The Blind Nose

Advertisers have done a terrific job convincing the public that laundry, carpets and draperies cannot possibly be clean unless they reek with a company’s cheap perfume. Repeat anything long enough and consumers will believe it.

Pity your poor nose because it is bombarded every hour of every day with heavily scented capert cleaner, room freshener, furniture polish, scented toilet paper, kitty litter, hand soap, perfume, after-shave, deodorant, hair spray, foot powder, moth balls, candles and always – the laundry. Your pulmonary system was not designed for any of this and will eventually be on overload.

This is not 17th century France where perfume was designed and refined to mask horrific odors that would curdle our modern senses. Remember your nose goes “blind” a few seconds after you splash on that half-cup of after-shave. You quickly lose any sense of how you smell but others do not.

A great purple cloud of fragrance that continues to hover around you is rarely appreciated and can trigger allergies in defenseless bystanders, especially young children. It is easy to offend the pulmonary senses of friends and co-workers who never complain for fear of hurting your feelings. Ask a friend if they think you need to cut back a bit.

Scent is not a sin. Nor should it become a mindless indulgence. Another person should be able to register your particular fragrance only when they are close enough to hug you. We wish you many hugs.

Be well. Breathe beautifully.

The Elastic Cage

Although your bony ribcage serves you well as chest armor, taken alone this assembly of bones is unable to draw in or release a single breath. To turn this bone-vessel into a breathing-machine, Nature first lays down two layers of muscle (the intercostals) that crisscross each other between adjacent ribs. One layer helps with inhalation and the other with exhalation.

In addition to the intercostals between the ribs, the multiple-muscled diaphragm stretches like a complex, elastic floor across the bottom of the cage, and serves as the most powerful and important breathing tool you have. Now your bony cage, with its strategically placed muscles, has become a powerful pump, able to move air in and out of your body, on command.

The elusive muscle floor of the diaphragm attaches around the bottom rim of the ribcage, and to the waist-level lumbar spine at the rear. This big diaphragm serves simultaneously as the elastic floor of your ribcage, and the elastic ceiling of your abdominal cage.

The constant rising and flattening action of this powerful sheath as it pumps the air in and out, gently massages the heart and lungs as it rises, and in turn, the stomach, liver, spleen and intestines as it flattens down. Absolutely amazing! We won’t spend much time with anatomy but you will be well served to have some understanding and control of your main breathing muscles.

Be well. Breathe beautifully.

Sandwich Muscles I
Upside Down Breathing

Chronic Stress: When Good Systems Go Bad

CHRONIC STRESS is a huge, spiky, scaly, drooling monster that lurks in the shadows, waiting to drop a whoop-ass load of damage onto your physical, emotional and intellectual self. You are designed to manage short bursts of stress quite easily but you are simply not designed to carry that load 24/7.

The Stress Monster thrives not so much on circumstances AROUND YOU but on the habits and attitudes WITHIN YOU. Stress loves to make you old too soon and sick too often.

Simply put, we poison ourselves with our own stress chemistry.

Hiked up adrenaline reactive behavior is an essential part of our survival but turning it on unnecessarily or forgetting to turn it off can be more dangerous than the original threat. GET THROUGH IT AND GET OVER IT.

Anticipate the situations that trigger anger, worry and fear. Prepare for them IN ADVANCE. Always keep a couple of favorite relaxing breathing exercises in your hip pocket and defuse this sucker before it kills you!

Be well. Breathe beautifully.