Part 4: The Inhaling Body and the Exhaling Body — Breath Seen Through Gravity

Published 2015/02/28
Modified 2026/08/09
Author Hidefumi Otsuka
Categories english-blog
Categories english-page

Breathing Series, Part 4 of 4

Introduction

Three parts of this column have addressed breathing so far. After the exhalation has run its course, a command travels from the respiratory center of the brain stem to the spinal cord; the muscles required for inhalation contract, and the ribs expand (see “Exhaling Takes No Effort — Conscious and Unconscious Breath“). The diaphragm plays an important role in this (see “The Diaphragm Reaches the Skull — Breath and the Placement of the Organs“). And regarding posture, extensors and flexors matter; when their balance collapses, breathing is affected (see “When Posture Collapses, Breathing Changes — Extensors, Flexors, and the Scalenes“).

Reading Gravity: g and g’

The Phase II training covered how the relation to gravity is to be seen.

As indices for organizing the body — what weight rests where — two measures are used, g and g’ (g standing for gravity):

g: Is the weight forward or back in relation to the body as a whole?

g’: Seen from the hip joints, is the weight forward or back in relation to the upper body?

(See “Letting Go of Tension (3) — Awareness of Gravity and Space“)

How, then, are g and g’ to be read in relation to breathing? The Phase III training took up two patterns.

On the left is the inhaling type, on the right the exhaling type.

In the inhaling type, g’ tips forward (anterior) as seen from the hip joints. The shoulder girdle is therefore carried back (posterior) to strike a balance. The pelvis, for its part, tilts forward (anterior). The spine here is extended, held straight. In this condition, inhalation tends to come easily and exhalation with difficulty. Because the spine is lengthened, the rhomboids and the muscles related to the scapula near the spine are tense.

In the exhaling type, g’ tips back (posterior) as seen from the hip joints. The shoulder girdle is therefore carried forward (anterior) to strike a balance. The pelvis tilts back (posterior). In this condition, inhalation tends to come with difficulty and exhalation easily. Because the spine is flexed, the muscles at the front of the body — the pectoralis major, the pectoralis minor, and the serratus anterior — are tense.

What warrants caution here is that the inhaling type is not necessarily inhalation-dominant, nor the exhaling type exhalation-dominant. Exceptions are possible. Still, this way of thinking is one model of breathing, and it serves very well for forming hypotheses.

On Models

As an aside, there is a passage worth introducing.

Naoki Komuro, whom I hold in high regard and who is no longer with us, wrote a book called Ronri no Hōhō (The Method of Logic). In its preface he writes that the secret to using logic freely lies in constructing a model oneself, since a model is a crystallization of logic; and that building a model is the work of drawing out only what is essential and discarding the rest.

Seen that way, Tonic Function, polyvagal theory, and anatomy — all introduced in this column — are models as well. What matters in Rolfing, in the end, is what is actually felt through the hands in touch.

Across four parts, this column has introduced breathing, and how attending to breathing in Rolfing bears on posture should by now be clear.

The movements Rolfing observes are breathing and walking. Walking will be considered over several parts to come.

Reference

Aline Newton; Breathing in the gravity field, Fall 1997, Rolf Lines

Note, August 2026

These four pieces were written in February 2015, during the Phase III training in Munich — one month before certification as a Rolfer, from the position of someone still learning.

Aline Newton’s paper “Breathing in the gravity field,” listed in the references, was among the materials distributed in the training at the time. It was through that paper that the relation between Tonic Function and breathing became known to me, and these four pieces are an attempt to render it in my own words.

Three years later, in January 2018, during Phase 2 of the Rolf Movement training, a lecture on Tonic Function came directly from Aline Newton. What she explained at length on the second day was this: the tonus required to stabilize posture is influenced by five factors — tissue, perception, thought and language, meaning and the symbolic, and coordination (see “Rolf Movement Part 2 (3): Confusion in the Best Sense, and On Tonic Function“).

What became apparent there was that Newton reads French, and had learned directly from Hubert Godard himself.

The Tonic Function read as an English paper in 2015 was Godard’s thinking, spoken in French, carried into English by Newton. When these four pieces were written, that route was invisible. Behind the paper lay a step of transposition from French into English, and a person who had done that work. Three years on, the same theory arrived from that person by voice.

When a theory travels across languages, someone has bridged the gap. Reading only what is written, that presence stays out of view.

On the relation between the first session and breathing, an account from the practitioner’s side was written in 2022 (see “Why Breathing Comes First in Organizing the Body — The First Rolfing Session Is ‘Breath'”). Set the four pieces written from the position of learning beside the one written seven years later from the position of teaching, and the same subject shows itself from a different angle.