I Ching Astrology

Check out this site that I have developed with Jon Sandifer. I Ching Astrology is the most ancient of all astrological systems.

Happy New 2009

Back on the blog after a couple of months. Been a good year for me - and probably the planet - a time to take a good look at myself and what I am doing, and how I am doing it.

Breath and heart are still relentless in their loving of me - keeping me going through the ups and downs.

I am grateful, truly...

Pause for a Samhain breath....

Our ancestors would have been celebrating the ancient festival of Samhain around about now - giving thanks for the year's harvests and preparing for a period of darkness, hibernation and contemplation.

The leaves are down here - mostly - making glorious tapestry on the riverside tow-path - see above. The fall/autumn seems like a planetary exhalation as all is spent and come to fruition... So I pause and think of the magic gap of stillness between each inhalation and exhalation - a point of sublime stillness and vibrant energetic life...

We're celebrating tomorrow night in the Druidic tradition with fire and mead.

The blessings of Buteyko

I've been a Buteyko fan for six years, and have benefitted from doing the now deceased Russian professor's exercises on a regular basis. Together with traditional Chinese herbal medicine, his breathing exercises have got me off steroids - drugs that had the most debilitating effect on my dad and mum-in-law before they died.

It's all about stopping mouth-breathing and hyperventilation. But the secret of my success with it has been taping my mouth at night. Yes, as scary and claustrophobic as it might sound, taping my mouth with a large swathe of microporous tape...

This is not on the Buteyko tin as far as I can gather, but was recommended at the course I attended.

Why I raise it now is that last night I went to bed with a cold and taped my mouth with a four to five inch strip of one inch wide tape. Because mouth breathing was not an option, my brain had to keep my nose unblocked and I had a good night's sleep - with little ambient snoring according to my wife. And today the cold is gone.

I can remember waking after a night of mouth-breathing because of a blocked up nose, and it felt like my mouth had been scoured with wire wool.

The point of all this is that Prof Buteyko has bought the science of breathing into the western healing arena and I owe him a big thank you!

Why vote for Buddha...

Killing the Buddha is a notion that appeals to my childish, anarchistic inner-rebel. But it is a profound notion: that all my ideas, notions, feelings and beliefs about spirituality could be masking me from the truth.

Being in the moment is a tricky thing, because there are many different types of moment. I cannot get in synch with the billionths of seconds that are the increments of time within atoms, so I always come back to my breath - a metronome I can understand and resonate with.

Here are a couple of thoughts from others on the subject:

"Why kill the Buddha? Because the Buddha you meet is not the true Buddha, but an expression of your longing. If this Buddha is not killed he will only stand in your way."

From "Killing The Buddha"

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"The Buddha starts by sweeping away the past as the container of wisdom. It doesn't matter what people tell you or what's been written down; you don't have to believe something just because it's got the weight of history and tradition behind it, he says.

He goes on to assert that it's not enough that a teaching appeals to our intellect, our logic. While the ideas behind a teaching may be appealing, that doesn't mean they work in real life. What's also implied here is that, just because a teaching "feels right" doesn't mean it is right-a critical point, since we are often drawn to ideas that fit with our own preferences, whether accurate or not.

Finally, he warns against accepting an opinion just because your teacher holds it."

Excerpted from "One Breath at a Time: Buddhism and the Twelve Steps" by Kevin Griffin

"There are no bad notes..."

... is part of the ethos of jazz, and part of the ethos of life is that there are no bad breaths.

And please, remember, we are not talking halitosis, here.

The jazz quote continues "...only poor choices."

And when it comes to breaths "...only unconscious ones."

More F.E.A.R

Edvard Munch's Scream

Pick of the day is

F rantic
E ffort to
A void
R eality

That is why a deep, sweet breath can be a very good wake-up call - and moves me to the deeper reality that I cannot muster one single breath for myself. Every one is a gift. But on the reality front, maybe there's some work I can do...

For more acronyms.