Héctor and his magic flute, lessons on the breath and life

“Through observation, you find a sense of acceptance…and finally some beautiful flowers of forgiveness bloom from there and the fruit is peace,”--Héctor Koa

Photo shared by Héctor Koa

Héctor doesn’t know this, but I have been on a recent quest to really learn to breathe.

It sounds silly to say that.

Partly because I have studied yoga for over 25 years and you can’t help but be exposed to ideas on the breath. I have attended pranayama sessions, read the now fairly famous book, Breath, by James Nestor (which left me swimming in too many techniques, that sometimes felt like they contradicted one another), and also Robert Litman’s book on The Breathable Body.

I have played with Wim Hof techniques and held my breath for two minutes.

I have taken a recent class and gone into altered states, all on the wings of the breath.

And with all that said, I continued to wonder about the breath… Mostly, I wanted to learn about how to stay as relaxed as possible in all kinds of circumstances and I knew the breath was key.

In some of those breathing classes, with rigid techniques when the instructor would count? You know, a nice nervous-system-soothing “box” breath (breathe in for four counts, hold on the inhale for four counts, breathe out for four counts, hold on the exhale for four counts etc…) my breath tended to become tight and rigid. Not with all the instructors. But with many of them. The ones that had a tendency to change four counts to eight and so on…. It was not relaxing. It was stressful.

Now, some of this likely comes down to a childhood swimming event where I couldn’t breathe for a time. I survived (obviously) and I did a lot of work around said event. A couple times, many many years later, during a myofascial release and EMDR session with different people, chlorine came out of my nose. The body does hold things and such things can be released.

But that event feels very much complete.

I only remember it like a distant story I might tell. I no longer have the capacity to feel it like I am experiencing it from a first person perspective because I don’t believe the energy of it is alive in me anymore. I guess you might say I have integrated it.

And still, over the years, I have been especially interested in how to breathe fully in a relaxed way, without effort. I imagine my quest in part, was catalyzed by that event. So once again, one of my favorite Sean Stephenson quotes resonates as true for me:

This is happening for me, not to me —Sean Stephenson

However, on my quest, when people would teach me breathing techniques, the techniques were just as likely to cause anxiety in my system as ease, even if ease was what I was told I would get.

Then I met Héctor.

I had just finished lugging my four pieces of luggage into my new studio at the Awake Retreat Center in Costa Rica. I was bringing supplies for nine months to El Salvador via this little one month visit to Costa Rica.

Hot, grateful to be back at a retreat center I love so much, I wandered into the outdoor kitchen and dining area and Héctor was the first person I met.

I knew I liked him the minute he smiled at me and I saw his eyes. They truly are the window to the soul. Héctor’s eyes and voice told me he was kind and he listened. But mostly, I knew I liked him because of how I felt when I was around him. I felt relaxed. I felt “met” and welcomed.

When I meet people like that, which is like finding a beautiful sea shell on an expanse of empty sand, I am quick to call them friend. I would learn a lot from my new friend.

You see,, Héctor is incredibly gifted in many ways and especially when it comes to the breath. He has trained for years as a classical flutist. He has studied in Amsterdam and New York City. He plays in an orchestra. He has gone deeper into the breath than anyone I know. He had to. He has to take a breath and make it last. He said something about how he had trained to be able to breathe out for sixteen measures. I am not enough of a musician to know what that really means other than “a really long time” and I know some of you do.

And I find myself now, as I write to you, wondering about how to tell this story in a way that will serve you best, to support your own life journey as it flows on the wings of your own breath?

So, I think what I am going to do is provide you with some glimpses, in order to paint a picture for you of little gems about life and the breath that might be useful.

So, let’s hold hands and I will take you through some moments, like little songs or gifts.

Here is the first one:

It is New Year’s Eve. I want to make cacao, which is considered a heart opening plant medicine. I am in the Cora, an open area at the retreat center, and it is late in the evening. Stars are shining outside; the sky is darker here in Uvita. Everything seems darker and richer here, like chocolate. The night is velvet. The air is warm and sultry. There are many insects and bird calls as the land is rich with mysterious and hidden aliveness, all in silent and auditory communion and communication.

There are two people I have just met that are seashells on empty sand. I gaze at them both and invite them to the studio where I have just unpacked my bags, for cacao.

I am touched, and a little bit surprised and nervous when they both say, “Yes!”

I pour too much cacao into a pan and make a drink that is more like thick, smooth honey than chocolate.

They thank me for it.

Julia, the seashell whose name I hadn’t told you yet, spies some Tarot cards I have brought and we spend time… conscious, intentional, feeling-time, drawing cards for one another and intuiting their deeper meanings.

I tell Hector, the second sea shell, that I used to use the deck almost every day for guidance and would simply shuffle it until some cards fell out. Those cards would be my message.

I take the same deck and shuffle its now-soft, well-worn cards a bit. Then I carefully feel though it to choose a card that is meant for Héctor. As I remove it, more cards fall onto the floor. We all know those are for Héctor too. The deck does not forget how it likes to do things.

Soon after, we sit snugly together on my very small blue velvet couch, holding our cacao. There is a candle lit and the lights are off. Héctor sits between Julia and me in the dimness. He has a flute.

As we sip the cacao, slowly, he closes his eyes, lifts the flute and a tiny breath of sound makes its way into the darkness. His fingers touch the holes with gentleness and care. As he floats somewhere in another realm he forms soft notes around us, weaving spells, weaving blessings, weaving a quiet moment with three strangers-now-friends on a tiny blue couch, late at night, in the jungle.

The cacao is powerful. I can’t drink it all and when they leave, I put my mug in the fridge for tomorrow, trusting it was enough. All of it was enough. It was a gift.

Another snapshot:

I am standing in the Cora again and Héctor is there. I have never told him about my quest to understand the breath. I have never told him about my past issue with water. He simply looked at me and asked me a question about breathing. Then he started talking about what he had learned, in classical music school as a musician, about the breath.

That is the main something I want to share with you. But I want to share it with you in a way that makes sense. That you can use after reading this. I want it to be easy and I want it to open a door to investigate something in yourself, with curiosity.

I imagine as you read, that might seem simple. All I have to do is write down the technique and you can go try it. So much is taught like that now.

But the problem I face is that Héctor started talking to me early in the afternoon and he was done teaching me around midnight.

This is what I want to offer you as a gift. I want to offer you what a classical musician who plays wooden, golden, and silver flutes gifted me about life and breath over the course of about eight hours and somehow, I think I can do it.

Which is silly as one of the many things he reminded me of is that we all will get our own version of gifts. No one will hear his music the same way. You will read this and it will sound different to you from how I feel, writing it.

So often, it is easy to think our version of things is the same everyone sees and that is not how a magical universe works. Every snowflake is different. You are different.

So here is how I imagine you can “get” something out of this. Everything is about frequency and feeling and so if you allow for that, allow yourself to play with what lands for you in this, you will get your own version of a gift. None of our gifts will be the same. Life is like that.

If you are going to take a deep breath, you have to exhale first

Héctor says many people guiding breathwork forget this and it causes a lot of problems. If you are busy panting or breathing up in your chest, and someone tells you to take a deep breath, it will get stuck. It will only go as deep as you are currently breathing.

You have to exhale first.

Then you take a breath.

Héctor takes a belly breath

In order to take a belly breath, you make space for your diaphragm to move down by using the muscles in your lower belly.

You push your belly out and your diaphragm drops down.

It is a happy, relaxed movement. It is like a baby-breath.

Your belly goes out softly, your breath flows in, and your diaphragm drops down. It relaxes into your belly like a bird in a nest as you expand out and make space for it.

Héctor likes to take the breath in through his nose as it seems to slow the process down and make it all more relaxed.

Ahhhh….the soft belly moves out as the air flows in and your diaphragm drops down to be held by your organs. (It feels to me like there is a subtle massage in all of this).

The energy of it

Now we are going back to snapshots again as I want you to feel the potential of this and I am going to mix in some more lessons from Héctor, who most certainly was teaching me about a lot more than breath.

By this time, I am sitting on the couch in the Cora, listening to Hector and trying out what he is telling me. It isn’t always easy. My belly feels a little tight. I try to relax it more. Héctor’s soothing voice continues as he speaks about the gentleness of it all and I find myself slowly slipping into an altered state.

I feel my pelvis and root chakra. As I relax my belly, I breathe into them. I allow everything to soften and I find myself floating in what feels like a soft, pink room that reminds me of rose petals, in another place, at the same time I am sitting on the red sofa.

I continue to breathe as I ask Héctor some questions. I talk about the previous day at dinner. I was sitting with three other women. One coached cancer patients. One said she had PTSD from speaking out against the government in her country and having them come to her house and threaten her. The other had strong opinions about something as well. I don’t remember now what they were. I remember I was navigating the energy of it.

My teacher Bev used to tell me, “Terra, if a situation doesn’t feel good, just leave. Trust yourself.”

Sometimes I do leave and often, in such situations, I sit quietly and observe. It is a bit funny to me as I am not often asked for my perspective (which would likely challenge something someone is saying).

At dinner that night, I decided to take a risk and experiment with what might happen a bit. So I said something very controversial that I was wondering about. You know…one of those somethings about cancer and recent events.

Now, the main thing about all of this that I think is of interest is what Héctor said about it while I was practicing the belly breath and floating energetically in the pink rose petal room.

He told me that as long as I stayed centered in myself, in the breath, my breath, I could really choose to do anything. I could stay in a more edgy situation like that dinner conversation or I could leave. The real practice was to see how I was staying centered in my breath and myself and not make myself wrong for any of it.

You know those tarot cards I mentioned we drew for one another? Well, mine feel a lot like they show a state of walking through life connected to the divine and centered in oneself. Centered in the breath. Centered in a rose petal frequency band. Through the simple and profound act of practicing a belly breath.

A breath can align you in your center with the power to choose in each moment—just like the Star and Temperance Card, connected to the Divine, where you can weigh your options as you stand between a new beginning, and a new version of The Earth…photo by Terra Brooke

Soak the tension in, digest it

What about when you feel tightness somewhere in your body?

I have spent years exploring this. I have learned to feel it more. To hold it with kindness. To ask it what it needs and to name the emotion of it. I have myofascial released it. Screamed it. Loved it. Written about it. Cut cords with it. Hummed it. You know…worked with it and experimented with it.

So it takes me by surprise when Héctor teaches me something totally new.

He is standing in my kitchen and he asks about tightness in my neck as it relates to a belly breath. What do I think I should do when there is tightness and I am trying to relax into a belly breath? He mentions grief (I have cried in front of him by now). I think of unspoken words that I sometimes hold back. Héctor tells me that we all get those things. He points to his own neck, mentions he feels some tension there and demonstrates. He says, “What if you just swallow it?” And he does.

It reminds me of digestion. My soft belly and organs are there to digest things. Why not emotions that are stuck or keep showing up as tension in my body?

This is much different than “swallowing” feelings to repress or bypass them. It is an invitation to digest whatever “it” is that is stuck somewhere as tension or numbness in the body. To work with it.

I have found it an interesting exploration to play with taking my body sensations into my system more, energetically.

I listen to Héctor and I try “swallowing” some tension in my neck. I imagine it going into my belly to digest, as I breathe a belly breath.

And it seems to work. My neck softens. My belly moves.

I have learned something new and I continue to experiment.

Sometimes, I simply feel myself soaking whatever I feel as tension more deeply into my body. That in itself is a form of digesting it. But more than that, it is a way to truly hold and integrate it. The energy is loved, welcomed, and allowed to land a little bit.

I integrate it.

Then you can jiggle a bit

Héctor says that before every concert with Deva Premal and Miten, everyone jiggles a little bit. They stand up and softly bend their knees and start to jiggle their bodies. Jiggle their ass, their face…anywhere they notice might enjoy a bit of fun, any place that feels a bit stuck or tense. They do it to relax so they can play with ease and grace.

Héctor playing flute with Deva Premal and Miten, photo thanks to Héctor Koa

Héctor tells me the breath is like a straight line, a pillar, of energy in the body. Jiggling gets things moving that might be stuck so my energy can flow through me freely.

So, after swallowing things, we jiggle together a little bit. I try to relax. Héctor reminds me it is all about fun and silliness. I try to jiggle like someone who knows how and not like a tense woman freshly arrived from the US.

Soon, we stop and Héctor tells me to feel my body. My hands and arms are tingling. I feel the energy moving and I like it.

Now, shaking is not new to me. I learned how trauma can release from the body through shaking. I learned from John Barnes and Peter Levine, that animals shake after events that are traumatic. Then they move on, in the present moment, apparently relaxed and trauma free.

Humans don’t do this in the culture in which we live. But I have been learning that it can help when you allow it.

But the thing is, in John’s workshops, the shaking in my body or in the bodies of others could get really intense. At the time, I figured it was part of the process of release. Some of that trapped energy and those past experiences had been intense. It was no surprise they felt that way on the way out.

So, I ask Hector about this. Jiggling seemed so mild compared to that. And how does jiggling relate to trauma release…because in John’s workshops, sometimes he would teach us to start with jiggling and it would move into much stronger shaking. Didn’t the body shake hard because of traumatic events? I tell Héctor I think animals don’t just jiggle. Isn’t it an intense experience for them to shake when they release energy from their system?

And as Héctor looks at me he asks why I think it is intense for them? I experience another paradigm shift. Maybe not? Maybe when animals are shaking after escaping a tiger, they are relaxed while they do it? Maybe they are jiggling a bit? Maybe even that, could have an element of fun in it?

This is something I am currently exploring and if you do trauma work, you will probably have lots of ideas about this.

For me, when I hear someone say something that feels very true and powerful, my body will want to shake in response. I have thought of myself as a little energy barometer.

That kind of shaking is not due to trauma release, but it is interesting to explore it as well. I mention it to him and Héctor asks what would happen if I stay centered in my breath and hold the energy and resonance of their words in my body. If I say something like, “Wow, when I hear you say that, I feel a lot of energy in it!”

I notice that I feel more solid and powerful. I feel centered in myself.

I don’t have to shake? I don’t have to be a little energy barometer when I sit in groups?

No. I don’t. I can allow myself to feel the intensity and breathe and speak what I sense. It feels huge to me.

I am starting to experiment with this.

So far, I have found that little experiment to be quite interesting. I feel more in control and powerful because the body response has space to be held in me at the same time I make space with a gentle belly breath.

The chakras float on the breath

When we first began this exploration the day before, and I was sitting on the red couch floating in a place of pink rose petals, I tell Héctor that I feel myself breathing into my root chakra. That I feel my breath go even below my root chakra and below my pelvis like there is a little bowl or tiny tail beneath my body and I am breathing into the tip.

The next day Héctor has arrived in my kitchen and as an aside, tells me that he has been thinking about the chakras and how they relate to the breath.

“The body is physical, Terra, and the chakras are energy centers. It feels to me like they float on the breath.”

Yes. Yes. The chakras float on the breath. It is all so beautiful.

the breath

So I keep playing with all these things as I dance with my breath. I play with them when I wake up at night. How’s my belly breath? How does it feel to breathe out slowly, through my mouth (or nose)? And I remind myself to feel for myself, what feels best. To question things and experiment. What if I soak the tension in? Do I feel more tense or relaxed breathing out through my mouth or nose?

In the end, like those Tarot cards, this is simply a path to be more connected to myself and to walk through the world from a centered and joyful place.

Earlier, at the beginning of this unexpected gift of time, teaching and exploration, I sit in a pink, rose petal altered state, and Héctor points out the peaceful environment surrounding us.

“What if you were standing on the road right now, Terra, and the cars were going by? How would that be?”

“It would be a lot different,” I said.

“And what if you just stayed with your breath, like this? What if you were standing on the road right now breathing into your belly, and the cars were going by and you weren’t thinking about how it is now, here? You were just standing on the road, with the cars, breathing like this?”

“It would be peaceful,” I said.

The past can keep us trapped in resentment, regret, judgement, wishes, and self-pity. The future can bring anxiety and fear.

I can explore the present and what is right here, in whatever situation, with a soft belly breath.

Héctor points out that as a performer, he can’t simply walk on stage and start sobbing if he is sad. That doesn’t mean he bypasses his emotions. It means he has had to learn to work with the energy of emotions and the sensations of his body so he can step out onto the stage and offer his gifts from a centered place. He has learned to flow energy through his pillar and release what might be in the way. He has techniques. He jiggles. He digests.

And despite my current, fresh practices from him, I still cried a bit when he left.

This is Héctor:

Center yourself in your breath, forgive the past, accept where you are at, let go of the future

—Hector Koa

www.instagram.com/hectorkoa