In the ten years since I started this blog I have never written about the importance of breathing. I don't even have a category for it.
I'm thinking about it now because I've started exercises in longevity breathing. I've decided that I'm going to follow Bruce Frantzis's energy arts program step by step. There may be something to his theory that westerners need a different program than asians. There are basic building blocks that we don't have, which Asians take for granted. One of them is attention to the gut and the importance of breathing, our intestines and in general the belly and lower part of the body. Our culture takes this ability for granted, rarely considering how and why we lose our capacity as we age. We place a lot of emphasis on aerobic exercise to improve oxygen assimilation. But we can do more by simply training in expanding the diaphragm in a way that is natural and progressive.
I'm training this month in deep, expansive breathing and already I can feel the difference in my chi. My plan for the next few months, even half a year, is to stabilize this energy. Six months of simply breathing and opening the are of my gut.
When I started, I believed that the goal I needed to change was six months of standing outside at dawn. Maybe the goal needs to be simpler and smaller. Six months of resting in my gut awareness.
Like Dan Harris says, if that makes me only 10% happier than I am, that's a pretty good return.
