I hold my breath when I concentrate.

I didn’t know that I did this until I was learning to drive, when my instructor would get increasingly panicked during lessons because he thought I was going to hold my breath too long and then faint at the wheel. This never happened, but my teacher was convinced it would, and would shout at me to keep breathing as I edged around roundabouts or made my wobbly way into the empty bays at the far end of the Asda car park. I failed my test twice with him, he got narked at my bringing down his pass rate, and after that we parted ways.
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I swim. I do yoga. I thought I knew how to breathe. But maybe not. I was born almost six weeks early, and once I was released from my incubator and allowed home, for the first weeks of my life I had a terrifying habit of just… stopping breathing and turning blue. We lived in a squat within running distance of the hospital, which was faster than calling an ambulance in Liverpool in the early eighties, especially when you have no phone. So my mam and dad would scramble round the corner with me bundled in a blanket and I’d get resuscitated. When my dad was alive, he’d tell stories about how he used to sit up on all-night vigils, watching me breathe. Making sure.
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Fast-forward a few decades, and I’m in a workshop for therapists about using specific breathing techniques to create calm and safety in the nervous systems of trauma survivors. It’s an experiential session, and over the course of the afternoon the facilitator leads us through various breathing interventions as well as all the theory about why and how they work. After observing me, she makes a comment: “you do know your inhale-exhale ratio is the inverse of what it should be, right? And you’re holding your breath way too long in between.”
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I downloaded an app and practised breathing in a specific pattern for five minutes a day. I became hyper-aware of when I was breathing, and when I wasn’t. When I was holding, when I was letting go. How can something I’ve done automatically for so long now feel like it’s taking up so much space in my body and brain?
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There’s a lot I could write here about habitual disembodiment as a coping strategies, and how I know I’m not the only one who’s spent so long living in their head instead of their body, restricting the oxygen they need without even realising. But for now, I just want to acknowledge the process of building this fluency with my breathing, the strange experience of becoming visible to myself in a different way. Seeing myself and my embodied experience as an infinitely rich data source. Oh, I’m doing that thing again. In this moment, in this place. What’s that about? What’s going on? Is there something happening — something that might only be on the edge of my conscious awareness — that’s nevertheless affecting my breathing like this?
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I recently did my first ever one-to-one breathwork session: an hour of breathing in a specific pattern to a soundtrack, lit by candles in my living room while an infinitely calm and lovely facilitator watched me over Zoom. It was unexpectedly psychedelic: my body locking into paralysis and my brain spinning through a kaleidoscope of bizarrely vivid images and experiences. I could feel the temptation to dissociate — that familiar old friend always waiting in the wings — but staying with it was totally transporting. Writing this to you now, I keep tuning in and out of paying attention to my breathing. I still keep holding my breath without realising or intending to. But I’m recognising it more and more, and practising coming back to my body when I realise I’ve left. I’m realising Garbage had it right when they said the trick is to keep breathing.

Originally sent as part of my newsletter in April 2023