Breath of Life

In the current environment where restrictions on movements and socialising, repress our need to share interests and concerns with loved ones, we turn inward, the Self seemingly less knowable. In last week’s blog I said evolutionary consciousness is a state of awareness ‘outwardly’ born. I probably left you wondering how to achieve that -I also advised the practice of being PRESENT, as the child is, but it’s easier said than done. So, today I will advise how you can get started -practices easily carried out in any given waking state.

The root to all forms of consciousness is Breath

Dictionary definitions are not helpful, they only refer to air taken in and expelled from the lungs, or given the appellation of life force. Breath is not only a function of forces in lung bearing creatures -it’s a function of forces in all forms of life -yes I did say that, all forms of life. So, what is happening for example in a plant or a mineral? It’s the same process that happens in you. A movement of energy takes place when we breathe causing a reaction of energy movement in the bloodstream and lungs. What follows is a movement of energy that accounts for the energy reaction initially made -in humans we breathe out carbon dioxide. Ultimately we know breathing keeps us alive, directly and indirectly causing the continuation of life in every cell of our body. A plant and a mineral has the same function -the difference is they don’t breathe air as we do, they breathe in terms of energy, seen and unseen. Oh, and by the way, so do we, but we consciously don’t know it

We tend to view breath only as an intake of need, whereas the movement of energy is a causative process that operates from without to within and vice-versa. The efficiency of that process is determined by the body of energy we can call the Self. Plants and minerals do this very efficiently, but like everything else life is qualitative, in accordance to its design, a measure of what it takes to change and evolve. You can say the same about animals -but no you can’t say that about us humans! We are very poor processors. When we breathe wrongly the nervous system maintains a level of unnecessary stress. As a result we get ill from internal mismanagement and shorten our lives. If we breathe correctly our health, both physically and mentally, is much better.

This is how to breathe correctly

Breathe in and out of the gut -that’s what babies naturally do. Observe animals -they also do it naturally. Now -why is that so hard to do? I mean how do you keep it up -do it all the time? You may notice even as you are reading this your thought processes are reacting, whether supportive of this guidance or not, the result of thinking will move the centre of breath intake and expression upward toward the chest. Two things are happening here when you are in thinking mode. The brain in your head in particular the cerebrum, is biased to produce alpha rhythms, i.e. the inward management of thought processes. When this is happening the brain in your gut (oh yes -there is a brain in your gut!) is being suppressed. You probably know the brain in your head represents the largest part of your central nervous system, and the brain stem is regarded by science as the lowest most primitive part of the CNS -it controls basic survival functions such as heart rate, breathing, blood pressure, digestion, taste, hearing, and sight. The stimulus for these functions comes from the spinal cord and the peripheral nervous system. The instinctual mind centre is in the gut from where our breath naturally cycles -if we allow it to operate as our body design intended we maintain good physical and mental health.

The way you breathe directly affects the function of the brain in the head!

Naturally, the breath cycle is a wave like motion -now you may fine tune it by time measures of inward, still, and outward breath, but that’s not essential to get the balance right between the brain in your head and the instinctual brain of the body. When you initially practice wave breathing from the gut you will complain it doesn’t allow you to think -so sitting or standing still is not the right way to get the function back -the right way to re-introduce it, is to walk. When you walk your senses must remain alert for obvious reasons -your thoughts will be focussed on getting from A to B. Just one other thing to do -you need to walk in a balanced way, i.e. with your weight centred between the ball and the heel. If you revert to thinking on other things, or you might say ‘unconsciously walking’, the body balance will shift to your heel, if you are in a hurry and your thoughts are biased to future expectations, their expressions become shortened and pithy in character, and the body balance will shift forward to the ball of the foot.

Give it a try!

Don’t expect perfection. It’s not possible in today’s information pressured world to get this right 24-7, but the more and longer you persist -the better the benefits. The brain in your head becomes more like a processor, which is what it was designed to be, and less like a storage if information and access alternatives. Your energy levels will improve because food requirements are less governed by appetite -are more instinctively managed, and dare I say it you may even look younger as your health improves!

Next week it’s Christmas and I plan to give you a bit of unwritten history of arguably the most influential man who ever lived! The poem I’ve written for today has echoes of breathing….

The Rook

In the stone-hard furrows
of a winter fallow field
head down
pecking the ground
the rook -knows a lean meal
when he sees one.

With a non-stop brain
in the belly unlike you
-‘I’ brain conscious,
his beak keeps pecking
burning calories
getting little and less.

Until slowly
little is no more
and weakness halts him.
Observer and naturalist
take note
the rook has no name.

This bare faced
creation of feather and bone
constant host
of protozoa
is an avatar
not found in your books.

His smallest parts
are self-known
unicellular kingdoms
unbounded by form and time.
He knew that before
his face was feathered.

The half-closed eyes
have no regrets
as he caws
the one last time.
What does
your looking tell you?

Do you suppose learning
comes from observing,
dissecting, magnifying?
Can you rise above sympathy?
If so, why can you not
reveal the mystery?

He caws not for bread
or his mate
long since dead
he caws for his life
that bounds
from his head.

See –now
the wings
no longer lift
the legs do not move.
The order to rest
is final.

Perfect.

Learn from that
if you can.
The rook who didn’t need name
whose belly forever guided his brain
shows you life’s three-fold harmony
how life transforms without pain.

Wheeling as you do
caged between
Earth and Heaven,
what release
does your harmony bring
self-appointed surrogate King?