Formerly Unseen Possibilities

Brian, Josiah, and Wilson, I appreciate your feedback. It’s comforting to get validations like yours, especially given the kind of skepticism I usually encounter when I present my ideas.

 

A typical response is the one that greeted me at UC Davis, in the late 1970s, when I was giving a guest lecture to a health class taught by the remarkable professor, Will Lotter,  who recognized that I was on to something, and was happy to give me a forum once every semester. His was a very large class, with several hundred students packed into an amphitheatre-style lecture hall. At that time, I was only a few years into the process of exploring and systematizing the BreathPlay skill set; in fact, I was still using my original name for the system, the Pelvic Pump.

 

Professor Lotter introduced me, and I launched into my standard practice of setting up a freewheeling question and answer session by bringing forward some provocative and challenging ideas on breathing. I gave a brief overview, focusing on my belief that our understanding of breathing is fundamentally wrong because it’s based on the unexamined assumption that the active phase of the breath cycle is the inbreath; that is, that breathing is a matter of sucking air in. I concluded by pointing out that those that I’ve taught to replace air-sucking with air-pushing by learning the Pelvic Pump enter a whole new realm of physical performance, as if tapping into an alternate physiology that dramatically boosts capabilities. As I ended the set-up phase of my presentation, finishing with an invitation for questions, I was excited by the idealistic thought that we were fulfilling the time-honored role of academic studies by joining in dialog in search of the truth.

 

Those idealistic reflections were brought crashing down to earth by the first question, from a young man in the back row, way up by the ceiling. In a loud voice, and in a tone more appropriate for a gang confrontation than an academic discussion, he said, “Hey man, what planet are you from, anyway?”

 

It was like a kick in the gut, and it set off an explosion of painful emotions which I instinctively and protectively held in check. The speaker facing all those students was plunged into a crisis of vulnerability and the fearful child within the speaker had no place to hide. Memories of angry rejection and harsh judgment condensed to critical mass and set off a secondary explosion, this one a release of uproarious laughter from deep inside that fear. The whole auditorium joined in the laughter, transforming a wound into a wonderful opening.

 

By the conclusion of my presentation, it was clear that many minds had been opened to formerly unseen possibilities.

 

And that memory brings me back to the beginning. Thanks again, Brian, Josiah, and Wilson, for your validating feedback: I have a feeling it will help open more minds to those formerly unseen possibilities.

 

 

 

 

What is Breathplay?

Sometimes a nobody has something to say.

In the early 1970s, I needed a safety valve for the pressure cooker of graduate studies at UC Berkeley, so I took up running. It was more about reducing stress than racing. That’s why I was surprised to find myself running marathons at under six minutes per mile. In 1972, my best was 2:33, just three minutes shy of that year’s qualifying time for the US Olympic trials. If I push a little harder, I told myself, I’ll be able to run in that marathon.

In terms of Olympic Marathon talent, I really was a nobody. Had I qualified, I might well have finished last. In short, I had no illusions about running through the streets of Munich as part of the US team.

That’s just speculation, though. I pushed too hard in training, so instead of a breakthrough marathon, I got marathon breakdown.

Taking up yoga to undo the damage, I studied with the best teachers I could find, including BKS Iyengar, Joel Kramer, and JB Rishi. These yoga years are distilled in my books Exercises for Runners (World Publications, 1974) and Yoga and the Athlete (World Publications, 1975) Ironically, it was within days of the publication of Yoga and the Athlete that I found myself drawn into the dance world. I told this story in my January 1981 Runner’s World article, “Fine Tune Your Running,” and in my BreathPlay book (Doubleday, 1986).

Of the three major BreathPlay epiphanies, two were dance related. In 1964, riding big waves at Waimea Bay gave me the first. In 1975, a certain jazz dance class gave me the second. In 1980, ballet master Richard Gibson gave me the third and most powerful epiphany.

What is BreathPlay? To what discoveries did the BreathPlay epiphanies lead?

BreathPlay couldn’t be more improbable, nor could the performance boost it generates be more astonishing. In a nutshell, BreathPlay is a systematic learning process based on swimming against the respiratory tide of billions. Instead of breathing in and out, as the entire world population breathes, the skilled BreathPlayer breathes out and in.

In addition to breathing actively out and passively in, the BreathPlayer also organizes each breath cycle in rhythmic patterns, or breathing gears, so that breathing is always harmoniously integrated with movement, no matter what the work rate.

What’s so astonishing about the results? It’s the combination of significant increases in power output with significant decreases in heart rate. You end up performing at substantially higher levels, and yet it feels easier. You turn training from stressful work into deeply satisfying play. Your performance breakthroughs come not from greater force but from greater finesse

Sometimes it’s precisely a nobody who has something to say. My modest physical talents placed me several levels lower than world class, and yet BreathPlay technique and training rocketed me into that realm. I believe that many weekend warriors would love to hear what I have to say about how it’s done.

By developing this very rare set of breath-based skills, I found myself riding with world class athletes, training them shoulder-to-shoulder on runs and rides, and routinely outclimbing them to demonstrate certain facets of BreathPlay cycling technique. My BreathPlay coaching has played a central part in Olympic gold medals, world speed and endurance records, and world championships.

When a no-talent nobody is able to perform at world-class levels, and when he has distilled his power secrets into a sophisticated, coherent, learnable system, he definitely has something to say.

Ian Jackson
817-988-8250
Breathplay.com