Breathing for Life A healing, empowering meditation
Our breath is our life.
This meditation involves concentrating on the breath, in a particular way. We breathe all the time, but usually don't pay attention. By taking charge of breathing, we can take charge of our thoughts, emotions, choices.
It's easy to do. You can do it any time, anywhere, for one breath or for an hour. It will energize you, calm you, clear your mind, fill you with confidence. A good meditation for those who seek to align themselves with the deity of love and justice and peace.
Step I- power breathing
You need to know a bit of anatomy. When you breathe through your nose, most of the air goes, of course, down the back of your throat into the larynx and thence to the lungs. A bit of the oxygen, however, can travel along the olfactory nerves (smell nerves) through the cribriform plate (a piece of bone full of tiny holes through which the smell nerves pass to reach the brain), directly to the frontal lobe of the brain. This oxygen feeds the brain cells directly, not even traveling through the blood stream.
When you take a breath that goes to the top of your nasal passage – you'll feel the coolness near the bridge of your nose- you are sending oxygen to the frontal lobe of your brain. This is the master lobe, which plans, initiates, monitors your actions. You are feeding the higher functions of your brain with oxygen, fanning the flames, as it were.
A Seneca friend tells me his people call it "power breathing".
This is why incense is used as an aid to prayer and meditation.
This is why creativity is also called "in-spiration"- breathing in.
Step 2- Attitude of gratitude
The word "spirit" means breath. Our breath is our life.
We did not make ourselves. There is an intelligence, a Creator, which set off the Big Bang, and made the laws of gravity and e=mc2, and started life, and made the laws of evolution, and us. The Creator also makes consciousness.
Another word for God is Great Spirit, Great Breath; or Holy Spirit, Holy Breath. Our breath is our life. Life is a gift from the Creator of all beings, all life. We should be thankful.
As we power breathe, if we take the oxygen into our frontal lobes with an attitude of gratitude to the Giver of life, we put ourselves in a frame of mind to receive in-spiration.
Enjoy the fresh air sweeping the cobwebs from your brain.
Carol S. Wolman, MD is a psychiatrist in Northern California. A lifelong peace activist, she is helping to distribute a Peace Plan for the Holy Land- email her for a copy.
As the Green candidate for Congress in California District 1 in '08, she (more...)
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