Category: Breathing For Health

Our Earth Breathes – We Can Help Her!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JViFugTtNQ

“Breathing in, I know I am breathing in.  Breathing out, I know that I am breathing out”, is a beloved saying of Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn.  As the video shows above, we are not alone in the act of respiration.  Our Earth that sustains and feeds us is breathing as well.  The question could be asked, what are we feeding her??

The Institute of Hearth Math who has done many years of scientific research on the power of the heart to inform our actions, feelings and thoughts believes that we should ask this question.  The passage below from their most recent newsletter addresses this question:

What Are You Feeding the Field?
This Earth Day, we all can pause to assess what our emotions are contributing to our environment, how we are feeding the field environment. This goes beyond conserving and respecting Earth’s resources. Everyone must ask, “What am I feeding the field?”Personal experience tells us when we are angry, inhospitable and uncaring, we affect not only ourselves, but also those around us. Consider how one unkind, thoughtless or angry person affects a roomful of people; the feeling of discomfort and negative energy is noticeable. Conversely, have you ever felt the change a room’s atmosphere undergoes upon the entrance of a vibrant, cheerful or positive person?What if people around the world intentionally experienced sincere love, care, compassion and other positive emotions simultaneously and fed this positive energy into the global field environment?This question led to an experiment, and after nearly five years, more than 40,000 members of the resulting Global Coherence Initiative, with members in 87 countries, regularly feed positive energy and heart-focused care and intention into the planetary field environment.Collectively, we create a field that interacts with the Earth’s magnetic field and energetic systems. As people intentionally send coherent love and care to the world, a more powerful heart-filled environment is created. This helps to build a reservoir of positive energy that benefits the planet. This reservoir can then be utilized to help bring balance and stabilization to people, thereby making it easier to find solutions to problems like climate change, the destruction of the rain forests and other global issues.There is more to this phenomenon than the feeling you get. HeartMath researchers repeatedly have categorized real mental and physical changes study participants undergo when they experience positive and negative emotions. HeartMath and other research shows that focusing on core heart-felt emotions can enhance one’s connection with others, and that this connection extends far beyond the individual.The research article Coherence: Bridging Personal, Social, and Global Health concludes that being responsible for and increasing our personal coherence are not only reflected in improved personal health and happiness but also feed into and are reflected in a global field environment. ” Institute of Heart Math**************************************

As we breathe from a place informed by our heart our breath opens and becomes more fluid and easeful.  We then change the environment of this “global field”….thus making better decisions for the health of our planet, which is essentially intimately connected to our own health.  Remember on this 2012 Earth Day celebration………EVERY DAY IS EARTH DAY!

www.ResonanceWithLife.com

OTHER BLOGS BY GAYE ABBOTT:

www.NaturalWealthJournal.com
www.WildlyFreeWoman.com

Give Us This Day Our Daily Breath Preview and Reviews can be found here:
http://resonancewithlife.com/daily-breath-book/

See new review by Richard Miller, Ph.D!!!

 

Belly Love and Body Image

In a recent post by Melissa Geiger called Reclaiming The Wisdom of Your Belly   she talks about the power that is located in this part of your body.  Our modern culture has us not only being ashamed of our abdomens, but also doing everything we can do to hold it in so that we will supposedly “look better”, or fit the cultural standards that have evolved from who knows where.  This applies to males as well as females.

The fact of the matter is, if we hold our bellies in trying to achieve something that our natural body does not want to conform to then we can NEVER get a full embodied breath, nor expand that lower portion of our lungs.  With belly held tight the breath inhabits upper chest and shoulders resulting in perpetually tight neck, shoulders, upper back and jaw.  No wonder we continuously need massages to help relieve these chronically tight muscles!

To help us in our decision to have a renewed loving relationship with our bellies here are a few things to remember (from Melissa Geiger/link above):

The Power of Your Belly

*In other cultures around the world, the belly is honored as the center of our physical & spiritual power.

*The Japanese word for belly is hara, and they use this word as a description of a person’s character. A “person with belly” (hara no aru hito) refers to someone who is calm, centered, warm-hearted and wise. Developing your hara is synonymous with developing maturity & integrity.

*On a physiological level, your belly is home to your Enteric Nervous System (ENS), which is often called “our second brain.”

*Psychological stress has an immediate impact on your digestive system. Chronic stress often leads to chronic digestive issues.

*60-70% of your immune system is located in your digestive system.

*Our digestive health has a direct effect on our daily sense of well-being.

*Diets that are high in sugar, fat & processed foods make your belly an environment where pathogenic bacteria, viruses & cancer cells can thrive.

*Eating raw & living plant-based foods bring more oxygen into your belly. Oxygen helps to create an environment where healthy cells thrive and unhealthy cells get crowded out.

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Many of us hold stress and tension in the area of our bellies, and the extra weight which is often gained there as we age adds to our refusal to simply love and accept this part of our body.  Breathing Spaces has talked about relating with the breath as if it was your lover.  What if you treated your belly just as mindfully?

Place your hands there and feel the warmth of energy that flows in as you bring loving thoughts and feelings through your hands into your belly.  In stressful times take time to move from this part of your body, rest your nurturing hands there, allow the belly to softly expand outwards as you inhale releasing any held tension, use your favorite massage oil to increase circulation and promote lymphatic flow, or simply be mindfully present to this powerful center and breathe.

After all Buddha had a belly!

WEBSITE:  www.ResonanceWithLife.com

OTHER BLOGS BY GAYE ABBOTT: 

www.NaturalWealthJournal.com
www.WildlyFreeWoman.com

Give Us This Day Our Daily Breath Preview and Reviews can be found here:
http://resonancewithlife.com/daily-breath-book/

Give Us This Day Our Daily Breath Available Now!

Happy Birth-Day to the long awaited book that has many of your favorite posts from BreathingSpaces within the pages!!  My heart is wide open as I deliver this book into your hands, hearts and souls.  My deepest wish is that this book will be of service to those who read it and that it will encourage pauses in life to simply be with the breath and the sacredness of this life we have been given.

Here is some advance praise as well as links where you can purchase one of three options – Downloadable with beautiful formatting and the ability to print out each week’s focus for a daily reminder; e-book for Kindle, iPad, etc; and soft cover spiral bound to place in your library as a treasured resource.  For a SNEAK PREVIEW go to: http://resonancewithlife.com/daily-breath-book/ or the Our Daily Breath tab on this blog.

A Road-Map to Living an Inspired Life!

Richard Cawte, Ph.D.

That says it all.

Life has become so hectic for so many of us, with so many things to do every day (and never enough time to do them!). In Give us this Day our Daily Breath, Gaye Abbott gives us a clear, easy-to-follow guide that helps us find places of calmness and deep ease from which the day can emerge in a fresh, vibrant way.

We tend to pay attention to peripheral things in our lives and yet so often the very thing that sustains us – the act of breathing – is something we barely pause to consider. What I love about this book is that it brings the act of breathing to the forefront, allowing the reader to explore his or her relationship with the world through the breath itself. It’s an inspired piece of writing, flowing from the heart.  

Giving us weekly practices is a stroke of genius, because it makes it easy for the reader to experiment and adopt new ways of breathing bit-by-bit. That’s why I love the book so much. It’s more than just a book. It’s a road-map to living an in-spired life, a step-by-step manual that invites us to align ourselves with the rhythms of the natural world – and then shows us how.  

Life throws up many challenges, but as Gaye says: “the breath is a tool to anchor you. Allow it to be the constant thread around which you weave your life.” Wonderful advice.

Truly a book to read, delight, rest and reflect in!

Richard Cawte, Ph.D., International Business & Author of the Natural Wealth Course, www.ResonanceWithLife.com

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Give Us This Day Our Daily Breath is a wise, graceful, kind and gently humorous guide to awakening more fully through weekly explorations of breath.
 
By relating the natural breathing rhythms to the cycle of the seasons, Gaye Abbott invites readers to reconnect with a sense of being at home on Earth and in our bodies. This fresh perspective combines with personal story and observation to offer valuable new insight into the healing and transformational power of breathing.
 

Lea Bayles, M.A., transformational coach, speaker and author, creator of the Replenish Your Soul series of guided meditations lea@leabayles.com,  www.leabayles.com

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Give Us this Day our Daily Breath is a wonderful book born from Gaye Abbott’s decades-long practice of yoga, meditation, awareness, mindfulness and joy, celebrating the breath each and every day like the gift and prayer that it is.   Inspirational, creative, healing and practical, Gaye offers insights, exercises and easy-to-follow practices that allow us to fully appreciate and embody this act of breathing and all it contains. Gaye writes, “When we come together with another life form, we share the breath in the air that surrounds us. We take of the same breath, so to speak. Down through the millennia this has continued. In fact, we are breathing and sharing the recycled air of the dinosaurs, the very first humans, the dolphins, and the trees…In many of the classes, workshops and retreats, I often have people sit back to back and feel their own breath first, then connect with the breath rhythm of the other without attempting to change theirs. Almost everyone noticed, in a short period of time, that the breath would synchronize and become one. 

Perhaps it was always one to begin with. Through this interconnected basic biological process we can feel each other, and with acute knowing understand what is within the other – even if we do not consciously acknowledge it. What if each one of us joined another – or others – in sharing a peaceful breath rhythm. Would the world change?” 

Yes it would, and with Gaye as our guide, it is bound to. And what a joyful and transformational journey it will be. Thank you Gaye for giving us this day our daily breath and reminding us of the incredible beauty, grace and power of this thing called breath that we too often take for granted!

Leza Lowitz, #1 bestselling Author of Yoga Heart: Lines on the Six Perfections www.lezalowitz.com

OFFERINGS: Downloadable (Instant PDF Download Below) with beautiful formatting and the ability to print out each week’s focus for a daily reminder OR through LuLu – e-book (EPub/iPad, Nook, Kindle etc); and soft cover spiral bound or regular soft bound to place in your library as a treasured resource!

PDF Instant Download – $9.97

E-book & Soft Cover Spiral Bound Versions

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Ebook : – http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/daily-breath-ebook/18852025
Regular bound soft cover: – http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/our-daily-breath—paperback/18852066
Spiral/coil bound soft cover :-  http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/our-daily-breath—coil-bound/18852103

Take A Deep Breath and Smell the Moment!

Dear friends of mine are living in Bali Indonesia for a 9 month exploration not only of a simpler life, but of the senses.  In a Facebook video Vicki created she made the comment, we are learning to “take a deep breath and smell the moment”.  This lead me to share with you a chapter below from my book “Give Us This Day Our Daily Breath“ ,which will be released later on this month.  Enjoy smelling into your moments this week!!

WEEK #31: 

The senses of taste and smell are so intimately connected that without the scent of the orange or the unfurling rose filling the next inhale the taste buds and senses would not open the doorway to pleasure.  Take a deep breath and smell the moment!

Let’s focus on the nose and mouth for a bit this week.  The air moving through your nasal passages, carrying the smell of food along with it, is enhanced by chewing. Taste buds then blossom out to extend beyond the salty, sour, sweet and bitter and inhabit entirely new territories of savory pleasure.

Researchers say 75-80 percent of the flavors we taste come from what we smell. Humans can recognize 10,000 different odors, yet no two people sense anything the same.  Animals of course have an even sharper sense of smell.

We also orient through our sense of smell, and oftentimes are triggered by certain scents which bring past memories and associations to the forefront.  This sense is much more powerful than something that has been simply seen or heard.

We have all had the experience of smelling something and a person comes to mind, or an incident that involved something emotional or of a feeling nature…..or even a reaction to a scent that activates fear or excitement for it has been associated with something dangerous or advantageous to our survival or well being.

When we take a deep breath through our nose (which was made for it by the way) air is sucked up into our nostrils over bony ridges called turbinates, which add more surface area for the smells that waft through our nostrils.

Most of us have done the experiment of holding our noses and chewing something resulting in almost no sense of taste – certainly not expanded taste.

When we change to breathing through our noses, the sense of taste roars back in and we can experience our food and our surroundings with pleasure, which then stimulates the digestive system and our overall enjoyment of the moment.

Try walking through a forest or along the seashore without the sense of smell.  Maybe try breathing through the mouth instead as an experiment.  Would it be as pleasurable or as life enhancing?

It appears that there is more than one reason why breathing through the mouth decreases our aliveness and enjoyment of life.  Mouth breathers often hyperventilate and only the upper lobes of the lungs are inflated.  This causes muscle tension in the shoulders, neck, head and face and stimulates that “fight or flight” sympathetic nervous system once again.

The nose however, contains tiny hair like protrusions called cilia that warm and filter the air in a rhythmical wave like motion.  The entire lung, including the lower lobes, is inflated and this in turn connects to the parasympathetic nervous system which clams the body, slows the heart rate, relaxes and soothes – and of course stimulates the olfactory nerve – or the sense of smell.

When we take full and deep breaths through our nostrils we enhance the pleasure in, and enjoyment of, our lives.  See how many smells you can identify this week and allow your taste and sensual life buds to open up wide! (Copyright 2011/Gaye Abbott)

Quotes of the Week:

“Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains.” ~Diane Ackerman

“Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived.”  ~Helen Keller

WEBSITE:  www.ResonanceWithLife.com

OTHER BLOGS BY GAYE ABBOTT: 

www.NaturalWealthJournal.com
www.WildlyFreeWoman.com

Breathing and Balance

Recently I was taken by the insight that being in balance is not a state to cling to.  We all know that when we are “out of balance” in our lives that it can affect many things in our body, mind and emotions.  However, I question whether that is because we are “attached” to being “in balance”?  The better question might be, do we have something to learn in the territory of imbalance?

We are told by culture, our parents, and our ever-present egos that we must “maintain” and not be taken over by feeling or emotion, get angry, be sick or out of sorts, be different, or go too far from mid-line.  The fact of the matter is that we will always go in and out of balance.  It is part of being alive as a human being, just as natural as our inhale and exhales from moment to moment.

An opportunity to explore within a yoga class the concept of moving from balance to imbalance for an entire 90 minutes brought for me great awareness on how the control of ego gets in the way of a full breath.  The breath was the barometer that informed me whether I was attached or not, which translates to whether my ego was invested in being in balance or not.

It was transparently simple!  Every time my ego became involved in maintaining “balance” – in this case within yoga poses – the results were predictable.  Struggle, effort, and breath holding or significantly diminished breath.

The most surprising result of attachment to whether I was in balance or out of balance – and we were given multiple attempts for both experiences – was that when I completely let go of what state I was in I felt more grounded and rooted and my breath was full.  In other words, balance became innately easy and falling out of balance had no ego centered judgement attached to it.  In fact falling out of balance was fun and became just another “dance step” in life.

What happened with the breath?  Every single time I was attached to a certain outcome my breath diminished, was held, or stopped all together.  With surrender to whatever was happening in the moment it all became a part of living life and savoring whatever experience unfolded itself as free of self judgement as possible.  In fact, my balance improved within letting go of the resistance to falling out of balance!

We often are so busy living life ahead of ourselves.  A diminished, held or shallow breath will clue you in to this very pattern.  Even something as simple as leaning forward when you stand or walk affects the quality of your breath.  Watch and learn!

Be willing to learn from the places of imbalance in your life and remember these 3 things:  (Courtesy of Keith Kachtick, Dharma Yoga, Austin, Texas)

*Release attachment to being in balance.
*Surrender to gravity
*Root down into the Earth as if your breath was digging deeply down into the ground

From this place – no matter what happens in your life – you will find that the breath remains full and rooted to your Source.  A state of being to return to over and over again.  Allow yourself to play with the imbalance and marry it to balance.  What a delightful dance that is!

WEBSITE:

www.IgniteWealthNow.com

OTHER BLOGS BY GAYE ABBOTT:

www.NaturalWealthJournal.com
www.WildlyFreeWoman.com