How Does This Body-Based Stuff Work?

Transforming Discomfort Into Ease

My clients often arrive to my practice room with some level of discomfort in the body – anything from mild stress to sustained pain. By the end of the session, the discomfort has decreased or disappeared. My clients also describe feeling at-ease, relaxed, calm, as well as alive and clear. This is the goal.

But what happens in between? How do the movement-breath-sound combinations we practice together work? What’s happening inside that changes?

All of my embodiment teachers talk about how the movement-breath-sound combinations touch the places inside that we are working with. It turns out, after 30 years of doing these combinations on a daily basis, that what my teachers say is my experience of what happens.

How Yawning Supports Optimal Functioning

Let’s take Zapchen Yawning practice as an example. When we do Zapchen Yawning practice, the movement, breath and sound (we make Yawning sounds as part of the practice) all touch different tissues or systems in the body as the Yawn goes through its cycle.

For instance, the big inhale we take that initiates a Yawn flexes the thoracic diaphragm. The flexing encourages the fluids to move at the rhythm they are designed to move, touches them out of their slumber if they have gotten too sticky or are moving slower than is needed for optimal functioning.

The inhale also opens our breath, brings more oxygen into all of our tissues. Both things—more oxygen, and more fluid movement—give our body its essential food and water.

Stretching That Increases Flow

Then, our mouth opens wide, our throat opens and then opens more as we keep inhaling to the top of the Yawn. These actions stretch the muscles and connective tissues of the neck, including where these tissues connect with the base of the skull and the collar bones.

This stretching is more like a tugging sort of stretch. It is the type of stretching that connective tissue (aka fascia) loves. It sends regenerative electrical signals through the fascia and muscles. It also lubricates the fascia, which is essential for the tissue to stay strong and pliable for optimal functioning.

The movement also tugs at the base of our skull, including the occiput. Most of us clamp down on our occiput when thinking, and especially hard when we are worrying. These tissues get touched in a rhythmic way by the repetitive Yawning and are coaxed to gently let go. 

Breathwork That Brings Buoyancy & Calm

Finally, on the woosh of the exhale of the Yawn, our whole body is essentially doing a big Sigh (yes, Zapchen Sighing is its own practice!). This mega exhale brings the whole body into a lower register — a baseline that is more relaxed.

At the same time, the movement and sound of the exhale vibrates the vagus nerve—the major highway of our flight-fight-freeze response. This gentle vibration soothes the nerve, and supports it to be in a neutral place, rather than in the flight, fight, or freeze gear that we often get stuck in when under pressure.

Taken together, all of these mechanics support sensations of buoyancy, ease, clarity, aliveness while feeling calm, being grounded without feeling heavy.

Zapchen Yawning practice also might make you notice how much rest you really need; this can be provocative for some at first — especially those of us living in a culture where getting enough sleep is a rare thing. Which is why I recommend working with a coach or healer who is experienced in the practices.

Why Body-Based Methods Are Effective

Many more things are happening when we Yawn. Western scientific research has studied the Yawn, and gives us evidence of the good that it is doing for our physiology. If you do a Google search you will come up with a long list of things to read, including this one from the National Institutes of Health. 

Zapchen Yawning is just one example of how this combination of movement, breath and sound touches our organism (our body) inside and changes our physiological state. Change in physiology changes our experience and perception of how we are. How we feel changes how we experience the world outside ourselves.

This kind of body-based work is getting talked about more, even studied by western science researchers. There was an article recently in The New York Times about Somatic Experiencing, a kind of body-based therapy that is having a surge of interest.

Even more exciting (to me, anyway), is a recent article in Cell Reports, about a study conducted at Stanford Medicine that involved a specific breathing technique that is similar to the Zapchen Sipping practice I teach my clients.

Opening Anxiety Into Sensations of Contentment

The study talks about why, from a scientific perspective, the technique is so beneficial for helping people manage their feelings of anxiety. In essence, the technique soothes the tissues that tense and cause anxiousness.

What’s really cool is that the study also showed two more important things: People in the study experienced a joy, or contentment, as an after-effect. The overall effects also lasted longer, as compared to a group in the study that only did cognitively-based techniques to manage their anxiety.

I am happy to report that sustained sensations of well-being and contentment also occur in myself, and in my clients, as result of the movement-breath-sound combinations I/we do in our sessions.

While not scientific, this is my experience after many years of practice. Practices that have bolstered my resilience. Practices that sustain me with more ease, clarity, agency and contentment amid the complexities of today’s world.