Some possible activities to try related to breathing and rhythm:
One: some 10 Things I Noticed Variations
10 Rhythms I Heard
10 Surfaces I Ran/Walked On
10 Textures I Felt/Saw
10 Things I Noticed Breathing
10 Smells I Smelled as I Tried to Breathe (possible: 5 good smells/5 bad smells)
10 triple (or triple berry) words
5 Things that Make it Hard to Breathe/5 Things that Make it Easy to Breathe
Two: rhythmic breathing
- Pay close attention to your breathing as you move. Steady it.
- How many steps do you take for each breath? Convert those steps into syllables and use them to write a small poem or a list of phrases.
- Your poem or phrases could be about your walk or run, or about anything you want to write about.
- You can be serious with it, or try to make it as ridiculous or strange or whimsical as you’d like.
bonus: compose your poem/phrases as you move!
For more of my examples of poems and phrases see: Rhythmic Breathing or the tag on my movement log, running rhythms.
Three: triple berry chants
- Make your run/walk about triples.
- Sync up your steps to the rhythm of 1 2 3/straw ber ry by chanting (out loud or in your head) the rhythm. You could count, or use words/phrases that have that rhythm.
- Come up with more words/phrases that fit the rhythm and chant them.
- See what happens.*
*for me, sometimes nothing happens. Sometimes as I’m chanting these triples, a fun word, a beautiful phrase, or a great idea for a poem, pops into my head. And sometimes, chanting these triples over and over and over again helps me to get lost in a dreamy state, where I’m not thinking about anything; I’m just being present on the path.
bonus: Triple berries are almost always dactyls. Try chanting some triple words or phrases that don’t follow the meter of stressed unstressed unstressed. Throw in some anapests: in the gorge, on a tree, near that bird, down this hill