I don’t think I ever knew how to breathe. This sounds silly, perhaps, because clearly I am still here, but bear with me a moment… I lost the ability to trust my breath, and my body, somewhere in my past. Now, I can look back on it and place some intellectual assessment on it, say that because I was ruthlessly bullied for being “chunky” and bigger than all the other kids, I tried to hide the sound of my breathing, especially any heavy breathing, out of fear. Some call it panic attacks from PTSD. I might have even taken up smoking cigarettes at 11 as some roundabout way to sneak in deep breaths among my enemies. But as I got older and wanted to pursue more vigorous activities, such as martial arts and hiking and running, I kept coming up against this limitation I had set for myself when I was very young, even though I didn’t recognize it as such. I literally had to relearn how to breathe, and I KNOW, beyond any doubt, that I am not alone in this. In fact, I learned that so many of us in this western culture never breathe deeply. I feel that this contributes to our collective insomnia, heightened levels of anxiety, blood pressure, headaches, [...]