Breath is always truthful and at certain times this honesty shows us our fears. I do agree with your premise that breath is undervalued in many of our contemporary yoga asana styles. Perhaps this is because loving and embracing our fullness, including our darkness is anathema to the dualistic and often candy coated notions of our definitions of “positive and negative.” Sitting compassionately with sadness and riding waves of fear as part of an integrated communion with ourselves requires trust in the process of yoga/life. Some of the stuff going on in the pop yoga streams just does not want to reckon with depth.
Here’s a quote I stumbled on last week from someone named Clarice Lespector:
“The world’s continual breathing is what we hear and call silence.”
-this post is by Francine Brungardt.