Meditation and Breathing

As more and more people meditate, humanity will shift to a higher vibration, and will make the shift from Materialism to Spirituality, just in time to protect the Earth from any more damage. But there are many who, when they try, fail, and suffer from various states of anxiety. Optimal breathing can in many ways be the equivalent of meditation without the risks of anxiety.   

Hi Mike, a long time ago you had mentioned to me that to take breathing further, look at Dr. Peter Litchfield's work.

I'm wondering, in the context of Peter Litchfield's training and your other expertise, how you would define healthy breathing, and how you work with breath without a capnometer? Any guidance there would be appreciated.

Thank you for what you do there.

Peter and I are very different. He cannot lay hands on therefor the mechanics have to elude him. I find that working with mechanics is many many times faster to make significant change but legally Peter and his biofeedback folks cannot do that.There are a few people where you must bypass the physical into the energetic and that's where the capnometer comes in very handy.I don't use it very often but there are cases of rather severe always in your head kind of stuff that it becomes useful and even indispensable. Here is The BPCapnoTrainer and Download Capno BP Order Form.  

With the physical i can put people into deep deep states of calm often in less than 10 minutes. Changing the mechanics so that this sticks longer is the next step via certain self administered and practitioner facilitated my official work, my special techniques and specific exercises over time.

These days what i see out there a lot is a potpourri of choices that may or may not help and most often confuse while parroting other's mistakes. A confused mind does nothing but make the writer seem superior while the student eventually languishes. This is why we created the www.optimalbreathing.com Academy . It is fundamental/foundational self help with careful steps and quizzes one by one to progress at one’s own speed, with me as a backup.As iconic football coach Vince Lombardi used to say “There are no new fundamentals”.

MW

Thank you, it's confusing out there indeed. I will look more closely into the academy.

And what do you mean by balance in that list of healthy breathing?

Also, had bought the optimal breathing kit from you a while ago (few years) and am about to return to it and focus on it a lot more.

What's changed in the mean time? or do you offer discounts for the new packages for those who bought the kit a while ago (as it's on sale now for 184 for all the courses)?

Curious, how would you define 'healthy breathing'?

On Fri, 1 Feb 2019 at 18:27, Mike White <hello@Optimalbreathing.com> wrote:

I ENJOY THESE DIALOGUES BUT I HAVE TO WONDER WHAT IS YOUR GOAL?WHY AM I BEING ASKED T0 TAKE THE TIME TO RESPOND?

EXPLAINING BALANCE MIGHT REQUIRE CONSIDERABLE TIME.I SHOULD HAVE INCLUDED GROUNDED AS WELL.

M

On Sat, Feb 2, 2019 at 6:06 PM Marcus <hiosoy@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks, if it feels it's too much time to respond, don’t worry about it, or if there is somewhere on your site that covers this, please point the way.

My goal in asking is multilayered:

One is to get a better understanding myself as to what constitutes healthy breathing, as there's so much info out there, much of it conflicting or obviously limited, and whatever points towards a more natural, intuitive experience of it, I'm open to, as I'm well aware my breathing can be constricted at times (mostly due to body tension in the lower and mid regions.

And i resonate more with your way of working with natural breathing, than say Peter Litchfield’s as an example, even though I’m glad for the info he’s put out there.

And I’m also well aware breathing is a foundation for so much else.

I have practiced breathing techniques and try to pay close attention to posture and breathing throughout the day, alternating just watching it and lettingit do what it wants, to consciously adjusting how i’m Breathing.

I also facilitate breath work of sorts (in the holotropic, transformational and rebirthing field, though not through those organizations) and am curious of how it can help open up a sustained healthy breathing, as well as in helping continue facilitating open breathing beyond the session. And so I ask these questions help me get a greater sense of what that is (though I know to truly help with the latter, would involve more training in the mechanics.)

The other reason, is that I am also writing articles on breathing for a website I write for (which is not yet online, and you will be referenced in and pointed to for those who want to go deeper or get personal guidance in breathing mechanics)and in writing on healthy breathing, I was try to get as many perspectives as I can to get a sense of what it really is, to reflect on, and to avoid the pitfalls of so many limited perspectives out there and avoid spreading mis-information out there.

For myself, the only clarity I had on defining a healthy breath, is one that is free, adaptive moment to moment and open.

How full, where in the body, chemistry wise etc etc I don't know.

So I thought of asking you, as I do trust your knowledge and perspective more than most out there.

Thanks

On Sat, Feb 2, 2019 at 8:37 PM Mike White <hello@optimalbreathing.com> wrote:

Great answer. I sense good ethics and integrity.

I get so many trying to suck my energy like 18 years ago when the London daily mail or news interviewed me around "breathing"' and two hours of my sharing my perspective. It later turned out it was about Buteyko. In other words they used my strategies and reasons to support a very narrow approach to breathing that was published to 8 million readers.B was removed from the Hale asthma clinic a few years later but since then their practitioners have pretty much used my languaging albeit around a very limited and limiting technique.

Back to balance, grounding and sometimes walking calmly through the gates if hell.The key to breathing is to strengthen the parasympathetic. Our thoughts and fears take us away to SNS. Drugs and their massive negative side effects try to weaken SNS but what is really needed is to strengthen PNS without dulling the senses; to make it a knee-jerk, reflexive automatic response. Years of meditation can do this if one can commit and get through the various blocks to toleration of the various energies that present; terror, trauma or abandonment being a few.The right teacher's guidance at the right timing in the right way can work wonders. But I have met what i call TM zone-outs who very clearly are not really present and too deep inside themselves.Meditation requires training and practice over time and because the somatic/physical body and associative breathing pattern disorders are not addressed in a direct physical way as I believe they could or should be, for too many, achieving deep sustainable peace within takes too long and allows for too many possibilities of getting knocked off course, confused and lost to the healing process. An energetic loose cannon so to speak.

So in that light, using my hands-on techniques, where i force the PNS strengthening, that i also teach in my school, I have taken people to level 10 calm in just a few minutes. Now the person has tasted the "chocolate" of a deepened state of calm and that becomes an internal often full bodied reference point to return to again and again over time.Ii use a Cherokee sign language to describe it "shuuway".

My self help courses endeavor to effect as much of that as possible,as well as full integration of the various parts of the breathing mechanics (high chest, low chest, mid chest, high low mid back, sides, throat, perineum, full 360 degree lower abdomen, grounded, deep easy free and strongly voiced, that all need to be engaged from time to time as the occasion presents itself to maintain that balanced,grounded full bodied breathing regardless of present circumstances. Factors so needed for ongoing health and well being". State of the art Stress management, self expression and self realization if you will.

There are very specific techniques and exercises in my new online courses that address this over time. I approach them as experiments with feedback and quizzes and exams and "how does that feel?. Use the ones that feel best and discard the rest or come back to them over time . Let the wisdom of the body be your guide. Make it a path or process instead of a goal.

Hope this helps

MW

As one of my colleagues would say

Dr. J Michael Wood

8:55 PM (2 hours ago)

to me

“’If you don't teach them to Breathe correctly, they are kidding themselves about reaching the true possibilities of meditation. They are still in the SNS mind, not in the PNS zone where self disappears.

It is a temporary state of "peace" that can't be maintained out of meditation, because they default back to SNS breathing patterns.'

Mike

ANOTHER EXAMPLE.

MEDITATION IS GREAT...BUT

If a fire is burning all around you, is it wiser to put out the fire, or meditate on the fire?  

Fear of danger/fire is often appropriate but FEAR is how we are most easily manipulated.  We forget all about "'fire" preventions and run from the perceived fears.

CORONAVIRUS IS TODAY'S FIRE. 

By only meditating, instead of taking the right action, we allow the "fire starting virus based fear mongers " to continue and control our lives in almost every way; they are training us to willingly walk calmly through the gates of hell.
ALL FOR THE "GOOD OF MANKIND". LMAO😷