tools: ZOOMING

Getting started with Zooming

Your Zooming CD has arrived. What now?

The most important step in ensuring your success with the Zooming (cycling) CD is mastering the Serendipity (walking) CD. Alexi Grewal, who used BreathPlay in winning the Olympic gold medal in the 121-mile bicycle road race, began his BreathPlay skill-building with lots of walking.

He understood the Latin saying, "Festina lente"--make haste slowly, realizing that the quickest way to success was through learning the basic patterns at a slower walking tempo, and only then taking them to the high-speed spinning tempo of the bicycle.

To optimize your first Zooming experience -assuming mastery of Serendipity, I'd like to give you the same recommendation I gave with Serendipity: use the best closed-ear headphones you can get your hands on.

Do not use Zooming for either off-road or on-road cycling. For the same reason it's the most powerful training tool imaginable, it could be extremely dangerous on an actual ride. Its very strength as a training tool is its danger for off-road or on-road riding.

Zooming will take you into a profound natural trance as it guides you into the deep integration of your breathing and pedaling. The inner space that it opens for you is very special and you'll want to return there often; however, it's not compatible with cycling safety. Once you've learned the patterns thoroughly, you'll be able to use them to transform your bike performance. Whether you prefer riding on-road or off-road, you'll find that you can learn how to combine your deeply trained BreathPlay awareness and skills with appropriate vigilance for your cycling situation.

You'll be able to keep a high level of inner awareness as you watch the terrain or the road, and as you maneuver in traffic or negotiate a tricky trail. The improvements in your strength and skill will be obvious to you, and you'll find yourself wanting to keep them coming by continuing to use the Serendipity and Zooming CDs. You may be tempted to take Zooming out on a ride, but I strongly advise you to use it only for stationary riding, so that you can stay with family and friends in the land of the living.

Use a spin bike or use a bike stand to get the drive wheel of your road or mountain bike off the ground. (Put a thick book under the front wheel to level the bike.) Although rollers are fine for indoor training, they're not the best choice for the Zooming CD since you have to keep your eyes open to maintain your stability.

As with the Serendipity CD, you must develop and apply responsive listening skills. Like Serendipity, Zooming is an acousticoaching CD, which makes it distinctly different from a music CD. Although you can enjoy listening casually to a music CD, you have to pay close attention in listening to Serendipity and Zooming. In order to benefit from the environment of sound they create for you, you have to open yourself to their acoustic energy, and you have to listen with your whole body and not just your ears. The more
responsive your listening, the deeper your learning.

As with Serendipity, the acoustic core of Zooming is the sound of the breath cycles. Each breath cycle repeats a pattern of six pedal strokes out and three in at a constant tempo of 180 beats per minute (90-rpm). You can see this on the Zooming label in the BreathPlay shorthand of "6/3 @ 90-rpm." Notice that the outbreath count comes first in the 6/3 shorthand, indicating its primacy of place in the breath cycle. Each outbreath is a six-count pressurized hissing sound: "Sss-sss-sss-sss-sss-sss." Each inbreath is a three-count relaxed aahing sound: "aaa-aaa-aah." Each breath cycle is a nine-count "Sss-sss-sss-sss-sss-sss / aaa-aaa-aah."

Zooming is almost 75 minutes long, giving you almost 1500 breath cycles of the 6/3 "Sss-sss-sss-sss-sss-sss / aaa-aaa-aah" pattern. To master the basic responsive listening skill, the central skill, you must learn to match your own breathing sounds to those 1500 cycles of "Sss-sss-sss-sss-sss-sss / aaa-aaa-aah."

In my 25 years of teaching BreathPlay, I've found that the biggest block to learning is timidity about matching those sounds. Before producing the BreathPlay CDs, I had to make those sounds myself when teaching, and I would invite people to match my sounds with their own breathing sounds. Those who right away became part of the BreathPlay chorus, adding their breathing sounds to mine without inhibition, always seemed to learn rapidly. On the other hand, those who held back always seemed to run into problems. If you're shy about making your breathing clearly audible, I strongly recommend that you make it audible at least to yourself.

As long as your breathing sounds clearly match the "Sss-sss-sss-sss-sss-sss / aaa-aaa-aah," you can be confident that you're BreathPlaying. In order to make the pressurized hissing sounds, you have to be actively pushing your air out, and in order to make the relaxed aahing sounds, you have to be passively letting your air in. If your pedal-strokes are matching the counts in the breathing sounds, you have it all working together.

As you should know from your experience with Serendipity, once you've mastered matching the "Sss-sss-sss-sss-sss-sss / aaa-aaa-aah" breathing sounds with both your breathing and your pedal strokes, the next step in BreathPlay skill-building is recognizing and responding to the voice weaves. You have to recognize a voice weave before you can respond to it, and I want to point out that you may not be able to recognize each and every one of them at first.

In spite of our best efforts to make the words clear, you may not be able to catch some of the voice weaves at first. While they're much easier to understand than the lyrics of some rock songs, you may find yourself trying to puzzle out a meaning every now and then. My advice to you is not to get snagged on lack of clarity. As long as you keep your breathing sounds matching the CD, you're succeeding in the most important part of the learning. When you can't quite catch the words, let them go.

Chances are, the meaning will be clear the next time through, either through simple repetition or through the cues of context. You may also find that reading over the voice weave explanations will enable you to recognize the ones you missed. Scroll down to "Zooming Voice Weaves" for some detailed discussions.

Each voice weave gives you a bite-sized bit of coaching input. Most of them are in pairs, and most are followed by a pair of empty breath cycles-that is, empty of voice weaves. It's a good idea to repeat the voice weaves to yourself in those empty breath cycles, both to reinforce the learning and to increase the responsiveness of your listening.

I strongly recommend that you use Zooming in perfect safety, on a spin bike or a stand-mounted bike. Possibilities open up when you don't have to worry about road hazards or rocky terrain, because then you have the freedom to close your eyes and yet pedal in perfect safety.

It's a good idea to warm up to about 90-rpm before you start Zooming. The tempo of 90-rpm is the classic spin tempo, and all cyclists should learn how to maintain that tempo, in the interests of energy efficiency.

When you push PLAY, you'll hear the 6/3 breath cycles at the 90-rpm tempo, and your first concern should be to match the CD's breathing pattern exactly and to connect your pedal strokes to the breathing pattern. Breathe and pedal with the sounds, and well on your way to putting the power of Zooming into your cycling.


Zooming Voice Weaves


It begins with the sounds of repeating 6/3 out/in breath cycles at the 90-rpm tempo of 180 beats per minute. Those breath-cycle sounds repeat throughout the entire CD. You can rely on their constant presence, although they're sometimes in the background. Sometimes they're behind the voice weaves, which are on-beat, bite-sized bits of BreathPlay coaching input. Sometimes they're behind Carlton Williamson's BreathMusic, which is a unique musical form supporting the BreathPlay learning process. At other times, they're behind both the voice weaves and the BreathMusic, but those breathing sounds are audible even then. You'll know you've reached the first level of skill when you can match those sounds for every single one of the CD's 1,500 breath cycles.

In each breath cycle, you can hear six steps of pressurized hissing outbreath, and three steps of relaxed aahing inbreath. You can use the steps in the breathing sounds by seeing each pedal's bottom-dead-center as a momentary footstep on an imaginary plane. When you have your pedaling speed adjusted so that the footsteps on that imaginary plane exactly match the steps in the sound, your breathing will have you spinning at a perfect 90-rpm.

You hear the first zoom on the eighth outbreath. It zooms on by and fades away. You won't hear it again until forty-five minutes later, and by that time you'll be getting enough of a sense of what it signals to be able to use its energy. Within that zooming sound is the promise of the power you'll be able to put into your pedals when you've taken your BreathPlay skills to the stratosphere â¤|

Ou-ou-ou-ou-ou-out / ii-ii-in 00:27
Ou-ou-ou-ou-ou-out / ii-ii-in 00:30

This first pair of voice weaves focuses on the basic out/in pattern of
the breath cycle. Notice that the outbreath comes first, reflecting the primacy of the outbreath in the BreathPlay model. The outbreath sound is six steps of intense pressurized hissing. Those six steps of hissing are forceful, and they're forceful because the outbreath is the active phase of the BreathPlay cycle. An important consequence of that hissing sound is the significant backpressure it sets up within the lungs. You create the sound by partially blocking the outflow of air, and that partial blockage backs up the air that's trying to get out through that narrowed passage. The increased backpressure increases the gas exchange at the alveoli, the tiny sacs within the lungs, at the ends of the smallest branches of the bronchial tree. When you make that six-step hissing sound you're helping yourself not just by setting a rhythm to fit your pedaling into, but also by increasing both the uptake of oxygen and the discharge of carbon dioxide.

The three-step inbreath sound is distinctly different, reflecting a relaxation of the partial blockage to create a wide-open air passage. It's important to note that there's so much air rushing into the lungs on the passive inbreath that the steps of the aahing sound have an intensity of their own. Keep this in mind so that you don't misread the cues provided by those sounds. The inbreath sounds are loud and clear not because of active air sucking, but because of the remarkable force with which external atmospheric pressure pushes air in.

The nine-step breath cycle of Zooming could also have worked with a 7/2 pattern or even an 8/1 pattern. I chose 6/3 because years of BreathPlay coaching have shown me that the passive inbreath is by far the most challenging part of the BreathPlay cycle. This has been particularly obvious with extraordinarily fit and well-muscled athletes. These physically gifted people find it easy to pull the abdominal wall strongly back on theoutbreath, but not so easy to then release it and let it relax into a rounded belly on the inbreath. The three-step inbreath provides time to release the patterns of muscular contraction that have been activated for the BreathPlay outbreath. As practice brings skills in quick relaxation, it then becomes possible to receive the same volume of air during a two-step inbreath.

It's interesting to watch the workings of the abdominal wall in BreathPlayers of different skill levels. The beginner's belly will release with apparent reluctance, letting go a little bit, and then perhaps a little bit more. The maximum release attainable is sometimes surprisingly modest. The belly might seem to release halfway before getting somehow stuck.

The highly skilled BreathPlayer presents a very different picture, with muscular release that happens so quickly and so completely, the belly seems actually to pop out. In doing so, it creates space for the diaphragm to flatten down into, and actually helps to pull it down. When the belly is only partially released, the downward movement of the diaphragm is partially restricted, and the volume of inbreath air is reduced. It's an interesting coordination: the accessory muscles of respiration aid the contraction (downward flattening) of the diaphragm by relaxing so as not to impede it.

Act-ive-ly-push-air-out / let-it-in 00:51
Act-ive-ly-push-air-out / let-air-in 00:54

This voice weave pair brings the focus to the activity of the outbreath and the passivity of the inbreath. As far as I know, billions worldwide conceive the work of breathing as taking a breath, as in the common English expression "Take a breath," the common French expression, "Prenez un soufflé," the common Italian expression, "Prendere un alito," the common German expression, "Nehmen Sie einen Atem," and the common Spanish expression, "Tome una respiración."

We speak of taking a breath and letting it out. Our language and others reflect the understanding that the work phase of the breath cycle is taking air in and the relaxation phase is letting that air out. The active-inbreath language, "Take a breath," sounds natural, whereas the active-outbreath version, "Push a breath," does not. The active-inbreath version, "Let it out," sounds natural, whereas the active-outbreath version, "Let it in," does not.

It's absolutely fascinating to me that the active inbreath is virtually universal, and yet the active outbreath makes more sense in all the ways that matter--physically, physiologically, and psychologically. Obviously, our breathing works fine regardless of which phase of the breath cycle we make active. We continue to feel comfortable as long as our need for oxygen is met. As I've often pointed out in the early parts of many BreathPlay seminars, there is absolutely no need to learn BreathPlay skills, because our established breathing habits work fine. However, learning the BreathPlay skills, which are based on reversing those established habits, pays off in countless surprising ways. They are easy to understand, and, with the aid of the BreathPlay CDs, they are easy to learn, fun to learn, even fascinating to learn.

Bel-ly-back-push-air-out / let-air-in 01:42
Pull-it-back-push-air-out / let-air-in 01:45

I remember the warm-up ritual one of my high school P.E. coaches used to lead us through at the beginning of each class. He was convinced that deep breathing was the way to prepare the body for activity, and he would always lead us in this peculiar exercise. "Fill your chest with air!" he'd shout. "Suck in to suck in!"

So we'd all inflate our chests as fully as we could, sucking our bellies in to help maximize the chest inflation. He'd stand up in front of us, projecting great pride in the way his puffed-up chest dwarfed his trim waist. He looked posed and poised for dramatic action. I remember struggling to stifle laughter on a regular basis because for some reason I couldn't help imagining a full-throated Tarzan outburst. He always looked so ready to start pounding his chest and breaking into a Tarzan warble.

But let's leave Tarzan and get back to this voice weave pair, because it coaches you to do exactly the opposite. Instead of pulling the belly back to help expand the chest into an air-sucking inflation, the BreathPlayer pulls the belly back to push air out and relaxes that pullback to let air in. Note that relaxing the pullback on the inbreath allows a natural rounding of the belly to happen all by itself. This is distinctly different from active-inbreath belly breathing, which is sometimes taught as preferable to active-inbreath chest breathing. The inbreath voice weave here is "let-air-in." You let the air in by releasing the pullback of the abdominal wall, letting it belly out.

Make-it-strong-out-breath-strong / re-lax-in 01:54
Breath-ing-out-makes-you-strong / re-ee-lax 01:57

You make the outbreath happen; you don't let it happen. Not only do you make the outbreath happen, you also make it happen strongly, and when you make it happen strongly for outbreath after outbreath, the outbreathing itself strengthens your abdominal wall. You make a strong abdominal contraction to make the outbreath happen and you relax that contraction to let the inbreath happen.

Breath-ing-strong-mov-ing-strong / re-ee-lax 02:06
Mov-ing-strong-breath-ing-strong / ii-ii-in 02:09

As you increase the strength, power, and precision of your core
rhythm--your breathing rhythm--you also increase the strength, power, and precision of whatever movement it supports, whether it be walking, running, cycling, or something else.

One-two-three-one-two-three / one-two-three 02:30
One-two-three-four-five-six / sevn-eight-nine 02:33

Many BreathPlayers have told me that they especially appreciate the counting breath weaves. They find the simplicity, familiarity, and predictability of straightforward counting to be reassuring and relaxing.

I think they have a good point. Each of the coaching voice weaves brings a bite-sized bit of BreathPlay skill to your attention, and prompts you to play with it. With the counting, on the other hand, all you need concern yourself with is reinforcing the tempo of your steps and the pattern of your breaths.

One-two-three-one-two-three / one-two-three 04:09
Hear-the-threes-feel-the-threes / three-counts-in 04:12
Hear-the-threes-feel-the-threes / ii-ii-in 04:15

Within the six steps of the outbreath you can hear two triplets, as in "One-two-three, one-two-three," or "One-two-three, four-five-six." Within the nine counts of the complete breath cycle, you can hear three triplets, as in "One-two-three, one-two-three / one-two-three," or "One-two-three, four-five-six / seven-eight nine." These triplets will help your skill building through simplifying each breath cycle by a factor of three. Instead of following six-step outbreaths and three-step inbreaths, you'll be registering two units and one unit--two triplets on each outbreath and one triplet on each inbreath. The voice weave of "Hear-the-threes, feel-the-threes," will help sharpen your ability to recognize these patterns.

Breathe-out-three-counts-times-two / in-on-three 04:24
One-two-three-two-two-three / three-two-three 04:27

Three counts time two, or two triplets, is six counts. You breathe out on six counts and in on three. The triplets are clearly recognizable in the BreathMusic throughout, and you'll find over time that you sense yourself breathing out on two triplets and in on one. If you focus on the inbreath triplets, or if you simply follow the sequence of triplets, you'll notice that there two alternating kinds:

Right-left-right, left-right-left / right-left-right

followed by:

Left-right-left, right-left-right / left-right-left
Breath-ing-out-on-six-counts / in-on-three 04:39
All-air-out-on-six-counts / in-on-three 04:42
One-two-three-four-five-six / one-two-three 04:45

Basic to BreathPlay is the skill of metering the pressurized outflow so that you have enough air left on the sixth step for an extra-emphatic final push. The extra outbreath effort in this final step gives it a decisive feeling of finality which helps set up the rebound relaxation of the inbreath. Notice that the first steps of each triplet are emphatic, but not as emphatic as the last step of the outbreath, which is the most emphatic step of each breath cycle.

Each-out-breath-switch-es-sides / sevn-eight-nine 05:06
Watch-each-breath-switch-ing-sides / sevn-eight-nine 05:09

We've already looked at the way the odd-count breath cycles automatically bring about balance in movement, but we haven't yet looked at the reason for the high number of switch sides voice weaves throughout. Since the switchside balance happens all by itself, why pay special attention to it?

To answer this, I'd like to bring up the idea of the A.Q., or awareness quotient, which I mentioned in the first edition of the BreathPlay book, back in 1986. The awareness quotient measures the body's equivalent of the mind's intelligence quotient. While the intelligence quotient measures the mind's ability to deal with mental abstractions, the awareness quotient measures the body's ability to deal with physical sensations.

Unlike native intelligence, which is systematically exercised over years of education, native body awareness is exercised in a more random pattern.

Zooming Technique

When I rediscovered the bicycle as an adult in my 30s, I found myself charmed by the cycling scene. I liked hanging out in the bike shop because it seemed like a refuge for master craftsmen in a mass-production world. I found a quiet delight in watching as my first custom frame was built up into a state-of-the-art racing bike with components I had selected myself, and with wheels I had watched a wheel smith lace up. There was a deeply reassuring satisfaction in knowing the care he'd taken with the spoke wrench to true those wheels to perfect roundness. I had validated it myself, watching both the front and rear wheels spinning perfectly on the truing stand.

Taking a close look at how you can keep a wheel spinning on a truing stand will help you understand how the BreathPlay Zooming CD can teach you a phenomenal level of mastery of a central cycling skill--the skill of maintaining a smooth and powerful spin with a minimal expenditure of energy.

You can keep the wheel spinning on the truing stand by an occasional brushing movement of your hand across the tire. It will keep on spinning for a while, but if you don't put some more energy into it, friction will gradually slow that wheel down to eventual stillness. However, if you find the right rhythm and the right touch, you can keep that wheel at a steady spin with minimal energy input.

You can think of the BreathPlay Zooming CD as a learning tool that teaches you the skill of doing the same thing on your bike--holding a steady speed with minimum energy input. As a matter of fact, you'll be learning the phenomenal skill of holding a steady speed with an intermittent, on/off energy input, turning it on for the outbreath phase and turning it off for the inbreath phase of each breath cycle.

The first zoom you hear will zoom on by during the eighth outbreath of the 3000-odd outbreaths of the Zooming CD, and you won't hear it again for another 45 minutes. By the time it returns, though, you will have BreathPlayed your way through a skill-building process that will enable you in time to understand how to hear that sound in your body, and how to use it to enter a realm of extraordinary bicycular power.

It's important to understand from the outset of this learning process that zooming is by no means a basic BreathPlay skill. As a matter of fact, it's an extremely advanced skill and is unattainable without real mastery of the basics. It's actually an integration skill that manifests mastery of many component skills. However, the Zooming CD will guide you through the entire learning process, helping you gradually to master the component skills and gradually to integrate them along the way. Every time you listen to it responsively, trying to perfect each of the breath cycles, you will be approaching a little closer to building the skill-set that will crystallize into the zooming experience.

In the same way that you can become a skilled spinner of a wheel on a truing stand, you can become a skilled zoomer on a bicycle. The truing stand skill is a two-part skill. One part of the skill is a matter of timing your brushes across the tire so that each one comes before an appreciable amount of rotational speed is lost. The other part of the skill is matching your hand speed with the speed of the tire. If it's too slow, your contact with the tire will take speed out of it. If it's too fast, your contact will add too much speed. What you're trying to attain is a steady rotational speed with absolutely minimal energy input into the wheel.

Now, I offer this ideal with full knowledge that even the best of hubs, which reduce friction to an absolute minimum, do not eliminate friction. So the wheel is never really spinning at a constant speed, since it is always slowing down, even when the friction is virtually imperceptible. In truth, we are not talking about a constant rotational speed because that is only possible when the energy input exactly and constantly matches the energy lost to friction, and that includes not only the friction within the hub but also
the friction of the spokes moving through the air.

The operative qualifier here is the phrase "for all practical purposes." We can learn to keep the wheel on the truing stand spinning at a speed that is constant for all practical purposes, that is, constant as far as our senses can detect. It's easy to see that we do not need constant energy input to do that. We can rely on the momentum of the spinning wheel to keep the rotational speed from a perceptible slowing if we simply find the right timing for those minimal energy inputs. In this sense, then, we can develop great skill as guardians of the steady spin.

Now, we're in very different territory when we move from guarding the steady spin of a super-light wheel on a truing stand to maintaining the steady speed of a bicycle out on the road. The glaring difference is that the movement of a cyclist through the air generates resistance that is many realms of magnitude greater than the tiny amount of friction that slows the wheel rotating on the truing stand. Air resistance increases not in a linear fashion, but in an exponential fashion: when you double your speed, your air resistance increases not two times, but two times two times. As you increase your speed by a factor of two, you increase the air resistance by a factor of four. At a speed of 20 mph, more than 90% of a cyclist's energy is spent in overcoming air resistance.

We're in very different territory than the low-friction world of the super-light wheel, but the principle is the same. We can learn to use the inbreath like the pause when our hand hovers over the spinning wheel on the truing stand. In other words, we don't have to maintain a constant energy output. We can learn to use the inbreath to relax not just the accessory muscles of respiration that we use to push the air out in the active BreathPlay outbreath, but also the primary muscles of locomotion that we use to put power into the pedals. We can use the rotational momentum of the drive wheel to hold our speed constant while we give our muscles a break from
pedaling.

With the Zooming CD's 6/3 breathing pattern, you'll be seeking a distinct shift in the feelings of your feet inside your bike shoes. As you're putting power into the pedals for the three revolutions (six pedal strokes) of the outbreath, you'll be able to feel the pressure of the feet working against the inside of the shoes. If your pedaling skills are well developed, that pressure inside the shoes will be changing constantly throughout each 360-degrees of revolution. Most notably, you'll feel lifting pressure against the shoe uppers on the upstroke and down pressure into the shoe soles on the down stroke. You'll know you're learning how to take a rest within each breath cycle when the feet feel like they're floating inside the shoes for the one and a half revolutions (three pedal strokes) of the inbreath. While you're using your six-stroke outbreath to express power, you'll be able to feel the pressure of the feet engaging with the bike shoes. While you're using your three-stroke inbreath to relax and recharge your power, you'll feel your feet floating inside the shoes as you let momentum carry you.

When most cyclists are first introduced to this idea, they are doubtful that they can master the skill. One very talented rider who has been testing beta versions of Zooming simply was unable to imagine himself ever reaching that level, "It sounds like you'd have to be a Jedi knight to get there," he said. However, he reported his first inklings of success within a few days, and I know for a fact that he learned from the Zooming CD only, with no extra help from Obi Wan Kenobi.

This may sound heretical to those who emphatically insist on keeping a constant power input into the pedals. "If your spin varies," they will tell you, "you are riding inefficiently. You must learn to keep your power input steady. You must develop the ability to maintain a smooth spin." I agree with that, to a point. The point of disagreement, from the BreathPlay perspective, is the question of what it means to maintain a smooth spin. It's a question of using the power of BreathPlay to develop a deeper and more refined understanding of spin technique.

I would like to bring up again the qualifying phrase I used when talking about the constant spin of the wheel on the truing stand: "for all practical purposes." What I'd like to suggest to you is that you can learn to "float" for the inbreath pedal revolutions, giving yourself a brief but perceptible rest period without any perceptible variation in the spin. Even though you're resting every third second, you're maintaining a spin that's smoothly powerful for all practical purposes.

The breathing pattern in Zooming is 6/3, so the outbreath phase is exactly twice as long as the inbreath phase, and the inbreath phase is one-third the total breath cycle--three pedal strokes out of nine. Admittedly, the period of rest is very brief. At the Zooming tempo of 90 rpm, it's exactly one second. But it's one second out of every three, and if you can build skill in floating the pedals every third second, you will have an advantage that will win races for you, or extend your comfortable endurance significantly.