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.

Hissing Breath

You may occasionally feel too scrambled to begin meditation or subtle breathing exercises immediately. That’s OK. On those truly crazy days it’s best to apply the brakes slowly and ease yourself gradually out of maximum stress into calm.

Let’s explore an INTERMEDIATE exercise that can help you STEP DOWN GRADUALLY from your hectic day. The more scattered you feel, the more important meditation and breathing exercises become to your mind, your body and your spirit.

The Hissing Breath gives you helpful AUDIBLE feedback. Later we will work on a few meditation-in-motion exercises that give you VISUAL feedback. Because you have had a particularly tough day it is especially important that you go about this exercise without pushing or forcing.

1. As always, empty first. Then inhale slowly and easily through your nose. Fill comfortably.
2. Send the air out as you make a long even hissing sound. . . hissssssssssssss. Empty comfortably without forcing. Almost immediately you will feel your systems slow down.
3. Continue as long as you remain focused and comfortable.

Remember that you never allow any discomfort (mind or body) with any breathing exercise. If the really long slow hissing out breath makes you a little light-headed, then try breathing out by making a “shhhhhh” sound. This moves the air out a little more quickly.

Be well. Breathe beautifully.

The Body’s Shock Absorbers

Mother Nature showed her usual creative brilliance when she gave you three incredibly strong but lightweight bony cages that house:

1. The brain, hearing and visual equipment
2. The heart and lungs and
3. The baby-basket.

Bone is porous so it’s relatively light and, when broken, has the capability of mending itself stronger than ever. However, your body must have resilience and “give” as well as stability and strength. Nature has to keep your heart and lungs functioning constantly even when a 240-pound guard tackles you or when you fall out of the cherry tree or when you take a jolting step off a ladder.

If Nature hadn’t made our bony cages flexible, we would be a pile of bone bits the first time we were rear-ended. Notice that our feet are arched, that our spine is a long soft “spring” made up of gentle curves, that the forward end of each rib turns into tough elastic cartilage and that the bony spinal vertebrae are separated by plump squishy disks. Still, step off that ladder carefully.

Be well. Breathe beautifully.

Cherish Silence

If you never insist on quiet time alone, if you allow your senses to be constantly bombarded, if you mindlessly parrot the thoughts and actions and styles of others, if you become addicted to the crashing din of daily life, you will never discover the person you are or what you need or what you have to give. You will swirl around in a cultural backwash without the ability to chart your own course . . . . ever. Technology is an amazing gift but let it be your slave and not your master.

You are an original unique creation and not simply a faded copy of others. The more time you devote to exploring the music of your breathing, the more time you meditate, the more quiet time you schedule, the greater your awareness will be of who you are. Don’t live as a stranger to yourself.

Schedule time each week without talking, without listening to radio or watching television. Yup. No IPod. Your inner spirit will never raise its voice. If you are very very quiet, you may learn to listen. As Baba Ram Dass said, “The quieter you become, the more you hear.”

Be well. Breathe beautifully.

Protect Yourself From Colds And Flu: Lesson Four

OK. The first three were easy. Four is more difficult. Unfortunately, it is also the most important. Fortunately, it is the last colds-and-flu lesson for now. Washing your hands often and correctly, touching shared stuff cautiously, using magic goo each time you exit a public place – all smart moves.

However, unless you scrub your hands (that includes cuticles and under your nails and under rings with a brush) every single time you touch a thing or a person, then you still won’t be as safe as you deserve to be. Remember, you may still pick up a cold or the flu from an airborne bug but we are aiming for AFAP – As Few As Possible!

LESSON FOUR (drum roll, please):

Unless you are at your very own clean sink (it is clean, right?) then DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT TOUCHING YOUR FACE FROM LATE OCTOBER UNTIL EARLY MARCH! No rubbing eyes, no itching ears, no gnawing nails, and the NOSE. Oy. The nose!

Your nose, in particular is off limits until spring. See? I said it was difficult. You will, as an added bonus, appear more confident, calm, and even more attractive when you give up the nervous fiddling-with-face syndrome. You can do it.

Be well. Breathe beautifully.

Protect Yourself From Colds & Flu: Lesson One
Protect Yourself From Colds & Flu: Lesson Two
Protect Yourself From Colds & Flu: Lesson Three

Resting Your Eyes: The Stepping Exercise

Only recently has man begun to stare at one small area, hour after hour. At work, it is the computer screen; at home it is video games and the television. The focus is narrow, the distance is fixed and the light is artificial and unrelated to Nature’s light cues.

For most of human history, we have been nomads or farmers. Our eyes evolved in such a way as to meet the demands and insure the survival of wanderers and gatherers and hunters. Early man constantly scanned his surroundings, near and far, high and low, left and right. Could he spot dinner and avoid becoming dinner? Could he spot a bit of grass on the horizon that could mean water? While our eyes cannot adapt and change in just a few centuries we can compensate and minimize the modern fatigue.

Stepping is a simple exercise that fixes on a focal point and holds that focus for one complete breath cycle (in-pause-out-pause). Remember that a “pause” is natural and never forced.

1. Focus on a specific point within arm’s length. Hold that focus for one breath cycle.
2. Focus on the upper corner of the room you are in for one breath cycle. Really focus.
3. Focus on a point as far away as possible. Hold that focus for one slow breath cycle.
4. Now step your focus in reverse – far to middle-distance to near. Repeat near to middle-distance to far. Repeat as long as you are comfortable.

Be well. Breathe beautifully.