From the Ground Up: Challenging Hierarchy on a Molecular Level

One of the difficulties some people face when they first encounter Breathexperience is that it is not a prescriptive practice. It makes no promises, no guarantees of "If you do this, then you will experience this." Instead, Breathexperience makes invitations. "If we do this, then what happens? What wants to happen next? What's changed? What's stayed the same? What is this doing for me" Opening door after door of possibilities for how to experience ourselves. Right now. Exactly as we are. And have that be enough. This, at least I believe, is a fundamental human right. Of course, this is not to say we should not strive to be healthy, to be good neighbours, to seek balance and stability. But so much of that has roots in our ability to cast off self-judgement, find grounding, autonomy, and increase our capacity to hold discomfort next to ease.

Our society has trained us to buy promises. "Do these five simple exercises every day and you will notice X difference." Lose weight. Drain your lymph (to get rid of your double chin). Use this product to gain this or get rid of that. Over and over again, we are asked to notice things about ourselves solely for the purpose of ascribing value and passing judgement. With a fine-toothed comb, we seek out things to "fix"in the hope that we will eventually be able to stop finding anything to judge.

What if the self-assuredness we've been chasing, the resilience, the flexibility, the unshakeable sense of self we've been trying to judge and shame ourselves into... doesn't come from a quick fix? What if it doesn't come from a bottle we can grab off the shelf or a ten-step subscription program from an influencer on Instagram? What if it comes from dismantling our perception of hierarchy on a molecular level? (Who told us to judge these things about ourselves, anyway!)

Breathexperience asks what happens if we give ourselves another option, one that doesn't require noticing for the purposes of identifying the good, the bad, and the ugly. We notice simply for the sake of noticing and being present as we seek an equality of forces—inhale/exhale, inner/outer, upper/lower, front/back, gravity/levity, doing/allowing, ease/resistance... The exhale is not just the passive result of an inhale, it has its own unique qualities, its own power, its own voice. Our feet are not lesser than our head, the space above us is not more worthy than the world below us. Imagination is as valuable as organization. Stillness has no moral superiority over movement. In this simple act of sitting with ourselves and others, without judgement, noticing our breath come and go, we challenge the systems that benefit from "this is good; that is bad" and the influence they have on our nervous systems. Breathexperience gets in on the ground level and disentangles our sense of self-worth from the systems that lay claim to it.

If we practice this way of being and perceiving consistently over time, the messaging most (if not all of us) have been fed since birth, that we're nothing but a collection of flaws that need to be fixed, begins to crumble. We begin to be able to sense the truth of who we are with all its nuances. Resilience becomes more accessible, our capacity to self-regulate increases. For those who are neurodivergent, we have an opportunity to unmask joyfully and in community with others. Connection and communication pathways open up. A sense of inner safety might start to develop. Healing can begin. One breath cycle at a time, we have an opportunity to challenge the patterns that live in our connective tissue—both personal and societal. One breath cycle at a time, we allow space for the truth.