The Importance of Conscious Breathing In Creating Health

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INTRODUCTION

Breathing (or respiration) occupies a very distinctive place in life. It is probably the most familiar manifestation of the ebb and flow of the pulse of life. We know that animate life forms (human, animal and insect) breathe. But inanimate life forms (e.g. plants) also breathe and even minerals are known to "respire".

Breathing is innate and instinctual. We don't have to learn how to breathe. We come into the world already doing it. (Did you know that even fetuses are known to breathe amniotic fluid while in utero?) From the very first breath of air that heralds our arrival here on Earth to the last one that signals our passing from this lifetime, breathing is life itself. The need to breathe is the most immediate of our bodily needs, even before hunger. In this way it is also our very first, conscious awareness of the duality of life and death in our lives.

In human terms, we commonly think of breathing as as a way of taking in air and oxygen and expelling carbon dioxide. But the importance of breathing in our lives and in our development goes much further than just this physiological exchange of gases. Breathing is, in many ways, the foundation for establishing and maintaining all health. It is what allows health to happen.

But not all breathing is equal. Despite the fact that we come into the world breathing as we are meant to breathe, for most of us, it soon becomes something very different. We begin interfering with our innate capacity to breathe properly from the time of very early childhood. We quickly learn to regulate, modulate and sometimes even stop our breathing. Why? Because controlling the breath is one of the most effective ways of controlling how much we feel. Stop breathing even for just a few seconds and you will have effectively begun to numb yourself to your inner experiences.

As such, the type of breathing that is so important to health is not this commonly shallow and attenuated kind. It is something different, which I refer to as "conscious breathing".

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A Sobering Perspective On Wealth

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I recently came across a series of informational charts and tables highlighting some interesting details about economic divisions in the Unites States in a blog posting entitled It's The Inequality, Stupid. One of these charts displayed in simple graphical terms the differences between the public's perception of what the distribution of wealth in the U.S. is, what the public thinks it should be and what it actually is. Another one of these charts shows how the distribution of wealth has changed over time. (If you have not already seen the article, I urge you to visit the website and take a look.)

In a nutshell, what these graphs show is the age-old axiom that the rich get richer, the poor get poorer and the middle class gets squeezed. In one sense, nothing we haven't heard or read many times before.

But what makes these and the other graphs in the posting so compelling is how they collectively reveal the extent of the economic disparity. The rich are not just richer. They are A LOT richer, with 10% of the population holding more than 80% of the wealth. And they continue getting richer at a disproportionately faster pace both in absolute terms and relative to the rest of the population. It is a mind-boggling accumulation of wealth that, given the limited nature of the world's resources, can only come at the expense of the rest of the population.

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The Parable of the Cracked Pot

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One of the most daunting challenges of embracing a spiritual path is the willingness to accept reality as it is. Whether it is referred to as surrender, letting go, non-judgment, non-attachment or just plain acceptance, the willingness to take in the experience of life as it is (i.e. “thy will be done”) is one of the highest expressions of self-mastery and the foundation of all spiritual practice. Only through such acceptance can we quiet the mind and move beyond the polarity of our judgments of right and wrong to make contact with the fundamental goodness that is the deeper nature of all of creation.

Yet, every day of our lives, we find ourselves fighting -- in both subtle and not so subtle ways -- against life’s circumstances in a never-ending battle to cajole, negotiate, force, manipulate, coax and mold the circumstances of our lives into what we want them to be. From the fleeting annoyance of spilt milk, to the frustration of traffic that impedes our movement, to the injurious reluctance to forgive, whether it is the anger-fueled jab directed at the world around us or the more brooding seething that we inflict on ourselves, our daily lives are filled with both large and small examples of the ego’s judgments of what is right and wrong and its demands that it be “my will, NOT yours!”

While  such ego-created conflict ultimately does not serve us, it is easy to see why it happens. It is a paradox of our existence as individuals that although our consciousness forms the center of our life, life does not in fact revolve around us. As we look out on the world, our individual perspective is just one reflection in an infinite number of reflections through which the universe comes to know itself. As such, we can never truly understand the ultimate meaning of what happens in our lives or grasp the interconnectedness of all of its elements. We forget that we are only ever catching glimpses, but never “the big picture”.

But every now and then, something happens to remind us of “the big picture” and of how we don’t see everything there is to see. I recently received just such a reminder from a friend in the form of the following parable. In its simple wisdom, it made a deep impact on me and remains a reminder to me to be gentle with myself and with those with whom I come into contact.

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Why We Need Privacy In The Internet Age

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Introduction

Facebook - the ubiquitous social networking website - has been causing quite a stir lately with an on-going series of changes to its default privacy settings that make certain of its users' information more public.


As an occasional and somewhat reluctant user of Facebook, my reaction to these changes has been decidedly negative - I do not like them. Sensing that my reaction was more than just a basic desire for privacy, I wondered if there was more to the issue of privacy than mere personal preference. Curious, I began reflecting  more deeply into the fundamental nature of privacy and its role in our lives.

What I came to see is that privacy is about much more than just the satisfaction of a personal preference or desire. Privacy is ultimately a basic human need. Through the relationship between privacy and vulnerability, privacy plays an important role not only in creating intimacy in relationship but in the discovery and realization of our true self.

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Moments of Recognition

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There are many blessings that my healing work brings to me. And one of the most unexpectedly moving of these is the experience of seeing myself reflected in the stories shared by my clients.

Whether the story takes the form of an actual account told in words or an honest emotion conveyed wordlessly through the eyes, something deeply touching happens when I, as listener, recognize something of my own story -- the hopes, the yearnings, the struggles, the fears -- expressed through the essence of the other’s story. In that moment, a boundary that seemed to separate me from the other dissolves and I can’t help but feel a sense of oneness and connectedness.

These moments of recognition - of seeing ourselves reflected in the other - have a powerful ability to transform and heal us. By reminding us of our shared humanity, they draw us out of the isolation and alienation of our ego’s self-centeredness and into the richness of relatedness and of knowing that we are not alone. In the process, something in us is healed.

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