Ashtanga Mysore Yoga Groningen - The Room That Breathes

Oct 20

2 min read

Podcast: Yoga, Ayurveda and Somatic Wisdom for Modern Life - Episode 14

A few weeks ago I taught the first of three Embodied Ashtanga Yoga workshops here in Groningen. We spent a full day with the breath - not just talking about it, but practicing with it. Feeling it. Noticing what it does, what it changes, what becomes available when it's present and what gets lost when it disappears.

Afterward, a few participants came up to me. Some version of: the breath landed more deeply. Not just the understanding - something in their body that hadn't quite been there before.

That stayed with me. And it's what this episode is about.

Listen to episode 14 here

What this episode is about

I talk about sound breathing - the audible breath that runs through the Ashtanga practice and in our Ashtanga Mysore shala here in Groningen and in Mysore rooms around the world - what it actually is, and what it does in the body and the nervous system.

About why the sound matters for our threat detection system, not as a conscious thought but as a direct physiological response.

I talk about co-regulation and what happens in a room full of people breathing steadily together, and why that collective hum of breath is more than atmosphere. It's the nervous system doing something very specific.

And I talk honestly about why refining the breath takes time and why that's okay.

Why the breath is one of the first things the nervous system shifts when things get hard, and why integrating a steady breath through challenge is actually asking quite a lot.

I also want to say something that doesn't get said enough: The breath is a powerful doorway into the nervous system. But we cannot breathe our life away. We cannot breathe grief, loss, or the accumulated weight of years of stress away. The breath supports and creates space but it cannot resolve what needs to be processed at deeper layers. Because grief, loss and accumulated stress aren't just states. They're held in the body as patterns, as unprocessed charge that needs more than a changed breath pattern to move through.

Who this episode is for

For yoga practitioners who have felt something shift in their relationship with the breath. And for anyone curious about what breath and nervous system regulation actually have to do with each other.