This winter, I started a new strength-training exercise program designed specifically for mothers. I knew that my body needed more movement. What I didn’t expect was that it would change my breathing. 

I have been practicing breath awareness via yoga much longer than I have been a mother. Yoga invites me to exhale, to melt into a pose. To let go, to surrender control. When I delivered my two babies, I used yogic breathing to relax between contractions, melting into the space of an exhale, gearing up for the next wave of baby. 

When my babies were tiny, I would breathe long exhales next to their ears to help their tiny lungs learn to do the same. Now, as they are early schoolchildren, we teach them to breathe deeply when they get frustrated. 

In the middle of a writing class, too, I teach my students to exhale, sigh, blow away their college stress. My exhale-sigh is audible, exaggerated, to give them permission to make a hint of noise with their exhale. And then we do it again. 

For me, relaxing on the exhale has become a spiritual practice of trust in God. For years, this breathing trust has been yoga’s best gift to me.

Imagine, then, my confusion in this virtual momma’s fitness program when the lead trainer told viewers to relax on the inhale. 

“Inhale, relax the pelvic floor; exhale, brace.” Say what? 

The program includes introductory videos to help you learn specific cuing for that brace, which amounts to engaging the pelvic floor. The pelvic floor, remember, is a key component in supporting babies in the womb and birthing them out into the world. This exercise program is for women whose bodies have gone through that birthing process, whether by caesarean section (in which abdomen muscles are surgically cut) or vaginal delivery (in which the pelvic floor might be torn). In either case, the mother’s body is reconstructing itself while at the same time caring for a young child (or children). 

Over and over, the lead trainer connected the breath with the pelvic floor, emphasizing relaxing the pelvic floor on the inhale and engaging it on the exhale. 

Those of you who practice Pilates or “PiYo” or different yoga cuing than I was trained in are probably not shocked by this cuing. But starting this program for me was like living in backwards upside-down land. For weeks, I felt lost, delaying the practice  videos because I felt inadequate with the breathing. Inhale, relax? Exhale, brace and do the work—lifting arms, legs, push-up, etc. 

Yet, I could feel my muscles getting stronger. As I grew more comfortable with exhaling and bracing, I began bracing before I picked up the laundry basket from the floor—an activity that previously threw my back out. With the brace, my back felt more protected. I wish I had known to “exhale brace” earlier, when my children were babies. By six months old, both of them were twenty-five pounds of pure infant chub. I lifted them without much awareness—and ended up with significant back pain. I see now how “exhale, brace” before lifting would have saved me from a lot of pain.

In The Breathing Book—the book I go to with breathing questions—Donna Farhi includes a diagram that demonstrates how the muscles of the diaphragm and the muscles of the pelvic floor mirror each other in function—both are, in fact, referred to as “bandhas” in yoga. On our inhales, the diaphragm—a large, disc-like muscle that divides our respiratory organs from our digestive ones—pushes down into the body, creating space for the lungs which then compresses the stomach and intestines. On our exhales, that diaphragm swings back up.

So, on an inhale, relaxing the pelvic floor makes space for the organs the diaphragm pushes down. The exhale creates space for the pelvic floor to come up, to lift up, to brace the organs from below. 

I had read this book before I had children: I had known about the bandhas, but I didn’t “get” it. At the time, I had needed the exhale to relax. 

I am learning this now, thank God.

Not all exhales are meant for letting go. Sometimes we have to brace. 

Since I’ve put so much on the spiritual side of “exhale relax,” I now wonder about the spiritual implications of “inhale relax; exhale brace.” When I started this momma’s exercise program, I was in the middle of a busy school year—teaching my own classes and helping my children navigate their first school years. We had a lot of bracing to do. I felt like I couldn’t breathe because I was waiting for the exhale to relax, and I didn’t have time to exhale. 

I needed to learn to “inhale, relax”—to relax into the tension of a full abdomen, a full schedule, to breathe through it (just like childbirth!). I needed to learn to use my breath to relax in the midst of work, then brace to do that work supported by both breath and muscle.

An inhale is preparation. We inhale before we speak. We inhale to draw oxygen into the body. We inhale and then need to exhale. Sometimes it feels like an inhale is to invite waiting. 

Waiting for inspiration. Waiting for oxygen. Waiting for speech. Waiting for God. Waiting for exhalation…

…

Waiting for the end of lockdown. It’s like the whole world has taken a giant inhale. Medical professionals and essential workers (thank you, blessed souls) have braced, and on their exhale work to heal the world. The rest of us watch the numbers and don our masks to get our groceries, trying not to inhale the pathogens. What do we do in a world where we are afraid to breathe around others? 

Sometimes, when I sit to meditate, my chest feels trapped. When I am anxious, I cannot inhale deeply. I cannot draw the breath into my belly. When I cannot inhale deeply, I also cannot relax on the exhale. Everything feels tight. 

But most of the time, by the end of a meditation period, I am relaxed. As I reflect on this now, I realize that the meditation helps me to relax on both the inhale and the exhale. To know that even in this moment of waiting, of invitation, of preparation, of not-knowing, of swirling of oxygen and carbon-dioxide through my body—even in this midst is God.

My friend Amy reminds me that “God breathes God's spirit into us on an exhale. And we must breathe in God's spirit on the inhale.” God’s exhale gives us life on our inhale—and we can relax into that too. Both the exhale and the inhale are life-giving—just look at the dance of breath between people and plants. 

In the midst of a lockdown to prevent the spread of a virus that hurts our capacity to breathe, I am thankful for breath. I am thankful for breath awareness, for finally learning to inhale, relax; exhale, brace. To undergird my parenting with a stronger breath, a relaxed inhale, instead of just waiting for the exhale after the children go to bed. 

It reminds me of Ecclesiastes: there is a time for everything under the sun—a time to inhale and relax, exhale and brace for what’s coming. There is a time to inhale and prepare, exhale and release. A time for every breath.