ANNOUNCEMENT!! I invite you to go to the Natural Wealth website to see a Sneak Preview of my upcoming book: Give Us This Day Our Daily Breath expected out in e-book and soft cover by 12/1/11!! Got to right hand column and click on Be Breathed – Our Daily Breath.
Would love your feedback as the book is not quite finished yet…and your comments would be most welcome! Also check out the video that took me so many takes….and laugh along with me.
REMEMBER – Laughter is a series of exhales expressed with uninhibited joy!
Thank you for taking the time to take a peak at the Sneak!
To my faithful readership – there has been a reason for a lapse in current posts. Not for want of interest in the breath, but instead because the breath is taking me to new levels within my own life.
There are two projects that have my attention and that I am breathing into. One is a book on the breath that I will publish before the end of the year, and the other is a newly launched website with my dear friend and business partner Richard Cawte in the UK.
In reference to the former you shall have notification and a sneak preview within a month or so. For the website please feel free to go to: IgniteWealthNow and explore, contribute, and make comments.
One of the pages on the website called Inspire/Connect/Enrich begins with a video that I wish to share here. When we breathe, see, feel and listen to our lives from deep within our heart and soul something amazing happens. We live our lives and perceive life itself differently.
When we are in gratitude, in the presence of beauty, moved by a persons words, focused on a project or cause that has great meaning for us, or dwelling in our creative imagination our breath expands. We lengthen up through our spine and the heart has more space to open.
More and more of us are awakening to our purpose here in this lifetime and how we breathe is reflective of this movement from the deepest part of our being. It is not always easy in our over stimulated lives to capture the essence of what is really important., nor do we always know how to take the next step.
However, the breath is ever moving and always renewing itself. Take inspiration from the breath and direction from your heart. All will unfold from there.
Do take some moments to watch this video presentation by Louie Schwartzberg below, and join Do As One on the Fall Equinox, 9/23, by breathing together with others across the globe to usher in the change of seasons.
Breathing Spaces is blessed to have a global readership which brings new perspectives on the breath to my attention. I was most fortunate to connect with a Danish “psychomotor therapist” by the name of Siff L. E. Skovenborg just a month ago.
Siff shared with me that Denmark has a high level education training program completely centered on a humanistic approach to movement, breath, and body awareness. Of course I was intrigued and asked if she would write an article for BreathingSpaces.
Below you will find her article. I invite you to dialog with Siff either via a comment here, or directly to her e-mail below.
Breathing In A Danish Psychomotor View
By Siff L. E. Skovenborg – psychomotor therapist
Being a therapist and teacher of psychomotricity in Denmark, working with breath and breathing patterns has for years been a special interest for me. Psychomotricity is a therapy with roots in phenomenology and body therapy (Reich and Lowen) as well as anatomy and physiology. The tradition however goes further back than that. The Danish psychomotoric tradition started in the 1930’s and sprung from dance, performance and gymnastics into a manual treatment therapy. The focus has always been to balance the work of the muscles and to increase the awareness of the body so that the bodily impulses could spring more freely and expressively. In that way the view of the body has roots in the humanistic approach.
The body is viewed as a totality – there’s no real division between mind and matter – only when we focus the attention to one dimension it seems to be a difference in expression. The same goes for the breath. The way we breathe is the way we live. Holding or controlling breath is holding or controlling the life we lead. Breathing solely in the belly or the chest is avoiding contact or relation to the emotions or sensations in these areas.
Still there are two ways for the breath to function: autonomic or voluntary. Voluntary is when you control the breath either to increase the expanse or to decrease or even stop breathing for a shorter or longer period. Still we breathe when sleeping, when being unaware or in need for more air for instance when exercising. However the controlled breathing can become a pattern that affects the autonomic function. Doing breathing exercises or being afraid of being in touch with emotional responses can limit where the breath goes, how much air we breathe in or out and how the muscles that make the breathing happen works.
So the work of a psychomotoric therapist is to open for the breathing space and for more autonomic control, so that you get a free, diverse breathing that regulates itself according to the situation. In order to do so, we have different approaches depending on the client’s history and resources (bodily/mentally and socially).
If a client that has learned a controlled breath for example in yoga classes and believes that a belly breath is the only right way to breathe. Here the therapist can choose to educate the client about the physiology of breathing and the autonomic function. If the client has the possibility of viewing a small baby in his or her sleep the variety of breathing can be seen and understood. Then exercises to learn to let the breath control itself can be relevant. Jacques Dropsy author of ‘The Well-Tuned Body’ describes such exercises, that we also use in psychomotricity.
Another example could be a client who is afraid to be in touch with emotions, you need to teach the client to deal with emotions first. We do that by letting the client describe the bodily sensations in a matter of a fact way. What is a matter of fact is the heart beating, the sweat, the pulse, the muscle tension, the breath. If the client tends to talk from the emotions or the mind, the therapist keeps helping the client back to a descriptive approach. When this approach succeeds, the client experiences that the emotion or sensation lingers off. Gradually he experiences mastery of being in the present with the sensation without changing it willingly or forcefully. When this is learned we can start working directly or indirectly with breath.
As a psychomotoric therapist we tend to begin the work with the breath indirectly, as the direct approach can make the client too aware of the breath to let it work automatically. Indirect work is for example manually or through exercises which increase the elasticity of connective tissue around the body, or by doing exercises that demand more oxygen and therefore forces the body to take deeper or stronger breaths. Direct work is breathing exercises, manual treatment on primary or secondary breathing muscles, or breathing awareness. When working directly with breath we almost always return to exercises that help the client to return to autonomic breathing.
Which approaches the therapist chooses, depends on the type of client. Every client is met on his or her own terms and the therapist always strives to engage the client to investigate the bodily/emotional/mental phenomenon together.
For more information you are welcome to contact me at sisk@ucc.dk or post@kropsliv.dk
“There are moments of insight when ancient truths do stand out more vividly, and one senses anew his relationship to the earth and to all life. Such moments are worth waiting for, and when they come in some unheralded instant of knowing, they are of the purest gold.”
— Sigurd Olson
The ocean was never more than 5 blocks away growing up and in my first years was just over a short wall to the beach with
Mission Beach, San Diego, California
waves beckoning to a young child to come and play. Given this you will understand why today I was so strongly drawn to the ocean that nothing could keep me away.
A 50 minute drive had me in direct proximity with the smell of salt air, the sound of waves rolling, and gulls sounding off in the air. Even though the sun was hidden there were many children, adults, and dogs celebrating the gifts of being near to the sea (and in it!).
When our senses are evoked by nature, feelings of love, a burst of creativity, tantalizing smells, pleasing sounds, luscious tastes, or the tender touch of a hand – our breath responds.
When I left my home my breath was shallow and constricted. After arriving at the beach and walking along the shore with lower legs caressed by salt water my breath became full and expanded.
What is it that connects our senses with the breath? Perhaps it is the “essensual” connection with that which we are created from – our home inside on the deepest cellular level. When our senses are filled – our breath is full.
Spending countless hours sitting in front of computers/electronics, watching television for some, and hooked into sedentary lifestyles and mind games we have forgotten that we even have a full array of senses that can give us unending pleasure, ignite our life dreams, and connect us to the whole of all that is around and within us.
What would it be like if today you took a “senses break”. In other words choose one of your senses – nose/smell; eyes/visual; ears/hearing; skin/touch – kinesthetic; or tongue/taste. I invite you to take a 15 minute “sense break” and completely focus in with that particular sense.
What is your experience? Has your breath changed as you allow your one sense to be the connector moment to moment? Now see if you can focus into the moment with all 5 senses and notice how the breath may change.
All life that came before us depended upon senses to navigate their particular place in the world. Their survival actually depended upon it. How might we bring back a deeper connection with our senses…and thus with our breath? As this connection deepens, and in some cases returns, our direct experience of life in the moment expands.
In return, our full embodied breath can also ignite our senses. Just taking one full breath activates the nasal passages/smell as we bring more air into and out of our body; increases visual depth and acuity as oxygen stimulates our visual receptors; creates a soft sound that tells us “we are alive and breathing”; expands our chest, ribcage, back and belly, massages organs and the lymphatic/circulatory systems, and causes increased sensitivity to touch as the breath moves in and out; and stimulates appetite to “taste” more of life as we increase our aliveness with a full breath.
What is holding you back from using your senses more to feel, hear, taste, touch and see? Don’t miss huge parts of your life! As Jon Kabat-Zin, Ph.D says in the video below: “Pay attention in an open-hearted way to the full range of your capacities and resources.”
Breathe it in!!
Sense Mindfulness with Thich Nhat Hanh (a favorite person and teacher!) – Stop running and pay attention to the now with all of your senses…..
Let it ferment and season you As few human Or even divine ingredients can.
Something missing in my heart tonight Has made my eyes so soft, My voice So tender,
My need of God Absolutely Clear.
by Shams al-Din Hafiz
Within solitude is found the deepest expression of our heart and soul….and it is here that we know ourselves as the fabric woven by God.
Being alone seems different from seeking solitude. The first happens spontaneously most every day of our lives either physically, or in an emotional state of being.
The second occurs when we mindfully seek out a space within and without for reflection and deep inner rest – a refuge if you will within the state of loneliness. Hafiz speaks of the state of loneliness as a rich source of communion with God/or source, and asks that we not discard or run away from it, but allow it to ferment.
Breathing within this state of solitude takes on new and expanded dimensions as our focus shifts from external concerns and stimuli to watching the breath take form and shape moment to moment. We may come face to face with the patterns of breathing that block us from vibrant life, or perhaps we watch as the small shallow breath drops softly down into the belly and brings us back to why we are here – back to our dreams and captive creative longings that can often be just a backdrop in the fabric of our lives.
In this place of solitude place your hands on your belly now and feel the warmth melt the hard protectiveness into a soft receptacle for the breath. Allow this soft belly breath to remind your ribcage and chest to expand in all directions. Watch, wait – even for just a moment in the life that stretches out before you – and know that it is now in this place of solitude that gifts are to be found. Do not struggle. Open the gate and walk barefoot on the soft path before you. Be still…..and allow yourself to be breathed.
BREATHING SPACES 