This post only includes an introduction to the essay. For the full essay, please visit our new Air Hunger Help website.
ABOUT THIS ARTICLE: Earlier in my life, I developed pronounced tension in my breathing that seemingly no one could help me with. After a few years, I discovered the Alexander Technique, which—combined with growing self-awareness and inner shifts—was my gateway to freeing myself from these habitual patterns. A few years after that, one of my Alexander teachers asked me to write an article about my experience, which ended up in a book (Paths to the Alexander Technique, edited by Shelagh Aitken and published by Hite in the UK).
In 2012, I posted the article on my (old) website. To my surprise, numerous people started finding the article and contacting me about my experience. This was all the more surprising because it was posted in the “blog” section of a music website, and those discovering it weren’t there for my music but were solely wanting to know more about how I was able to find freedom from Chronic Breathing Tension or what is sometimes termed “air hunger.” Apparently, this is a largely unrecognized issue, and most of those contacting me told me this was one of the first accounts they had read that validated their experience. They were happy to know they weren’t the only ones out there experiencing these alarming symptoms and that it was possible to liberate their breathing from these patterns.
For this reason, I’ve transferred the article—including the public comments made on the blog post over the years—to this new website in the hope that this information can be of help to people who may be encountering similar difficulties. New comments can still be added below.
Please note that this essay—while potentially informative and helpful—is not intended as an instructional essay. Instead, it is a personal account of a long, winding process of discovering my natural breathing through much trial and error. For a much more informed and guided approach to restoring natural breathing, please watch the newly released videos and read about the full program here.
Discovering the Liberated Breath
The first time I remember becoming conscious of my breathing mechanism was when I was about nine years old. As my family sat around the dinner table in Auckland, New Zealand, my father—who was often stressed and regularly searching for ways to counter his stress—shared that he had just learned from a breathing expert that we should ideally take only eight full breaths per minute. I tested myself and noticed that I had difficulty achieving this. Clearly, I thought, it was something I would have to work on.
I would one day learn that this per minute “breath quota” advice was misguided. My passing attempt to implement it now seems to presage the long line of misguided battles I would later wage on my breath as a young adult, a struggle that would revolve around the symptoms of “air hunger” and chronic chest-breathing, and that would be complicated by the imperfect tool known as “belly-breathing.” I would one day understand that it was a hopeless fight, one in which my incomplete knowledge of the breathing mechanism vied with my accumulated habits for dominance. Eventually, I would discover through the Alexander Technique that these two forces of habits and attempted fixes were two sides of the same coin: interference. By becoming aware of my habits, I would ultimately discover true choice and the possibility of ceasing my reinforcement of the habits, thus allowing the natural intelligence of the breathing mechanism to direct the show once again. It would take years of frustration, however, before I was able to arrive at this understanding.