Hello Everyone,

Welcome to the October 2010 Breath and Breathing Report

First of all, I want to thank Peace Arnold and everyone who took part in the seminar and sessions in New York City, and to announce that we are scheduling more private sessions there November 4th thru 6th; and organizing another seminar on Sunday, November 7th. Contact: Peace at 917-579-1449. Email: rebirthingnyc@gmail.com. 

I'll be driving down to the Baja from San Diego around Nov. 21, and I plan to be on the farm and in the gardens until the end of March. Lot's will be happening at Baja Bio Sana this season. There will be ongoing breathwork training, life skills/healing arts programs, permaculture and community projects, organic farming courses, etc. You are welcome to visit, to study and teach, to work and play!

I am writing to you from Cape Town, South Africa. I've only been here for two weeks, but I have to say that I have fallen in love... for the first time... again! In love with love, in love with life, in love with this work, in love with this beautiful country and the amazing people who live here. I am in love with the sights and sounds, the flavors and scents, the colors and textures, which are so deep and rich and varied here. 

I am in love with the soft and rugged mountains and the spectacular beaches, and the unique mix of cultures and traditions here. People talk funny. And there's an amazing ability, in even the poorest of the poor, to express such spontaneous joy and aliveness! This place is filled with big shining eyes, beautiful bright faces, and light open hearts. 

My hosts Lluwellyn (he's an entrepreneurial consultant) and Rika (she's an Olympic athlete) have been so gracious and so generous with their time, energy, and talents. They've acted as chauffeurs and chefs, technical advisors and tour guides. They've opened their hearts and their home to me, and to Tamara from Toronto (she is doing the month-long tour with me), and to Anne from San Diego (she was here with us for the first 8 days). And all three of us have fallen in love with them!

I did a presentation at the Celebrate Life Festival upon my arrival, and I've done a series of talks, seminars and sessions at a number of different venues with various small groups and audiences in Cape Town. Several times, I've lost myself in the nature here... or in the singing, dancing and drumming. I've seen a lot of Cape Town and the surrounding areas, and have met many men and women, young and old, black and white, rich and poor. 

I visited Kirstenbosch Gardens, Table Mountain, Chapman's Peak, and several of the sandy and rocky beaches here. I went on a short safari, and got up close to some lions, cheetahs, zebras, giraffes, rhinos, hippos, wildebeest, and other critters and creatures. I've enjoyed driving (on the wrong side of the road!) along the coastline, as well as up over around and through the mountain passes and peaks.

Being here has reminded me that everyone of us has learned something that all of us need to remember. Two themes seem to be coming up here for me: humility and community. More and more, something is arising in me; I am feeling it in myself and seeing it in everyone and everything. I call it the "urge to merge." It is an ancient, primal, universal, spiritual call to come home to Oneness and Wholeness.

I had a wonderful experience of this a few days ago when we found ourselves at Mzoli's Meats, experiencing a traditional "braai" (barbecue). We found ourselves in the midst of an informal gathering of more than a thousand people in the township of Gugulethu (In the Xhosa language, that means "grandmothers of ours.")

About five hundred people were packed under the pavilion roof. Everyone else danced and partied in the streets around the place. (We were the only white people in sight, yet we felt completely accepted, at one with everyone in their simple celebration of life!

I was taking in the event, absorbing the experience, opening to all the music, the noise, the laughter and dancing, when four or five women around us began to clap in a unique rhythm with such glee. After a few minutes another small group of people at the other end of the building got caught up in the energy and began to mirror and copy this rhythm. 
It was such a beautiful moment. Everyone's faces lit up like nothing I've ever seen! 

The love was actually flowing like a ribbon of light between the women in our circle, and then weaving its way through the crowd, connecting to another small circle of men and women! Several of the women could not contain their joy. It spread through the room until almost everyone joined in the brief crescendo. In the end, they all shouted and squealed and whistled in celebration of this simple love connection. It felt like religious ecstasy. Yet the holy offering was nothing other than chicken, beef, lamb, pork, and beer! 

There have also been signs of conflict and unrest. We took part in a peace ceremony where a protest was held three weeks ago by a community of squatters who were being forced to move by police who shot rubber bullets into the crowd. Several people lost an eye. And some in the crowd reacted by throwing stones through the windows of a nearby luxury apartment building. We did our ceremony in one of those apartments.

For me, this trip is all about honoring  a movement "toward the one," this inherent desire for oneness, the urge to merge. I am experiencing it as a deep love of life and every form of life. We can experience or witness this urge to merge in the most obvious and direct ways: through intense sexual attraction or a simple handshake, with a hug or momentary eye contact. It is celebrated in marriages, friendships, business partnerships, team efforts, and by dance partners and musical groups. 

It shows when a child wakes up in a strange place and clings to the mother, or when people form a common vision and then work together to realize it... It can be seen when rain falls and is absorbed into the soil, and where a river meets the sea. It's there when lightening strikes a tree, or voices strike a chord, when children take on the ways of their parents, or when a master initiates a disciple. Everything seems to reflect this merging of two or many into one.
 
The clashing of cultures and ideas, the mixing of races, the combining of art and science, the celebration of religious festivals, political rallies, when people join clubs or form  associations and organizations: there it is, the urge to merge! When a lion devours its prey, the two become one. Even war and violence are crude, insane, or immature ways of coming together! This is the nature of love. Everything is love!

In breathwork we merge the inhale with the exhale, we bring together the outer breath which is air and the inner breath which is spirit. We bring together body and mind. With each breath, we take in the energy of the world, of life around us, and it becomes an intimate part of us. When we breathe out, bits of our essence spread out and become part of everyone and everything around us. Conscious Breathing/Spiritual Breathing is a natural way to satisfy this urge to merge.

The breathing groups here (except for the 50 high school students), have been small and intimate. It gives me time and space to accelerate and integrate my own healing, learning and growth process, to nurture my own awakening. And I've had an opportunity to simply be... to sit and walk in an open quiet space of giving and receiving, of watching and flowing with the movements and changes in and around me.

Here you cannot help but notice that so many people live every day of their lives on the basic level of survival. It is sobering to realize how we who are privileged, fortunate, or blessed with so much, can take what we have and how we live for granted. I have to smile when people in America become irritated when they have to wait in line for two minutes at Starbucks for their coffee, when people here have to wait by the road for hours for a bus to their medical appointment.

Most people I know only equate survival to extreme situations, catastrophes, terminal illnesses, wars, plane crashes, etc. But maybe the real survival strategies need to be applied to our customs, lifestyles, attitudes, our everyday thoughts and beliefs, and the mundane activities of life. These things, if they are not in harmony with our source or our essence, can eat away at our life force, and block our awareness of love. 

Yet, we don't normally view these things as threats to our survival. In fact, many of these anti-life, anti-love thoughts and beliefs, attitudes and lifestyles are taught and rewarded, justified, and even glorified by our so called "civilized" society, and popular religions! Why is it so hard for some people to survive in some of these societies? And why is it so difficult for some people to translate their religious beliefs into a practical form of love? 

I am beginning to look at Breathwork in terms of five basic survival principles:

1. Conscious Awareness
2. Breath Control
3. Relaxation
4. Natural Body Positions and Movements.
5. Strong Faith in our Connection to Spirit.

Breathwork requires a zest for self-inquiry. It is a way to connect, harmonize or balance our highest spiritual aspirations and unlimited energies with the everyday real world challenges of life, health, work, and relationships. We use our body as a laboratory. We gauge every situation, shifting and adjusting the breath accordingly. We need to merge our physical actions and our spiritual intentions, without losing touch with the breath.

We use breathwork to draw upon our soul energy to transcend physical limitations. We use breathwork to understand, sense, and control so-called involuntary internal processes. We use breathing to invite pure spirit to express or project itself through our physical body, in a uniquely human way.

Relaxation is a prerequisite to full free breathing. Full free breathing is required for profound relaxation. We need to learn to release unconscious non-functional tension from the body. This extra tension causes us to tire from physical activities more quickly. And it also affects us psychologically, causing us to give up or become confused and ineffective under stress.

Detailed intimate awareness of internal body states is required in breathwork. You can't let go of what you are not conscious of. Deliberate tensing and relaxing of various body parts allows us to sense the difference and to control our body's reactions. Consciously creating local tension while deliberately relaxing the surrounding areas is a key practice; as is relaxing certain local areas while tensing the rest of the body. 

You can even learn to create tension in you nervous system, without producing any obvious muscular tension; and you can develop enough awareness to sense whether or not your nervous system is completely relaxed. Subtle energy breathing together with meditative awareness is the key to developing these skills.

Breathing and relaxation can be disturbed, blocked or obstructed either psychologically or physiologically. Breathing and relaxation are disturbed in reaction to fear, anxiety, or stress. Relaxation and breathing can be disrupted by any sound, movement, sensation, emotion, by anything unusual or unexpected, and even by simple activities. Physical tension, pain, disease, fatigue, bad posture, old injuries, etc. can disrupt the flow of breath and destroy the state of relaxation.

Recently, I have been focusing on "Performance Breathing." That is breathwork for sports, athletic performance, combat, and heavy manual labor. But the basics of performance breathing are not really any different than those of spiritual breathing:

1. Sustain continuous breathing movement no matter what.
2. Maintain detailed total body awareness at all times. 
3 Infuse energy into every cell with every breath.

One aspect of performance breathing is to generate a certain amount of stress, simulating life situations in a safe controlled environment, and then observe and correct any and all dysfunctional reactions. In performance breathing, we work out near the edge of our comfort zone, skill level, or coping ability. And we grow, expand, and evolve from there.

With performance breathwork, we breathe in the nose and out the mouth, and we always lead with the breath. That is, when combining breathing and physical activities, we let the breath move first and then let the physical action follow. We use the breath to pull or push physical motions (just as a locomotive engine acts on a chain of railway cars). 

Use breath sounds to help focus your attention. Certain breath sounds can also help to dissolve blockages and painful areas, to release suppressed energies, or relieve stressed areas of the body.

Don't create pressure or tension in the neck or upper chest when breathing. Be sensitive to the body's moment to moment needs. Allow each inhale and exhale to reach its natural turning point. Don't begin one until the other is complete. Smooth phase transition is the key. Sense the change-over point. Don't cut the breath short, and don't over extend it.

Don't allow a particular phase of breathing (inhale, exhale, pause) to be habitually linked to any particular movement or activity. For example, if you inhale while doing a push-up, make sure to also practice exhaling while doing a push-up. If you always hold your breath when lifting, move the breath when lifting. Don't waste energy. Don't use muscles you don't have to. Maximize relaxation, minimize effort. 

Breath holding can increase your physiological and psychological reserves. It helps to raise your panic threshold, allowing you to stay calm and focused in stressful situations. Learn to tolerate the symptoms of air hunger triggered by breath holding. Gradually increase the amount of time you can relax and comfortably maintain a breathing pause. 

I have been experimenting with running. When I become weak or tired, or feel that I can't continue, I simply change my breathing pattern. If that doesn't work, I inhale thru the nose, pulling the pain, fatigue and weakness out of the muscles with the inhale, and then exhale out my mouth. I also jerk the pain and fatigue out of my muscles with the inhale ("burst breathing") and shoot it back into and thru the muscles with the exhale. 

With no preparation or working up to it, I ran 5k the first time out, and felt only mild muscle soreness the next day. Then, I cut my time down with each of the three successive 5k runs... 

Finally, the most important thing about performance breathing is to have fun! Don't be serious. Enjoy the training and the practice.

Love to all, 
Dan