breathing
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practicing breath

1. This site encourages "practicing breath" as a constant awareness in your life. Make a commitment to conscious intentional breathing at all times and places. Breathing, when practiced with active acceptance, dynamic relaxation, and creative intention, can become a way of feeling alive in every moment.

2. The practice consists of a series of 18 breathing exercises that will step-by-step build your breathing skills. It is recommended that you do each exercise at least three times before moving on to the next.

3. You may wish to practice breathing in a more meditative pose. At such times, take care that your back remains relatively straight (remembering that the back has natural curves). If seated, move your buttocks to the outer edge of the seat, away from the chair back, since the backs of most chairs encourage slumping. If sitting cross-legged on the floor, try placing a small pillow beneath your buttocks. If lying down, it can help to elevate the knees.

4. Touching the tip of your tongue to the roof of your mouth enhances an important inward flow of energy.

5. Chronic contracted breathing narrows the range of both inhale and exhale. If you never fully exhale, then you have no room in your lungs for a full inhale. If you never fully inhale, then the overall capacity of your respiratory system (including lungs, diaphragm, rib cage and all of the connecting muscles of the region) diminishes. You eventually become structurally unable to take a complete breath, no matter how hard you try.

6. We use the hushing breath (sssshhhh. . . .) to affect a full exhale. By "sounding out" the breath until empty, you create the space for a full, vigorous, body-initiated inhale. Continuing practice gradually expands the respiratory system toward full capacity. Both inhaling and exhaling will become longer, deeper, and slower, even as the immediate feeling of breathing ranges from quiet pleasure to tingling joy.

7. In the beginning, use the hushing breath throughout your day and as often as circumstances allow. Especially notice those people and situations that tend to inhibit your breathing. Come awake at such times, remembering breath, moving energy, and feeling acceptance. Do a few long slow hushing breaths to set the pattern of full release leading to full reception.

8. After sufficient time and practice, you will have retrained your breathing to a fuller, more feeling, and more life-enhancing pattern. You will mostly breathe in and out through your nose, in accordance with the body's design. You can always do a few hushing breaths whenever you feel yourself contracting.

 

All these symptoms appear and disappear in a matter of minutes. All one has to do is maintain connected breathing. . . . These symptoms are caused by past thoughts and feelings. A symptom is the manifestation of an old negative thought in your body so that you can release it through your breath. All symptoms are the cure in process. A negative thought, formerly suppressed, is trying to get out. It is much better to go through a few minutes of symptoms and breathe it out than it is to have those negative thoughts suppressed and causing negative mental mass (disease). The symptoms are rarely very painful unless you start making them real. All they really are is thoughts that you can change. Most people, in fact, think of these dramatic psychophysical memory phenomena as interesting and even fun. The symptom is a real body sensation, but a continued breathing rhythm causes it to disappear in a few minutes. Your breath and spirit releases the symptom from your mind and body, and you feel free and clear.

Celebration of Breath
Leonard Orr

It is the primary role of the physician, whether the African witch doctor or the modern doctor, to entertain the patient while secretly waiting for nature to heal the disease.

Dr. Albert Schweitzer

Prana is not the same thing as oxygen. Oxygen is carried to the cells of the body by the red blood corpuscles. Prana travels through the body in subtle energy channels, known as nadis. The main vessels of the flow of prana are the well known acupuncture meridians, but every cell of your body that is alive is nourished by the subtle channels of prana.

Prana can be likened to electricity. Negative current flows to a light bulb, the free electrons are converted to light and the positive current flows back to the source. Similarly, prana travels to the cells of the body and nourishes them and apana flows back to the source.

Rebirthing
Jim Leonard and Phil Laut

By stimulating and directing positive, joyous feelings we can change the essence of our inner patterns and experience. When positive or joyous feelings and attitudes pass through each organ and circulate throughout our whole system, our physical and chemical energies are transformed and balanced. In other words, [we have the opportunity to recreate our bodies through positive energy.

Gesture of Balance
Tarthang Tulku

Have you ever thought to wonder to yourself what orgasm is? I’ll bet you never said to yourself, `Why, it’s a spontaneous, reflexive re-distribution of energy.’ At least I hope not. But orgasm is a spontaneous, reflexive re-distribution of energy; and, because it is, orgasm is not limited to genital release, nor to sexual contact as a stimulus. It means that sneezes can be orgasmic. It means that the tension you collect between your shoulder blades can release orgasmically. It means that, whenever you have extra energy collected somewhere and you’re willing to simply surrender to the tendency of that energy to move, you can allow yourself orgasm.

The Lover Within
Julie Henderson

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