Tying Breath to Listening
Author: Ken Homer Issue: 2025-09-17
Tying Breath to Listening
by Ken Homer
As children, we all spent countless hours with a variety of teachers learning how speak. But who among those teachers taught you how to listen?
That’s a question I often pose to groups I work with. When people do volunteer that someone taught them how to listen the most common answer is a music teacher. Often people who do counseling receive some training in listening and those poor souls who have had to endure employer mandated trainings will mention active listening workshops where your advised to make eye contact and nod and smile to show you are paying attention. In her Ted Talk, NPR host Celeste Headley says “Forget that crap. There is no need to show you are paying attention if you are paying attention.”
My questions for you dear reader are: What do you do when your intention is to listen closely, but you find your attention wandering? Where does your attention go if you hear something you disagree with? Is there a link between listening well and breathing? I think there is.
Most people breathe 12 to 15 times per minute, and they breathe shallowly. When we breathe shallowly, we tend to be less connected to our bodies and more in our heads. But it is in our body where our ability to access emotions, intuition, and empathy resides. And those are critical to effective communication. Deeper breathing connects us to our body and expands our ability to be present and aware in our current situation. This can help us be more open and receptive to and more grounded and able to stay with what someone shares with us. This is how breathing relates to how we listen.
What follows is a guided tour of four different kinds of breathing and a practice that you or your team can work with to learn if it will make you a better listener.
Shallow Breathing—The first kind of listening and breathing we are going to explore is shallow breathing. Stand comfortably with your feet about shoulder width apart and your knees slightly flexed. If you are sitting, keep both feet flat on the floor and your back straight with your ears over your shoulders and your shoulders over your hips. Begin by placing your hand high up on your chest with your thumb and forefinger touching your collarbones. This breath is exaggerated intentionally to bring your awareness to how shallowing we tend to breathe.
Take five quick breaths here, breathing into your hand. Breathe in and out through your nose. Do not breathe below where your palm is touching your chest.
Most people find that breathing in this manner makes them feel light-headed. Usually when we breathe shallowly, we focus on what’s going on in our minds as we listen rather than on hearing what someone is saying. Oftentimes, we’re busy preparing our response to what they are saying—so, we don’t really hear their perspective. Shallow breathing supports shallow (level of content) listening and may increase emotional reactivity.
Moderate Breathing—The next kind of listening is a little deeper and allows us to shift our focus towards being present and listening more attentively to others. As we deepen our breathing it calms our nervous system, That allows us to focus less on what is going on in our minds, and more on what others are saying and sharing.
Move your hand to your solar plexus—that’s the area just under your rib cage in the middle of your torso. Take five breaths here, breathing into your hand. Breathe in and out through your nose. Do not breathe below where your palm is touching your body.
People usually report that this is a more calming way of breathing. Breathing more deeply is necessary for supporting brain and body when challenges arise in a conversation. It’s very common for people to take a short sharp inhale high in the chest when they are confronted with a perspective that startles or surprises them. This moves energy up into the head. What’s needed to effectively process challenge is to be more grounded and centered in our bodies. Moderate breathing supports us in dealing with challenges to our ways of thinking and perceiving and helps us to stay with the conversational threads instead of retreating into our own thoughts.
Belly Breathing—Now we are going to breathe more deeply, shifting our attention away from our minds and going more deeply into our bodies and senses. This breath may require more effort than you are used to exerting when you breathe.
Place your hand on your belly, just below you navel. Take five deep breaths here, breathing into your hand. Breathe in and out through your nose and allow your belly to swell as you breathe. Often men keep their bellies hard, guys, please allow your belly to soften as you work with this breath!
Most people say that breathing in this way makes them feel more grounded and sometimes even a little sleepy. One reason for that is because when we go to sleep, we automatically breathe more slowly and deeply. Deeper breathing gets more oxygen into our bloodstream and more oxygen to our brains as well. Our nervous systems calm down and this supports opening up our thinking processes as well as our emotional receptivity.
Belly breathing activates empathy. It allows other people to “impress” us, meaning we can become more attuned to how their emotional states affect our own. It gives us clearer access emotional sensitivity and to intuition. As we breathe more deeply and slow ourselves down, we can become more aware of what is important to the people around us, helping to improve our social and emotional intelligence.
Full torso breathing—the last breathing practice in this series is a combination of the first and third. Keeping your hand on your belly just below the navel, place your other hand high on your chest with your thumb and forefingers touching your collarbones once again. Now, breathing first into your belly, allow your whole torso to slowly fill with breath, expanding gradually from your belly to the very top of your lungs before exhaling through your nose. This breath may be hard at first, but you’ll soon master it.
The future is constantly being born in each moment, yet most of us have very little awareness of this. This kind of breathing will help us to stay fully present and attuned to the subtle cues of when the future is attempting to emerge between us. Sometimes, what is enlivening in a conversation is easy to spot. Words are spoken that raise the hair on your arms or you find yourself leaning in of perhaps feeling aversion. Other times it is more subtle. Full torso breathing can support us in attending to what is enlivening.
This breathing practice is easy to incorporate into your daily life. And what’s great is that nobody needs to know that you are doing anything. The next time you are talking to someone, and you find yourself challenged or your attention wandering, simply move your hand to your belly and breathe more deeply and see if helps you to shift your attention and recover your ground and center.
Conspiracy Theory—Applying this practice in your life and work
The Latin word “conspire” translates literally as to breathe together. I have a theory that people who take the time to breathe together have better conversations. I invite you to try this out for yourself.
When I work with a group on an ongoing basis I use this practice as a foundation. Once people know the four breaths, we start our all our gatherings by breathing together. We skip the shallow breathing and focus on the three deeper breaths taking seven breaths for each one for a total of 21 breaths.
Taking 21 progressively deeper breaths together has several benefits. First it slows your mind down, shifting the focus from the speed of thought to connect with the slower rhythms of the body. It also increases your presence, supports a greater attunement to all your senses, and helps you in expanding your focus of attention.
Lung capacity—the average adult has a lung capacity of five liters. The average volume of air that most adults take in with a single breath is half a liter! For every quarter inch more depth that you move your diaphragm on an inhale you will take in an additional half liter of air.
Nervous system regulation—slow, deep breathing calms the nervous system. This in turn increases emotional and social intelligence by lessening reactivity and supporting limbic resonance.
Why breathe through your nose? Inside your sinus cavities is a signaling molecule called nitric oxide (NO) which has numerous cardio-vascular, nervous system, and immune system benefits. These benefits are only realized by breathing through the nose. If you breathe in through your nose and exhale through your mouth you will not activate NO or receive its benefits.
Breathing together tends to slow the conversation down, allowing more reflection. It also co-regulates the nervous systems of everyone present and over time can have profound impacts on a group’s ability to work through difficult conversations. One senior engineering team I worked with told me that after three months of doing this practice, they all felt their ability to accept and work with dissent and divergent views was greater and that their collective decision-making process had improved.
Breath is life! Breathing consciously supports your ability to be more present, connected and alive, while improving your ability to listen for what matters.
©2025 Ken Homer – feel free to distribute with full credit to the author and no changes to the content
Related:
- Ken Homer (author)
- 2025 (year)
- Topics: Events and Gatherings, Tools and Platforms