Yes, I know what you think of me, you never shut up, never shut up, never shut up. I took vacations in the stratosphere, you know, it's really hard to hold your breath. Welcome to Never Shut Up, I'm your host Rose Crass. Today is April 8th, 2026, and we are talking about Tori's cover of Growing Up by Bruce Springsteen.
I am so glad she released the cover that she did for Strange Little Girls. How did she sit on that for so long? That's a really bad-ass cover, if you ask me. I love that piano.
So glad that exists. Also glad she did it on tour back in 2005. So let's get into the song. A battle plucky kid from New Jersey, Growing Up, finding their way.
There's some piracy in there, so you can see why Tori was very attracted to covering this particular song by Bruce. But the energy of the song is a lot of energy and holding your own. There's a sense of taking control of your life and taking the control from others. And so one way we control our lives, and yoga, especially our life force, is through the practice of kumbaka.
Kumbaka is breath retention. There are a couple of different variations of breath retention. There is internal retention, and then there is external retention. So for internal retention, we inhale the breath flows in, and then we pause.
And let it be a pause rather than a holding and a squeezing. It's a simple pause listening to your body's call when you need to. We slowly allow the breath to flow out. So that would be an internal retention.
Inhaling slowly through the nose, pausing, and you're pausing past your first impulse to exhale, because that first impulse is a fear-based impulse. Rather, you're sticking with it. When you're ready, slowly release the breath. Take a couple of breaths in and out here, because we're going to move into the external retention of the breath, which is far more challenging.
So we inhale slowly here. Exhale nice and slow. And when you reach the end of your exhale, pause, allowing yourself to sit in a space of no breath. When you need to slowly allow the breath to come back in.
As you continue to practice this, I personally find it easier to have somebody not telling me to do it. So I'll let you continue to practice that external retention while I talk a little bit about it. What we encounter on the external retention is something called a minivacia. A minivacia is the clinging to life.
It's the fear of death, the fear of change. Every time we exhale, we encounter our own fear of death, our own clinging to life, clinging to the way things are. So breath retention is the practice of becoming okay in that space of no breath. I mean, we all know what happens.
You master your inhale when you come into this world. You will spend the rest of your life on this planet mastering your exhale. And it is the very last thing that you will do on this earth is exhale. So learning how to exhale and be in the pause is practice for the long pause, shall we call it?
The long pause. And as the yoga sittras teach us, we cannot fear something that we have not yet experienced. So I encourage you to develop a daily practice of an external breath retention, spending maybe just five minutes working on this practice. You knew before bed, it'll help you calm down, help you go to sleep.
And so with that, I thank you for joining me and Tory for little mental yoga today. Remember five minutes a day, so much better than 60 minutes, once a week. And this is your reminder that our next Ears with Feet book club is April 26th. Yes, that is a Sunday.
It is a non-show day and we will be talking about the book of Oh, can't remember the author right now, but we'll be talking about the book of Oh, you know, little nod to glory of the 80s. Here's a short book. So you can read it quickly and easily and with plenty of time to join us for Sunday morning, Tory Church. Have a great day.
Bye. For more information and links to things mentioned on the show, please visit us online at songsatorianus.com. Yes, I know what you think of me. You never shut up.