Hubert Godard: The first step would be to forget that you are breathing. Air is already in you, it’s enough to open to the environment. There’s no need to take hold of it.

Lucien: It’s so diffcult for me to hear ‘there’s no need to take hold of it’. Because, actually, in my imagination, I associate not actively drawing in breath with suffocating. If I could trust…

Hubert Godard: Yes, there is a question of trust at the heart of breathing.

Lucien: But who or what, then, is breathing?

Hubert Godard: Life! You can finally see life at work, a rare moment when you bear witness to its unfolding. Something breathes in you, peacefully.

Like philosophers of antiquity for whom teaching was in service to a way of life, Hubert Godard proposes that we approach breath ‘in the live’ in order to understand the extent to which breathing is a function of our postural attitude in relation to our milieu, the environment.

With the collaboration of Charlotte Hess and Claudia Righini.

Translated by Sally Gardner

Une respiration, extrait pages 20 et 21