There are few skills more valuable than learning to breathe properly. And I say that as someone who used to have a terrible way of moving air in and out of myself!
For the last three decades I have routinely offered to teach patients and students how to help themselves with simple breathing exercise. If you are interested, I have recorded some of my methods.
Sadly some people have scant interest in learning. I recently saw a patient with a chronic problem with anxiety. I asked her if anyone had tried to help her to help herself with some breathing techniques. She told me, rather tartly, that I was “talking “Bull ****” and that she just wanted me to give her a “narcotic.”
Oh well, you can’t help everyone.
“Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness: which unites your body to your thoughts. Whenever your mind becomes scattered, use your breath as the means to take hold of your mind again.”
–Thich Nhat Hanh (Vietnamese Buddhist Monk, 1926-)
“The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.”
–Mikhail Baryshnikov (Latvian-born American Ballet Dancer, 1948-)
“Each of us is called from within to stabilize ourselves as co-creative humans, humans capable of accessing the eternal aspect of God and simultaneously awakening to the evolving aspect – humans expressing our God-given creative essence as Spirit-in-action in the world.”
–Barbara Marx Hubbard (American Futurist, Public Speaker and Writer, 1929-)
“We are in the habit of thinking of clothing as something we use to cover ourselves, but in fact there is much more to the matter.
It can be said that the physical body is the clothing of the soul and spirit, that words are the clothing of thought, and so on. Feelings, thoughts and forces have clothes, as do all creatures visible and invisible.
A flower, for example, is a garment in which an entity hides. This is why you must meditate on flowers, on their form, color and fragrance, so that you understand the nature of the beings who wear such clothing.
And it is not only on flowers that you must meditate, but on everything that exists in the different kingdoms of nature: mineral, vegetable, animal and human. A crystal, a diamond, a precious stone – each is a form of clothing, a body in which a spiritual entity has incarnated in order to reveal itself.”
–Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov (Bulgarian Spiritual Master, 1900-1986)
“There are people who so arrange their lives that they feed themselves only on side dishes.”
–José Ortega y Gasset
(Spanish Philosopher, 1883-1956)
“But the important thing is not the finding, it is the seeking, it is the devotion with which one spins the wheel of prayer and scripture, discovering the truth little by little. If this machine gave you the truth immediately, you would not recognize it, because your heart would not have been purified by the long quest.”
–Umberto Eco (Italian Writer and Semiologist, 1932-
)
“When the divine vision is attained, all appear equal; and there remains no distinction of good and bad, or of high and low.”
–Sri Ramakrishna (a.k.a. Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa, Indian Hindu Mystic and Promoter of Universal Religion, 1836-1886)
“Giving transforms Having into Being, and the miracle of giving is that we are giving only to ourselves. This is always the case, and this is the great secret of Life. It is the unfolded mystery of every spiritual tradition.”
–Neale Donald Walsch (American Writer, 1943-)
“Tomorrow’s God: Our Greatest Spiritual Challenge” (Neale Donald Walsch)
“A fact in itself is nothing. It is valuable only for the idea attached to it, or for the proof which it furnishes.”
–Claude Bernard (French Physiologist, 1813-1878)
“Common sense is the knack of seeing things as they are, and doing things as they ought to be done.”
–Josh Billings (a.k.a. Henry Wheeler Shaw, American Humorist, Essayist and Lecturer, 1818-1885)
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