And yet, caught up in our frantic schedules, work, family, and yes, even personal growth activities, so many of us forget to simply breathe.

When we do slow down and notice our breath, life changes. We get calmer, our minds clear, we feel more connected to ourselves, a higher power, and to the people we love. Many of us experience a deep sense of “oneness” that radiates out from within and into the world.

That’s why I’m excited to invite you to The Breathwork Summit – a FREE 4-day virtual event, January 31st – February 3rd, dedicated to harnessing the power of your breath for healing yourself and transforming our world.

I’ll be speaking at the Summit along with world-class breathwork pioneers such as Gay Hendricks, Stan Grof, Jack Kornfield, Sondra Ray, Leonard Orr, Dr. Dan Siegel and many other experts and visionaries.

Learn more and sign up for free here

Join us, learn to consciously breathe and experience these benefits in your life:

–Relieve stress and feel calmer in your mind and body
–Unblock and resolve painful, energy-draining emotions, trauma and conflicts
–Sharpen your mind
–Connect more strongly to your life force
–Increase your capacity for joy, peace and love
–Experience deep, permanent healing on a cellular level
–Open the door to becoming a more vibrant, loving, creative and responsible being – a true agent of change

Sign up for free here

P.S. When you learn to consciously breathe, you’re then able to show up more fully as a force for positive change in the world.

Join me for The Breathwork Summit and spread the word!

Co-Sponsors:
The Shift Network, The Shift Movie, MaestroConference, Transformations School of Integrative Psychology, International Breathwork Training Alliance.

My Facebook author page now has more than 5500 fans.

I hope you will join us today!

Now comes a book, called “Earthing,” with a deep understanding of at least some of what is meant when we refer to the energy of the earth, along with simple tools that make it possible to practice grounding both inside and outside your home or office, when you are unable to stand or walk or move or lie directly on the earth with bare skin (which is paramount). Simply expressed, these tools can be described as extension cords to the energy of the earth.

Here’s what a renowned cardiologist has to say about Earthing: “I regard Earthing as the greatest health breakthrough in all my years in medical practice. Regular grounding (another name for Earthing) restores the body’s natural electrical state, calms the nervous system, reduces inflammation, and improves circulation. No pill on Earth can do what Mother Earth does!”–Stephen Sinatra, M.D.

Rather than go into more detail here, I recommend that you visit the website and download a free audio of the entire book.

To do so click on Earthing or on the image to the left, then click on Earthing Audio “Listen Now,” and then download the MP3 files. When you visit the website, be sure to read some of the amazing research on “Earthing” that has already been done and learn some of the many ways that earthing might be able to help you.

Visit Earthing today!

Dennis Lewis

For many hundreds of years the Taoists have spoken of the importance of the “belly brain,” or “little brain,” in health, healing, and self-transformation. It may have taken a while, but according to an article by Sandra Blakeslee in the Medical Science section of the New York Times (January 22, 1996), western scientists finally “discovered” that the gut does indeed have its own brain, referred to as the enteric nervous system, which “is located in sheaths of tissue lining the esophagus, stomach, small intestine, and colon. Considered a single entity, it is a network of neurons, neurotransmitters and proteins that zap messages between neurons, support cells like those found in the brain proper and a complex circuitry that enables it to act independently, learn, remember, and, as the saying goes, produce gut feelings.”

The Taoists believe that the gut brain processes not just food but also emotions and other experiences, and that paying attention to this brain, learning to sense it and listen to it, can have an enormous beneficial impact on our lives. And I have certainly found this to be the case.

Those of us who are able to sense our bodies in an impartial way know that a lot of our fear, anger, anxiety, and other negative emotions are stored or at least reflected in the gut. And we know that the gut brain is intimately involved in communication between mind and body. Though it’s important eventually to be able to sense our gut, our belly, in the midst of action and stress, it’s helpful to start by practicing in quiet circumstances.

Getting in Touch with the Gut Brain

I’ve been writing about and teaching this powerful work with the gut since 1994, both through Chi Nei Tsang (internal organ chi massage) and through my work with natural breathing. You can work with a more-complete form of this practice by visiting my belly breathing blog of February 20th, 2009. You can also find much more material in my books.

Next time you have a “gut feeling” about something, just tune in to your belly and how it moves as you breathe. This simple act of attention will reveal far more about your situation than you might imagine.

Copyright 2010 by Dennis Lewis

The Harmony of Mindful Breathing

Yogis, qigong practitioners, meditators, and alternative health practitioners have known for many years that conscious, natural breathing can help reduce stress, increase relaxation, and facilitate healing. In her groundbreaking book Molecules of Emotion, neuroscientist Candace Pert lends scientific support to this view when she tells us that bringing our attention to our breathing during meditation brings many such benefits. According to Pert, mindful breathing helps us “enter the mind-body conversation without judgments or opinions, releasing peptide molecules from the hindbrain to regulate breathing while unifying all systems.”

In a phone conversation I had with her on May 9, 1995, Pert pointed out that the part of the brain that controls breathing is located at the fourth ventrical of the floor of the brain. This is the same location the secretes many neuropeptides, which, among other actions, modulate our feelings, which, of course, have an enormous influence on almost every aspect of how we function.

What is important to take from these physiological facts is that the way we breathe can have a powerful influence on the relationship between mind, emotions, and body. If our breathing is disharmonious, for example, the relationships between these functions will also be disharmonious, resulting in poor communication between them and little sense of real wholeness.

A big help in improving communication, harmony, between these functions is to practice following, being present to, your breathing. In this practice, you simply use your inner attention to follow, to sense, your inhalations, exhalations, and any natural pauses between for several breaths. When sensing your breathing, it is important not to attempt to manipulate it or control it in any way. Any effort to do so, especially an effort driven by your thoughts or emotions, will most likely bring or exacerbate disharmony.

If you really wish to reduce stress, increase relaxation, and improve communication between thinking, feeling, and sensing, one approach is to sit quietly each day for at least 15 minutes in touch with the whole sensation of your body, including the subtle inner and outer movements of your breath. Sit on a chair or cushion with your eyes closed and your hands either together in your lap or palms down on your knees. Sense your weight being supported by the earth, and allow the entire sensation of your body to come alive inside your awareness.

Once your mind and body become very quiet and you are in touch with the overall sensation of your body, pay particular attention for several breaths first to the air entering and leaving your nose, noticing the warmth or coolness of the air. Then gradually (and progressively) expand your attention to include the movement of air into and out of  not only your nose, but also your throat, trachea, and lungs. Sense how the air feels as it moves through the airways and notice any “electric charges” as the air intimately touches the tissues through which it moves.

As you undertake this practice, be careful not to analyze or judge anything you notice about your breathing. Just watch, sense, and feel your breath as it manifests throughout your body. This will help balance your energies and bring your body, mind, and feelings into a more intimate and harmonious relationship.

Copyright 2010 by Dennis Lewis

Free Your Breath, Free your Life

The way we breathe, of course, is often a revealing metaphor for our willingness or ability to experience what is actually going on inside ourselves and to move freely through and within our lives and ourselves. For some of us, for example, our restricted, superficial breathing is our unconscious way of suppressing our emotions, of feeling less. Opening up the restrictions in our breathing can help us open up the experiential spaces of our own minds and bodies and learn how to live in the full expanse of the present moment. It is in the spacious reality of the present moment that real exploration, healing, and wholeness can take place.

To live from more of the whole of ourselves is only possible, I believe, when we can fully exhale, when we can let go of everything that is truly unnecessary in our lives. We’re not just talking about a physical act here; we’re also talking about a psychological and spiritual one as well. Can I let go, moment-by-moment, of my narrow, illusory self-image and all the unnecessary muscular tensions and contractions that arise from it? Can I let go moment-by-moment of all the unnecessary and fictitious things, both big and small, that I get attached to and identify with, so that I can receive new, more honest and complete impressions and perceptions of myself and others? Can I live and relate from my wholeness right now instead of from my assumptions, opinions, and judgments based on past experiences and future expectations?

This is what the process of health, healing, and self-transformation is really all about—the inner space and freedom to explore, to be, and to appreciate who or what I already am in my essence. The way we breathe, the way we participate day-by-day in the breath of life—the boundless life force that animates and connects us all—can play a vital role in this intimate exploration.

Copyright 2004-10 by Dennis Lewis.

“Can the mind heal the body? How are the brain, immune system, and emotions interconnected? What emotions are associated with enhanced well-being? How does mindfulness function in a medical context? Is there a biological foundation for ethics? How can death help us understand the nature of the mind?”

In the summer of 1991, ten well-known scientists, psychologists, meditation teachers and other scholars came together with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala India “to grapple with these questions.” This book is a record of conversations that took place during this event—the Third Mind and Life Conference.

There are some, of course, who may say that the effort to understand reality through a dialogue between religion and science is misguided at best. But even if this were the case, Buddhism is not a religion in the ordinary sense of the term. One need not “believe in” the Buddha to practice Buddhism. For our beliefs, like our other attachments, are often what keep us from opening to reality, the miraculous emptiness that underlies the fundamental interdependence of all life.

What is unusual about Healing Emotions is the way in which it explores this “interdependence” through a continual questioning that expands our view of the world and explores relationships between things that we thought were unrelated. This should come as no surprise, however, since in the introduction we are told that “Buddhism has as principal aims the goal of transforming perception and experience and synchronizing mind and body.”

Healing Emotions explores the relationships between such subjects as cellular biology, stress, emotions, moods, headaches, immunology, visceral learning, self-esteem, virtue and morality, greed, mindfulness, death, self-acceptance, responsibility, consciousness, compassion, and much else. This thought-provoking book is a testament not only to the Dalai Lama’s far-reaching search for ways to better understand the many challenges facing us today, but also to his underlying “affection” for other human beings and their ideas and experiences.

“I believe that human affection is the basis … of human nature,” says the Dalai Lama. “Without that, you can’t get satisfaction or happiness as an individual; and without that foundation, the whole human community can’t get satisfaction either. In my day-to-day thinking, I always take into account the total environment, the whole community.”

Whether or not one believes that “affection” is the basis of human nature, it is becoming increasingly clear that the growing lack of genuine affection in modern life, of loving kindness toward oneself and others, is closely related to our lack of awareness of the “total environment.” And without this sense of the total environment—and the urgent sense of conscience that comes with it—any real transformation is next to impossible.

Healing Emotions: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on Mindfulness, Emotions, and Health

Liangong in 18 Exercises was developed in China by qigong masters in conjunction with specialists in both Chinese and Western medicine. Liangong is based on qigong practices such as Tao-in, Eight Pieces of Brocade, Five Animal Exercises, and Muscle and Tendon Changing. It works systematically in 36 exercises (it was originally 18 exercises) with the muscles, tendons, ligaments, joints, and organs of the body to promote fitness and health. Liangong can help reduce stress, strengthen your immune system, promote cardiovascular and respiratory health, increase flexibility, reduce muscular pain, speed healing of soft tissue, increase mental clarity, and promote somatic awareness. These exercises can also help open up the various breathing spaces of the body. The exercise shown above is called “Pelvic Circles.”