Holding Variations

So we've been exploring what it's like to hold another's breath as a way to deepen our own understanding and we've been using a hold of the diaphragm to go through the different variations. There are obviously multiple ways you can hold another's breath and in the interest of helping you find what's right for you we'd like to share a few other options. So on our way into this Alana if at any point you want out of this demonstration or experiment please say stop. Okay so step one of another hold is not everybody feels comfortable looking at another and holding their breath. It's quite intimate and modern society does not emphasize looking into each other's eyes much anymore. So you can actually hold the diaphragm from behind. You want to find out you know you're bringing your hands around that fifth rib area. Okay it's a firmness and you just want to pay attention to where on the radius of your friend's torso it feels the best. Okay and then you can do all those experiments we just did like this. Okay personally I don't find this is satisfying. I don't get as much feedback. I can't see her collarbones. I have to rely on areas that are less awake but if this is how the experiment is going to go down best then this is how you do it. Okay now another place that's a really interesting hold and Alana has agreed to lift up her shirt for this experiment. Thank you. So you're gonna want to find your thumbs at what we're gonna call the the tops of the ears of her pelvis. So I'm gonna kneel down as if I'm proposing so it makes a little bit better of a shot but you once you find the the tops of the ears of the bony part of the pelvis then it really helps once you sort of find them to go kind of up out and over them. So I'm going kind of over and down and then a little bit of down. Does that feel okay? Now I'm kneeling for the purposes of you at home being able to see this. You obviously don't have to kneel to do this. You can stand and then Alana would you mind just see if you can bring your awareness to where my thumbs are and see how that may help or hinder or change your breath. Nice. Beautiful. Now very similar to this. I'm gonna ask Alana to share in a moment very similar to this but slightly different is to bring your thumbs in more towards the SI joint. So S for sacrum, I for iliac. So you were on the top of the iliac before and you're looking for these two. Do you mind if I do this just a little bit? You're looking for the two dimples of where the sacrum starts and Alana this feels like about where it is. Does that feel right? And really like once you find them it's like your thumb just sort of I'm gonna kneel down even a little bit more to make sure you can see. It's like your thumb just kind of goes right in there and then I'm pushing in a little bit and I'm kind of pulling down a little bit on the outside of my hands and then Alana I'd like you to just sort of notice you know how this feels. It's similar. One's up on the iliac but one's in the sacrum and we tend to think of when we're noticing how a hold feels. We tend to think of only the inhale. So I try to think a little bit more, play a little bit more with how it feels to exhale. Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay then as you're ready you'll release your thumbs from your partners sacrum or ilium and just to check in let us know what you noticed with one hold or the other. So what I noticed with the first one with your hands closer further apart the breath seemed to go down the back of my body so there was a sense of really lengthening the breath down the back and with your thumbs closer in I noticed that as I started to breathe down into your hands my whole upper body could relax and I felt this really nice release through like my neck and chest and face and it was a grounding feeling quality. Great. Yeah. Let us know what you find with those and also you'll find that just different people like the thumbs in different places. It's hard to breathe towards an area that you don't have a relationship with and so being willing to help another breathe towards an area is incredibly effective. Now just to be really clear the breath actually doesn't go beyond the lungs okay but the sensation of the mind and touch and the movement of the breath gives a sense of the breath moving deeper and what we're really feeling is what we call prana. So one more hold that we'd like to share with you and this is the most intimate of all the holds not everybody feels ready for this or comfortable with this but it also in our experience is also one of the most favorite holds so if it's right okay just because it's more intimate if at any point you want out of this experiment just say stop. Okay. So one of my hands is going to move towards her lower belly. Let me just turn this way to show like so it's finding her lower belly so if her belly button is here I'm in her lower belly. My other hand okay is looking for her sacrum that triangular bone at the base of the spine and I like to put the heel of my palm towards the top of the sacrum and I like to press down just a little bit so I'm pressing in with this lower this hand on her low belly and I'm pressing down with her hand on the sacrum not a lot it's just enough so there's a descending and then once I feel like I've gotten the right spot I ask does that feel okay okay and then my job is to offer the support and Alana's job is to notice how her breath responds. Nice few more moments. Beautiful then as you feel ready you'll release your hands and just to check in what did you notice? Well instead of having a sense of my breath going down or around the back body it felt like with the weight of your hands and your touch my breath actually felt more free and open and expansive like my rib cage could rise. Hmm so almost what I hear you're saying is because I was providing the descending energy there was a sense of that you could really fly. Yeah fine I've ever heard that feedback quite like that so that's really exciting. So again like these these experiments are designed to help us know ourselves know each other and all the breath so as you discover what you like as you discover different ways to do it share like this is a dialogue and this is a living tradition that we're all in so thank you so much and thank you.