All life that came before us depended on senses to navigate their particular place in the world, their physical survival actually depending upon it. As this connection deepens, and in some cases returns, our direct experience of life in the moment expands.
Simply taking one full breath floods our sense of smell with scent as nasal passages are stimulated.
Increases visual depth and acuity as oxygen stimulates our visual receptors.
Creates a soft sound that reminds us we are alive.
Expands ribcage, back and belly massaging the organs and moving the fluids within.
Increases sensitivity to touch as the breath moves in and out.
Stimulating appetite to “taste” more of life, enhancing aliveness…
Inspiring New Possibilities, Living From the Soul of Life While Co-creating Well Being of Body, Being, Heart and Planet….One Breath At A Time
Soul Musings is a 31-day practice for the month of December immersed in deep listening to what is emerging and unfolding day by day. Eight sentences with occasional resources to explore more deeply.
Each post, invited by Soul, allows the words to emerge unscathed from prior planning, editing, or censorship. Dwelling in uncertainty and dipping a toe into mystery this union of words is an attempt to resonate within an innate way of Being…. returning “home”.
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“Breathing is one of the simplest things in the world. When we breathe with real freedom, we neither grasp for or hold on to the breath. ” Donna Farhi from The Breathing Book
Though we are coming closer to Winter this picture displays the pure joy that we have all felt in putting our nose close to the new life that is arising from the ground at the first hints of Spring. As this young child bends down to savor that experience there are many things that are happening at once.
She is totally immersed in the Scent of Life with feet planted on the earth bowing down with the innocence of surrender to explore what will meet her as she inhales. This gesture is innate and reminds us of the deep connection that we have with the Earth…and ourselves….through the sense of smell.
The sense of smell is vital to our enjoyment of so many things and is the most primal of our senses. Many species depend on this sense for survival. For humans we have substituted so many “artificial” or chemical scents that many have forgotten what it is like to connect deeply with the natural smells that surround us – pleasant and not so. We have shielded ourselves from feeling the fullness of life within the connection to the natural world, other species and humans.
Have you ever smelled something and a flood of memories or even an instinctive urge to take an action pour forth? Whether it was an aftershave or perfume that a beloved person wore, freshly mowed grass, fresh buttered popcorn, a favorite flower, a negative ion ocean breeze, pine trees in the forest……or the smell of decay, waste or a certain chemical like ether that you had when your tonsils were removed as a young child a long time ago.
For those that are “mouth breathers” there is a multitude of life giving experiences that are being missed not the least of which is an exquisite sense of taste. “Seventy to seventy-five percent of what we perceive as taste actually comes from our sense of smell. Taste buds allow us to perceive only bitter, salty, sweet, and sour flavors. It’s the odor molecules from food that give us most of our taste sensation.
When you put food in your mouth, odor molecules from that food travel through the passage between your nose and mouth to olfactory receptor cells at the top of your nasal cavity, just beneath the brain and behind the bridge of the nose. If mucus in your nasal passages becomes too thick, air and odor molecules can’t reach your olfactory receptor cells.
Thus, your brain receives no signal identifying the odor, and everything you eat tastes much the same. You can feel the texture and temperature of the food, but no messengers can tell your brain. The odor molecules remain trapped in your mouth. The pathway has been blocked off to those powerful perceivers of smell–the olfactory bulbs.”
Thus, the nose is meant to be used for breathing for so many reasons and as you can see it directly affects our sense of taste. As you inhale the nose prepares the air to be the right temperature and humidity for the lungs and dust, bacteria and and other tiny particles are removed before the air even reaches the lungs.
A full diaphragmatic breath through the nose inflates all lobes of the lungs giving you more life energy, massaging internal organs, stimulating lymph and vascular flow…… opening the way to fully experiencing this exquisitely choreographed dance between smell and taste.
Fully engaging with our senses of smell and taste through breathing fully offers us the lusciousness and fullness of embodied life. Join me in the Scent of Life……
Gaye Abbott, RYT assists individuals to open energetic pathways for vibrant aliveness and full expression by removing the blocks that cover our natural innate blueprint, while addressing concerns through the opening of possibility. This is accomplished through a combination of Jin Shin Jyutsu, breath repatterning, yoga therapy and targeted guidance/mentoring revealing the larger purpose and co-creative expression that we are here for.
For those interested in receiving private sessions please contact Gaye at: JoyfulGaye@NaturalPassages.com. Travel to your location in the U.S. or globally is available. Please inquire. Skype: gaye.abbott
“Are you breathing just a little and calling it life?” Mary Oliver
“If you try to comprehend air before breathing it, you will die.” Mark Nepo in The Book of Awakening
Following this quote by Mark Nepo is a very brief story about a Hindu sage centuries ago. “One day in the morning of their morning prayers, the sage suddenly rose and ushered his students away from the monastery. He rushed about them and shooed them like little ducks back into life, proclaiming, “The day is to be experienced, not understood!”
Every activity in life is an act of making divine and sacred love. What could be more sensual than simply breathing?! …and as Mary Oliver questions how fully are you really breathing/living!!
We arise in love with every inhale we take as we receive into our bodies the lover of breath. Without conscious awareness we open ourselves to receive this gift and then complete the circle as we exhale back out giving to other life forms around us. The trees and plants embrace our carbon dioxide and give back to us the oxygen that we crave. Interconnected.
Sensuality is completely enjoying and fully appreciating what the senses give to us in any given moment. If breath was your lover it would be so much more enjoyable to allow it to be all that it is meant to be so that it could make love to you. Not a technique or an understanding of breaths anatomy and physiology, but pure unadulterated pleasure and acceptance in feeling the breath move in and out.
You can hear breath moving in and out, but cannot see breath. I sometimes wonder if we could see breath what it would look like – the pure energy of love itself? No one knows exactly what causes the heart to beat or how that first air breath is ignited when we are born into this world. All we know is that at first it feels something foreign to our being having come from a watery world…and then we experience the kiss of breath and are never the same again.
Our bodies undulate – open and then surrender – with each breath we take if we have welcomed the fullness of breath into our being. Our voice can be heard by others and our songs can tenderly touch the parts of us that are yearning to dance. This is not something that we try to comprehend. We are simply and sensuously breathing.
Deeply within our blueprint lies the part of us that accepts simply being breathed…a metaphor for life lived in alignment with the creative force that resides within. One can know this place in any moment….slippery dolphin touch teaching you to embody the movement and sensuality of breath, dark earth and evergreen smells as reminders of where you have come from, wind sounds wrapping themselves around like the finest of silky garments, tastes of air across palate, slithering past the fine hairs that line your nasal passages, lying with another and joining breath as if weaving a fine art piece, lustily laughing a series of exhales which then welcomes the in breath with open arms.
How could you ever go back to taking breath for granted? It enlivens, paints, sculpts, expands, awakens and enhances your life with every inhale and exhale, cherishing you as no other can.
Will you cherish breath and experience the sensuality of life? Re-member…..you innately know how!
With life’s “hits” we often become static, fixed and rigid, wrongly thinking that these states will protect us from whatever is “out to get us” in our day to day living.
Instead we can be knocked over quite easily and incur even greater trauma when in these non-fluid states.
The amount of water in the human body ranges from 50-75%. The average adult human body is 50-65% water, averaging around 57-60%. The percentage of water in infants is much higher, typically around 75-78% water, dropping to 65% by one year of age.
To add to that according to H.H. Mitchell, Journal of Biological Chemistry 158, the brain and heart are composed of 73% water, and the lungs are about 83% water. The skin contains 64% water, and even the bones are watery: 31%
We can’t ignore the fact that water makes up more of who we are than other elements and considering that we came from a watery home while inside of our mother it seems curious why we outright deny that we are in fact fluid and liquid in nature.
There is nothing more directly noticeable than the breath when we are not in a fluid state in our bodies, thoughts, emotions and how we express in the world. Our breath is hung up in the upper most part of our chests, and secondary breathing muscles (in neck, shoulders and upper chest) compete to see who can become the most contracted in their efforts to breathe us.
When we are breathing effortlessly from our primary breathing muscles (diaphragm, intercostals between the ribs, and abdomen)- or being breathed as I like to say – our bodies feel supple, fluid and flexible and our expression in the world comes from a deeply relaxed place of trust and confidence. Imagine a wave of breath washing through you. There is no way to be fixed, contracted or rigid in that!
If you really want to feel liquid and fluid I would suggest swimming with dolphins in the wild. This was a peak life experience I was privileged to have several years ago. One can’t help but feel the sensuous nature of being free, playful and lovingly liquid as when swimming with these amazing creatures. For moments in time you feel that you could breathe under water too! Perhaps we all did at some time in our ancient past!
A FEW TIPS FOR EASEFUL FLUID BREATHING:
* Be aware when the breath becomes shallow and you feel tension in your neck, face, upper chest and shoulders. Take a breath break!
* Breathe with your primary breathing muscles: diaphragm, intercostals between the ribs, and abdominal muscles. (by the way holding tight in your abdominal muscles or wearing unforgiving tight clothing constricts the breath unnecessarily)
* Imagine a wave of breath moving through you and washing all of the tension away.
* Smile and laugh often and watch the fluidity come back into your being!
* Dance with abandon and move from all parts of your body. Celebrate the body you have been given!
* Join with another and breathe together. Watch as your breath eases and lets go as your rhythm comes into synchronization with theirs. Surrender is the name of the game.
* Imagine yourself safely in a water environment floating and being completely held and supported.
* Bring attention to your second chakra (right below the naval) and place your hands there with great love as you consciously breathe for a few minutes. Watch your abdomen soften with the attention.
*Commune with the Earth and frequent Nature often!
* Go swim with dolphins!
There is a way of breathing
That is a shame and a suffocation.
And there is another kind of breath,
A love breath,
Which opens you infinitely.
—Rumi
My recent offering of a class called Decrease Anxiety, Indulge Inner Peace has been an awakening on many levels. Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the United States affecting 40 million adults age 18 and older. That equals 18.9% of the U.S. population and doesn’t even include those under 18.
Shallow constricted breathing is one aspect of the emotional posture of anxiety. Our entire system turns acidic with this type of breathing, our secondary breathing muscles in the neck, shoulders and upper chest become tight and contracted, and the stress response is activated over and over again.
Did you know that the average person reaches peak respiratory function and lung capacity in their mid-20’s As they continue to age they lose between 9%-25% of respiratory capacity for every decade of life. The findings resulting from a 5,000 person clinical study group observed over a 30 year span showed that the way a person breathes is the primary measure of potential life span. (Framingham study). This tells me that we can change the decline in respiratory function by breathing more fully as often as possible and potentially decrease anxiety!
“For breath is life, and if you breathe well you will live long on Earth” Sanskrit
That full diaphragmatic breath that was so easy when we were infants somehow became distorted and contracted as we learned over the years that is was often not safe to be completely ourselves. This “shut down” on so many levels is perhaps the core reason why there is so much shallow breathing and anxiety these days.
In addition, the minds default for survival always seems to go to the past and to the future to supposedly protect us from making the same mistakes or creating new ones. We resist the fact that everything changes. It is the moment to moment experience of life NOW that somehow gets lost in the fray!
A key to opening back to what Deepak Chopra calls “deep harmony of body, mind and Spirit that was yours at birth” is a full unrestricted breath…one after another. Is our goal to always breathe in this way? Well, perhaps intention is a better word here for if we can be aware of our breathing throughout the day, and at least start and end our day with at least 5 minutes of conscious breathing practice, our body will start to remember what it was like to be that open and unrestricted. Our hearts will celebrate as they are massaged by the diaphragm and open to love, and our minds will once again remind us of the capacity for wholeness and interconnection.
We won’t always be able to breathe this fully, but at least we can have the intention. It takes practice and a willingness to live the moment. Here is a mantra that you might want to use in your daily breath practice:
On the inhale silently say to yourself “alive” and on the exhale “now”. Then rest in the “pause” before the inhale naturally comes back in again. The moment is a gift of awareness. This also can be a great “break” during a very busy day when you realize that you are forgetting to breathe, or in the midst of emotional, mental, or physical stress.
As Dennis Lewis says in the last of The Ten Secrets of Authentic Breathing, “Remember you are a breathing being, alive right now and here. Let yourself feel the mystery and the miracle of your breath and your life as often as you can.”
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