I'm noticing an analogous dimension of connection or disconnection: words can be disconnected from their original energy in the same way that the breath can become disconnected. Thus not only breathing exercises can be "forced, overly mental, and irrelevant," but words become exactly that too. That description sums up, for example, most people's experience of the Bible (and my experience of the Bible, most of the time). But once the breath comes online, then there's life. So too with the words. Connect the words to the original energy and they suddenly gain a substance that moves us powerfully.
They asked each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?" (Luke 24:32)