellee.com/subscribe