Say Yes to the Breath

Did you know that when we are at rest, we average about 16 breaths per minute. This means we breathe about 960 breaths an hour, 23,040 breaths a day, 8,409,600 a year. 

Also, do you know we eliminate MOST of our body’s wastes not through our large intestine, but through our lungs. A hefty 70% of our body’s waste are eliminated through the exhale and the other 30% of our body’s wastes are eliminated through feces, urine, and sweat.

Breathing, for the most part, is an unconscious process, yet it is one we can adjust, modify and refine. Breathing responds and adjusts according to the thoughts we are thinking, the things we are feeling and sensing, and what we are seeing and experiencing. Breathing is intimately connected to our physical and emotional state and vice versa. Our breath may be used as an indicator of our feelings, and our feelings may be used an indicator of our breath. This means that if we change how we breathe we can change how we feel. For thousands of years the ancients have expressed the importance and power of the breath.

 “… breath as ‘pneuma’ is also the spirit or soul. We live in an ocean of air like fish in a body of water. If we inhibit our breathing we isolate ourselves from the medium in which we exist. In all Oriental and mystic philosophies, the breath holds the secret to the highest bliss.”

~ Alexander Lowen, The Voice of the Body

 In a beautiful “Conscious Living, Conscious Loving” workshop with power couple Kathlyn & Gay Hendricks we learned a new breathing exercise that we feel you must experience! We found the breathe reminiscent of the cranial sacral wave and a beautiful way to bring even more ease and flow into our everyday practice. This breath exercise reminds us that breathing is not just for the lungs, but breathing is for the whole body, mind, and heart.

Check out this video demo of what they call the “Yes Breath” and Enjoy!

(Scroll down to see the Yes Breath)