Breath Blog

Back in the saddle again!

2011-03-30T14:14:00.001+01:00

Reading the Science of Breath again... quite refreshing!

Above all, keep breathing :)

Breath knows no reason

2010-01-10T18:51:00.001Z

"The reasonable man encounters circumstances and adapts himself to them. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt circumstances to himself. All progress depends upon the unreasonable man."

- George Bernard Shaw

Still breathing in 2010 under a glorious Blue Moon

2010-01-02T17:50:00.001Z

When I was 18 I never thought I would make it to 30. Now that I'm 60 in 16 days, I am more amazed than ever at how great life is...

Just thinking about breathing taps the gratitude reflex; it really makes me realise and understand how much is always being done for me; and how giving the universe is.

2010 is going to be a very special year. It got off to a great start with a Blue Moon and Lunar Eclipse on New Year's Eve.

My picture of the Full Moon is taken from outside our house looking North across the River Thames.

One breath at a time....

2009-12-11T12:30:00.002Z

That's how life comes and goes... Glad to be back on the blog after quite a while...

I Ching Astrology

2009-02-08T19:04:00.002Z

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

2009-01-01T19:48:00.001Z

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....

2008-10-31T09:44:00.003Z

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

2008-10-30T20:12:00.004Z

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...

2008-10-23T10:16:00.003+01:00

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"

===================================================

"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..."

2008-10-16T22:50:00.003+01:00

... 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

2008-10-15T08:10:00.006+01:00

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.

“Smile, breathe and go slowly”

2008-10-14T10:53:00.003+01:00

After a hectic day, I remembered the words of Thich Nhat Hanh as I watched the sun set and the full Moon rise last night.

Whether it was influence of the full Moon or not, I don't know, but I woke with a sense of dread this morning. And someone reminded me - via a post here - that another acronym for FEAR is

F ***
E verything
A nd
R un

There is a point here, but, as I am not in a warzone, I'm sticking to my original - that Fear today is False Evidence Appearing Real... And am hopeful that my preoccupations and anxieties won't trip my brain into pressing the F*** It button and running from my realities...

So best remember: “Smile, breathe and go slowly.”

A breath of Swedish fresh air

2008-10-13T11:35:00.003+01:00

Fine advise for a grey autumnal morning in England, don't you think? For me, with my paranoid disposition, it is as well to remember the acronym:

F alse
E vidence
A ppearing
R eal

And to go on from there...

Patient and flowing

2008-10-10T09:58:00.002+01:00

It's still happening - the inflow and the outflow...

Impervious to my panic at not being able to sort out an errant digital camera and the hopeless tech support, patient and freeflowing...it is the truest gift I've ever been given - my breath....

Buddha on the breath

2008-10-09T10:26:00.003+01:00

At a time, o Monks, when the monk thus trains himself: Perceiving impermanence will I breathe in, perceiving impermanence will I breathe out'; 'rejecting attraction will I breathe in, rejecting attraction will I breathe out'; 'perceiving eradication will I breathe in, perceiving eradication will I breathe out'; perceiving estrangement will I breathe in, perceiving, estrangement will I breathe out': at such a time, o Monks, a monk examining phenomena observes phenomena, unremittingly, with perspicacity and insight, after having conquered worldly desires and worry. And he recognizes with wisdom, how worldly desires and worry are being overcome, and attains peace.

- Buddha Sakyamuni, (563 - 483 B.C), founder of Buddhism

Image from www.buddhist-images.co.uk

The Chord of Life and the Beat of Existence

2008-10-08T11:43:00.002+01:00

Moving back into my being - I see my breath as the deep chord of my life connecting me with and participating me in life, with the sweet music of my beating heart providing musical sustenance...

“The big picture is without form.” Lao Tze

2008-10-07T08:39:00.002+01:00

This is what I needed to read this morning. I only get my petty concerns, not the bigger picture.

Acceptance is the key. I can accept that I will never have everything figured out, that most things are way beyond my control... But it is more that I have to live my acceptance, than just passively accept. A famous AA speaker says: "You can't think yourself into right living. You can only live yourself into right thinking."

I can change one thing, and one thing only. Myself. And change for me is not about preference, it is about change, making a living difference...

How do I relate this to my breath? My thoughts are that my breath is just giving and without judgement. It doesn't wish me a good or a bad day. It is unconditional in its support...

As I heed it, so I learn...

Breathing, for me, has come to mean gratitude

2008-10-06T08:38:00.002+01:00

Try as I might, I cannot take responsibility for one single breath.

The fact, for me, is that I don't breathe, I am breathed...

And that is starting to make a difference in my life, as I can see the importance of gratitude and the senselessness of feeling hard done by...

As someone once said: "The largest room in the world is the room for improvement."

Your nose knows, you know

2008-08-18T10:39:00.003+01:00

This is an extract from this wonderful book:

We don't usually appreciate the nose until it becomes blocked... This unsung heroine of our anatomy does more for us than sniff out pleasant and unpleasant aromas, the nose prepares the air before it enters the delicate lung tissue so that it is just the right temperature and humidity. Air drawn into the nose is separated into right and left caverns, and is swirled through nasal hair and along passage ways lined with a light blanket of mucous that serves to catch any dust, bacteria or other tiny particles... The air then enters a three-storied chamber. The brain, eyes and optic nerves are just above the top chamber, the nasal cavity occupies the middle chamber and the bottom chamber is just above the roof of the mouth. These chambers are called turbinates and the aerodymamics of their curved walls causes the air to swirl around and around, passing over a much greater surface area than it would otherwise. While the air is doing the Viennese Waltz in your turbinates it is picking up moisture so that it will be just the right humidity before entering the lungs. Up to two quarts of water are supplied by the turbinates each day. By the time the air has passed through these chambers it has also reached body temperature.

We also know that air alternately enters the nose through the left and right nostrils during the course of the day. Blood shifts from one nostril to the other every 90 minutes or so, causing one nostril to become more congested. Scientific studies show that when the left nostril is open the right hemisphere of the brain is more dominant, activating the more creative feeling side of the mind. When the right nostril is open the left hemisphere of the brain in dominant, facilitating more analytical, rational and intellectual mind activity. Yogis observed this phenomenon thousands of years ago and developed a sophisticated practice called "alternative nostril breathing" or nadi shodhanam, in which they deliberately changed the flow of air through the nostrils to balance their psychophysiology. They believed that when the right nostril was open the surya, or sun/heating element, was dominant, and that when the left nostril was open chandra, or moon/cooling element, was dominant. By opening and closing the nostrils in varying patterns one could adjust the physiology of the body just like regulating a hot and cold faucet to produce warm water. Although present research on the subject is controversial, many believe that the right nostril dominance stimulates the arousal-producing sympathetic nervous system and left nostril dominances elicits the relaxation-producing parasympathetic system. By alternating the flow of air in a regulated way yogis could have been trying to create an equilibrium in the two sides of the autonomic nervous system and a balance between excitation and relaxation.

Breathing is difficult - consciously.....

2008-08-17T15:35:00.003+01:00

But so is really appreciating the gift of life....

But when you've got a grand-daughter who can fly, things are really not so bad....

No doubt about it... Spring has sprung...

2008-05-07T13:51:00.001+01:00

Witness the first of our irises this year - pure evidence of the divine, whispering breath of the glad giver...

The father of chemical enlightenment passes away...

2008-05-01T10:19:00.006+01:00

Albert Hoffman, the Swiss inventor of LSD, died yesterday aged 102. May he rest in peace. He changed my life and until now I've never expressed my gratitude.

The discovery which he qualified with this remark: "Catastrophic consequences... can ensue when its profound effect is misjudged and the substance is mistaken for a pleasure drug', changed a whole culture.

What was unseen became seen, although as if in fairground mirror, but nevertheless the visions were transformative and made mass spiritual experience and aspiration a reality.

Before it was declared illegal, I read a book in 1967 in which leading lights of the day recalled the experiences of their tripping. One remarked on the power of the drug, saying that he really did not welcome that depth of perception in this life - and preferred normality. Normality was not for me: a callow youth at the time I was seduced by Tim Leary's rant: "turn on, tune in, drop out."

And to cut to the chase, I decided that chemical nirvana was something within my grasp. I purchased top grade "Owsley" acid - six tabs - and hitchhiked down Highway 1 to beyond Big Sur. Hiked up a canyon much frequented by hippies, settled in the woods. With religious fervour I ingested all the acid and recall very little - but the power of the drug was such that my limbs felt INTERCHANGEABLE - I believed for a few hours that my hands were my feet and my feet were my hands. Not the experiences of which bodhisattvas are made!

In the end LSD started to unhinge me, most likely because, as Hoffman warned, I took it in uncontrolled situations for "pleasure".

So by 1970 I was off drugs...and the following year became a student of the breath... But, that as they say, is another story.

Wisdom - not something that I can go shopping for

2008-04-27T08:09:00.003+01:00

"We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us... "

- Marcel Proust

I can be clever - please myself with my own humour, judgements, preferences and opinions. What I've learned with this - is that I am not always quite as clever I think I am.

The reason - some inherent wisdom (?) tells me - is that my cleverness is the harvest of the past and doesn't let me drink in the wonderful refreshing waters of the present.

Today, I am going to try to "smell the coffee" and not dwell on the slipstream past. Just how wise that will be...only time will tell...

PS: So that I am clear - the slipstream of the past very often means a "half-empty" low-grade depression that I find very hard to shake off...

The Mighty Breath

2008-04-22T10:01:00.003+01:00

"First of all the twinkling stars vibrated, but remained motionless in space, then all the celestial globes were united into one series of movements... Firmament and planets both disappeared, but the MIGHTY BREATH, which gives life to all things and in which all is bound up, remained."

- Vincent Van Gogh

What this celebrated artist is getting at is that there in only one reliable thing in life.

Interestingly the only picture my mother had in her room was one by Vincent - in retrospect that choice seems to have reflected an empathy with his very troubled life, rather than his mysticism.

What these words say to me, though, are: if the MIGHTY BREATH is all that is reliable, and if I give more of myself over to its healing winds - surrender to them if you like - will the low level misery that I accept as "my life" start to fade? And metamorphise into a more rewarding, less self-piteous place to be... I believe it will...

Follow your nose - for a good night's sleep

2008-04-21T18:09:00.002+01:00

In a previous post, I noted that right nostril air stimulates the sympathetic part of our autonomic nervous system - which gives us our "fight and flight" energies. Left-nostrilled air resonates with the parasympathetic part - giving us the space to "rest and digest."

Based on this , Swami Rama, in his Science of Breath, provides this advise for a good night's kip:

"...when individuals go to bed, they should lie on the left side for five or ten minutes, activating the right nostril to create increased body heat. As soon as they are warm and comfortable, they should turn ot the right, allowing the left nostril to open. Doing so relaxes, calms and prepares them for sleep."

Sweet dreams...it works

Happy New Breath

2008-01-15T20:51:00.000Z

It's been a while... but my passion for the study of breath remains as strong as ever, not so, obviously, my passion for blogging.

Slow abdominal - steady and measured; this method of taking in air is still further improving my health and well being.

Breathe easy, my friends, and stay well.

Albert Camus: Existential Mystic

2007-04-27T10:35:00.000+01:00

As heavy as it sounds, I think Albert is right.

Time for more righteous breathing :)

"I shall tell you a great secret, my friend. Do not wait for the last judgement, it takes place every day."

- Albert Camus

A peace ful reminder...never comes in wrong

2007-02-18T16:59:00.000Z

"There is no way to peace, peace is the way. This means that we can realize peace right here in the present moment with our look, our smile, our words and our actions. Peace work in not a means, each step we take should be peace. Every step we take should be joy. Every step we take should be happiness. Are you massaging Mother Earth every time your foot touches her? Are you planting seeds of joy and peace? Enlightenment, peace and joy will not be granted by someone else. The well is within us and if we dig deeply in the present moment the water will spring forth. If we are determined, we can do it. We don't need the future. We can smile, breath fully and relax Everything we want is here in the present moment. Peace is every step. Shall we continue our journey?"

- Thich Nhat Hanh

Beautiful graphics from www.herbological.com

It snowed today...

2007-02-08T17:19:00.000Z

Woke to a white world - everything anew... snowflakes found their way to Buddha... just to be... for a while... like me...

Breathtaking beauty

2007-01-24T13:20:00.000Z

Snow fell in our village overnight. It cleaned the air and land... and helped me breathe fresh new breaths.

Thank you...

The mirage of the media

2007-01-22T13:08:00.000Z

I found this oddly inspiring quote at the end of an article, in defence of the paparazzi in the UK Press Gazette (the trade paper for UK hacks):

From Buddha himself! - "Believe nothing. No matter where you read it, or who said it, even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense."

The writer, Charlie Pycraft, was making the point in the wake of the Kate Middleton brouhaha that our government loves to make mountains out of molehills over celebrity privacy to bury other news, but is not quite so keen on opening up on its reasons for waging "illegal" wars.

Whilst it might be very inconvenient for Kate having the media camped on her doorstep, it is just satisfying an adoring, prurient public and, in most cases (although obviously not hers), providing the drug of exposure that celebrities seem to need.

I think that Charlie has brought a breath of fresh air to subject by injecting some ancient wisdom into the debate.

A journey to the source...

2007-01-18T18:52:00.000Z

I went to the source of the River Thames today, with my wife. It was my birthday treat.

The Thames flows very close by our house, some 90 miles its origin, so it was time for a visit.

A pub, The Thames Head, is the most significant landmark when tracing the river to its beginning point - and the footpath is a bit manky as you start to make your way across the water-logged fields.

The effort is well worthwhile - it is an enchanted spot. The marker stone and the striking tree overlook what was today a large puddle, a pond really, and magical bubbles continually erupt from the earth through the clear water of the river's genesis.

Photograph copyright ©1999 Denis Waugh

Storming heaven...

2007-01-16T18:24:00.000Z

The infinite heart-mind

Back to the heart of blogging in 2007 - thanks for the inspiration yb - with this yearning cry for inner truth from Macrina Wiederkehr:

"God, why do I storm heaven for answers that are already in my heart? Every grace I need has already been given me. Oh, lead me to the Beyond within..."

Candles

2006-11-10T11:25:00.000Z

"It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness"
- Quaker Proverb

The breath-taking beauty of Bali

2006-09-12T11:19:00.000+01:00

I'm here with my wife to do some jewellery business...

It is truly an enchanted island

Lunar Standstill

2006-09-07T06:15:00.000+01:00

Tonight at 1950 UK time the moon will be full and it will be very low on the horizon, looking luminous and large, marking the end of a 18.6 year cycle, that was tracked by our ancient Druidic ancestors at pre-historic sites such as Callanais on the Isle of Lewes...

This is a picuture of the early morning moon, just before it gets full later today.

A split second of grace...

2006-09-01T10:01:00.000+01:00

"Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied."

- Pearl S. Buck

This has proved so true for me, but I have often over-ridden the flash of light that has signalled the pit I am going to walk into...

But if you consider every mistake as just a modification of your plans, it's not so bad...

Real consciousness around moments of critical decisions (it could be argued that every moment has this nature) is where it's at...and that is why I blog at breathblog, pure and simple...

Wanting, as I do, the best I can get from every moment, so that I can reflect the force that put me here in the first place...

Expectation - the pits

2006-08-26T21:40:00.000+01:00

There is no greater enemy to those who would please than expectation.

- Montaigne

Expectation is a major hurdle; it blocks gratitude; it disables my enjoyment reflex; it turns the universe into a petty playground, where the exercise of my own will is preferable to the cosmic unfolding of every moment.

On a breath level, I guess I do expect that I will breath another breath, just about all the time. The fact is, of course, one day I won't.

There is, to paraphrase Montaigne, no greater block to reality and joy than expectation. At the heart of expectation there is probably fear and resentment - an untutored arrogance, operating from a perspective of weakness, that assumes I know how things should be operating...

As much of a struggle as it is, giving up expectation can really open up some amazing doors...

American politics needs to take a deep breath

2006-08-25T11:40:00.000+01:00

Great cover, great magazine...

Remembering what we are up against....

2006-08-25T07:31:00.000+01:00

"Half the spiritual life consists of remembering what we are up against and where we are going."

- Ayya Khema

Shouldn't the spiritual path be all peace, fluffiness and light. I wish. But it is the struggle as much as anything, it seems, that provides the momentum for insight, growth and inspiration. Buddha's definition of life as suffering nails it to the floor...and there's not many who'd want to dispute this.

My first forays towards "enlightenment" were chemically induced, as part of the psychedelic revolution. And I guess I've always had a hankering for the instant bliss of LSD - my memory conveniently blanking the bad psychotic trips. Born into a consumer society, why would the idea of enlightenment in a tablet feel like a foreign notion?

Alas, the hindsight of what wisdom I have remembers that I was on the road to chemical dependency so I pulled the plug on drugs...and have been using my own neurosis, stupidity and ignorance to guide me on...

Coming to the point of realising I know nothing - brings me to a reluctant acceptance of what the universe has to offer me...and that in turn can lead to gratitude...and then to some serenity...

Bird problems

2006-08-23T21:33:00.000+01:00

The crow that mimics a cormorant gets drowned.

- Japanese proverb

Our special wonder

2006-08-21T07:27:00.000+01:00

Can such a thing be,

And overcome us like a summer’s cloud,

Without our special wonder?

- William Shakespeare

The joy of being alive, when preoccupied with our own concerns, can come upon us like a summer's cloud...and that is a special wonder... But for a less fleeting connection, that I need to maintain my sanity, I use prayer and riding on the breath of my life... That is "my" special wonder: to track the beauty of my own being - by contacting my Higher Power through prayer and experiencing the gift of life through meditation.

Bridge to another dimension...

2006-08-20T21:48:00.000+01:00

"Confined in the dark, narrow cage of our own making which we take for the whole universe, very few of us can even begin to imagine another dimension of reality."

- Sogyal Rinpoche

And that is where the breath comes in - it is the bridge between our cognitive prisons and our eternal essence, which is ever present and joy itself.

Seeing other worlds...

2006-08-18T07:51:00.000+01:00

"Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world (our own), we see it multiplied. "

- Marcel Proust

Profound quote and captivating picture of Proust on his death bed. In the art of living and dying, who knows how many worlds we will come across. There is a look of serenity on the face of this great author. So hopefully he found a world of peace...in death...

It is always interesting to muse on whether we are ourselves the source of all knowledge, whether we contain all the worlds we are ever going to experience - the new terrain we enter is merely an unploughed field within us, sometimes revealed by the work of great artists. Or are we beings who actually absorb new wisdoms and worlds from external sources?

I'll be thinking about this over the weekend, as I've been asked to write a book on meditation and I think crucial to my ability to write it is a grasp of whether we are self-contained or if we need to seek the help of an external higher power to climb the mountain of Self-awareness.

The waves

2006-08-14T07:28:00.000+01:00

"You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf..."

- Joseph Goldstein

This so reminds me of the ancient tale of King Canute. The stubborn English monarch who has very grandiose ideas about his own power: he thinks he can command the tide to turn back. His courtiers seat him in a throne at the sea's edge. He commands the sea to go back...but all he gets is wet feet and a bruised regal ego.

The alcoholics put it another way with their serenity prayer: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can. And the wisdom to know the difference."

Evaluating one's own power and motives is a life-long journey, and Mr Goldstein one of America's first vipassana teachers must have known that breath was the key.

A haunting image

2006-08-12T21:42:00.000+01:00

Painted by William Holman Hunt over 150 years ago, it has a heavy resonance for me...

"The wise man is a happy child..."

2006-08-11T07:19:00.000+01:00

"An adult is one who has lost the grace, the freshness, the innocence of the child, who is no longer capable of feeling pure joy, who makes everything complicated, who spreads suffering everywhere, who is afraid of being happy, and who, because it is easier to bear, has gone back to sleep.

"The wise man is a happy child."

- Arnaud Desjardins

Burdens...

2006-08-10T10:46:00.000+01:00

"God gave burdens, also shoulders. "

- Yiddish proverb

Imagine...

2006-08-09T20:05:00.000+01:00

"What would it be like if you lived each day, each breath, as a work of art in progress? Imagine that you are a masterpiece unfolding, every second of every day, a work of art taking form with every breath."

- Thomas Crum

Milarepa - Tibet's most famous mystic - an enigma for the Western mind

2006-08-07T18:16:00.000+01:00

"My bed is small, but I rest at ease...
My clothes are thin, but my body is warm...
My food is scarce, but I am nourished..."

- Milarepa

Milarepa is the ultimate devotee - this quote shows a man who accepts utterly his fate and surrenders to what the universe gives him.

The biography I read of him claimed that his birthdate in 1052, is as well known in Tibet as 1066 is here or 1776 in the USA.

The life he lived, after indulging in the black arts and murdering relatives, is perhaps beyond comprehension to a modern westerner. His guru, Marpa, treated him with nothing less than cruelty. It was only by the intervention of Marpa's wife that Milarepa survived at all.

Marpa would ask Milarepa to build a house, only to have him knock it down and start again... This happened repeatedly.

Marpa instructed him to lead the most ascetic of lives. Often Milarepa is depicted with green skin; this is because all he ate was nettle soup...

Although I love his story, it does raise questions of how necessary it is to have a teacher who demands so much of you.

Deepak Chopra, when asked: "Do we need gurus?", replied: "Here in California - we say G - gee; U - you; R - are; U - You."

This implies that at this stage in human evolution the wisdom we need to pursue a spiritual path is available to us without the need of gurus or masters, whose agendas might be questionable.

Breathing during birth: a palpable lifeline

2006-08-06T14:12:00.000+01:00

Someone posted about the importance of breath when giving birth.

Well, I asked my wife, who has been through two difficult and one "normal" birth. Her reply was that: "The assumption is that if you are aware of your breath, you don’t lose control!

"I’m not so sure about because being aware of the breath whilst giving birth is extremely difficult. For me –anyway...

"You were there at several births, you must have your own ideas..."

Well, my recollection of the births was, to be honest, awe-filled panic as much as anything else. I tended to block the whole process by falling asleep after many hours of traumatic labour, abandoning my exhausted wife. So I suppose I have to concur with Donna Farhi, in the extract from her excellent "The Breathing Book" copied below, that well meaning husbands could very well get in the way of a process dictated by Nature...

I pick up on Farhi's point about using breath to "tether" yourself to the moment...

The extract is from pages 208-210:

Childbirth

Many of my students who have taken yoga classes with me throughout their second pregnancies have reported that their new-found awareness of the pelvic diaphragm and of their breathing in general, made for a shorter and easier labour. These women also commented on how they felt more in tune with the process because they knew how to let their breathing spontaneously change in response to pain and exhaustion. I have since come to the conclusion a greater understanding of their breathing and movements that occur in the pelvis and lower abdomen can be invaluable to a woman in childbirth.

There are differing opinions about the efficacy of using specific breathing patterns during birthing. I tend to agree with Carl Jones, author of Alternative Birth, who feels that concentrating on any one set pattern of breathing can "interfere with a spontaneous response to labor and can actually impede labor's progress." He also found that bedside fathers often became so focused on coaching a set breathing pattern that they tended to neglect more effective means of labor support, such as massaging the laboring woman or providing verbal encouragement. It seems clear that since most of us breathe poorly and we tend to meet difficulty with tension rather than relaxation, a heightened awareness of breathing give a woman the ability to respond both spontaneously and intelligently to the challenge of her child's birth.

If you feel that learning a breathing technique would give you confidence many current authorities on birth training now recommend the Bradley Method, a system that teaches slow breathing rather than shallow, panting breathing characteristic of the Lamaze method. Rapid chest breathing can lead to hyperventilation, a condition that will make you feel light-headed and even numb in your hands and fingers. This isn't good for you of for you baby. If during particularly heavy contractions you have breathed so rapidly that you begin to feel symptoms of hyperventilation, take a long and slow breath out and immediately your next breath will be fuller. This slow diaphragmatic breathing can provide a focal point for your concentration when the going gets rough.

During the second stage of labor women are often encouraged to push strenuously during contractions - which many women accomplish by holding their breath. Breath holding during the second stage has been associated with a drop in fetal heart rates and a concomitant reduction in the fetal oxygen supply. Despite our cultural predilection to treat birth as a competitive athletic event (with speedy birth considered a successful one), studies show that when women are allowed to follow their own inclinations they are able to deliver as quickly as mothers that were actively encouraged to push. They also reduced their chances of tearing and requiring an episiotomy by up to 40 percent. Rahima Baldwin, author of Special Delivery, advises pushing only when there is an "irresistible urge" to do so and suggests that when you feel the need, you help your body push effectively by expanding out through your lower belly and perineum. She adds: " Most of us, when we think of pushing as in a having a bowel movement, think of pushing in on the belly as we hold our breath. This is just the opposite of what you need to do in the second stage to birth your baby. Your baby's head requires that everything down below is open and stretches as the head bulges forward on your perineal tissue. Remember, when you breathe in fully and allow your belly to expand the diaphragm presses downward, which can only help the birthing process.

In the Physiologic Approach to the second stage of labor (a modern approach that is actually a return to older midwife wisdom), the mother is "encouraged to breathe spontaneously while keeping her mouth open, relaxing her jaw and throat, and making as much noise as she likes." She is also cautioned "to avoid cutting off the flow of breath, as an open glottis (throat) is associated with opening in the pelvic and vaginal areas."

All of these approaches reflect the basic belief that it can be a trap to go into labor with a set idea about how it should progress and a prescribed way of breathing throughout. While following a technique may give you confidence, it can also prevent you from making choices in response to what is actually happening (rather than what you imagined should happen). These choices also include letting your breathing change in response to your body's cues.

Regardless of the particular approach you choose for your labor, it will be crucial to remain attentive to what is happening rather than being overwhelmed with fear or panic. Your breathing can act as a palpable lifeline to keep you tethered to the present moment. If you have a heightened awareness of your body and the effects that different body positions and breathing techniques have on you personally, you will be better able to respond to what is happening and to ask for what you need, whether that be a change of position or more support from you partner.

As one of my students said: "During my first labor I didn't even know where my perineum was or how to breathe in such a way as to open rather than close there. During my second labor, I knew not only where to open but how to do it, and I felt I could trust my body because it was a body I knew rather than a stranger to me."

- Donna Farhi

Just watching a birth is truly an unforgettable experience - we all make a similar entrance to the planet - except where surgical intervention happens. It is one of the two great transitions, the other being our exits, which are a lot more varied in their denouements.

But some say that each breath contains a birth and a death - the Tibetans called it bardo - although it is totally hard to clock this, when considering the momentous nature of a human birth. Yet when you consider that we, each of us, have an alloted number of breaths, whether pre-ordained or not...then the preciousness of each one of them is not really up for debate...is it?

And those of us who have ever truly gasped for a breath will know that our lifeforce does ride on the wave of our inhalations and exhalations...

Going back to the starting point, I would just like to thank my wife for her bravery, endurance and unconditional love in giving birth to our three beautiful daughters who are now 30, 29 and 23.

And there is one last thing: the very first breath a child takes - when they suck in the very essence of life and begin what always ends up being an amazing adventure... That is really quite something special.

I remember our youngest who emerged after a difficult breech birth, blue and lifeless, and then she took a breath...and started to live an independent existence... Totally amazing!!!

What has all this stuff got to do with the breath?

2006-08-03T09:31:00.000+01:00

Well, I believe that breath is a bridge between the conscious and the unconscious, the limited and the unlimited...and that it is a great emotional healing force, perhaps the greatest we have ready access to.

So it can be the inspiration for any spiritual journey of recovery, healing, or enlightenment.

In other words, whichever way you're headed: your breath can be your best friend...

You've got to listen...stoopid!

2006-08-03T09:17:00.000+01:00

"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is a proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation."

- Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) - the father of Social Darwinism and originator of the phrase: "survival of the fittest."

Uptightness

2006-08-01T19:03:00.000+01:00

Cool picture (Tibetan rinpoche meets beat poet and American mystic) and great insight into that harrumphiness that has been an undertow in my life. My uptightness is something I really try to hide from people. But resentment has been a really big guiding light in my life, leading me precisely nowhere... So as with my grumpiness I give up all right to it...as of now!

Trungpa, who gave us the great concepts of "crazy wisdom" and "spiritual materialism". made a tremendous effort to bring western neurosis under the penetrating microscope of Tibetan wisdom.

Here's his take on uptightness - a condition that we all have to own but has a real stink of the "uncool" about it:

"Everything is based on our own uptightness. We could blame the organisation; we could blame the government; we could blame the food; we could blame the highways; we could blame our own motorcars, our own clothes; we could blame an infinite variety of things. But it is we who are not letting go, nor developing enough warmth and sympathy - which makes us problematic.

So we cannot blame anybody!"

Faith...a subtle chain...

2006-07-31T07:06:00.000+01:00

"Faith is the subtle chain which binds us to the infinite."

- Elizabeth Oakes Smith (1806-93)

Laughter...

2006-07-30T11:09:00.000+01:00

"The most wasted day is that in which we have not laughed."

- Chamfort

Avoiding the cycle of resentment and retaliation...

2006-07-29T07:09:00.000+01:00

"Without forgiveness life is governed...by an endless cycle of resentment and retaliation."

- Roberto Assaglioli, founder of Psychosynthesis

Now here's a challenge for the weekend...

2006-07-28T10:32:00.000+01:00

"You should live in such a way that you can confide anything on your mind."

- Leo Tolstoy, another quote from his "Calendar of Wisdom"

The highest possible goals...

2006-07-25T17:34:00.000+01:00

"In the long run, people achieve only that which they have set as goals for themselves; therefore, set the highest possible goals for yourself.

"The fulfillment of the law of goodness has nothing in common with everyday material prosperity. Sometimes material prosperity and moral goodness clash in conflict. These sufferings lead to the highest elevation of spirit.

- Leo Tolstoy from: A Calendar of Wisdom

Indispensable beings...

2006-07-24T22:13:00.000+01:00

"So long as we are loved by others, I should say we are almost indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend."

- Robert Louis Stevenson

Dare to take this personally!

2006-07-22T06:26:00.000+01:00

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. The bamboozle has captured us. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. "

- Carl Sagan

Dr. Carl Edward Sagan (1934-96) was a popularising American astronomer and astrobiologist, and I am sure he meant this in the grand historical sense. But when I read the quote, it resonated as the immense difficulty of unravelling my past into the magic of the present.

Perhaps I will stand corrected, but the key to getting your power back is to give it up. The difference is surrender as opposed to conflict - and I am not making a political statement, just a personal one about my own state of being...

Against the backdrop of the cosmos, it is possible to feel the humility to understand the bamboozle... And I feel sure that Carl, the stargazer, must have known this, and his quote is just good advice to apply a new and more enlightened focus on life.

Our local swans

2006-07-21T06:32:00.000+01:00

This year, the local swan couple, who jealously guard the stretch of river outside our house, had a big family of "ugly ducklings" - six in total. Last year they had three cygnets but lost one.

Past forgiveness

2006-07-20T20:33:00.000+01:00

"Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past."

- A spot-on, pithy quote from Lily Tomlin

2006-07-19T09:01:00.000+01:00

"Do not believe what your mind tells you!"

Seen on a teeshirt in London

More about noble friends and noble conversations...

2006-07-18T15:04:00.000+01:00

I just had to return to this quote from a lovely book: One Breath at a time by Kevin Griffin:

"One night, my teacher was talking about a sutta (a record of the oral teachings of Buddha) where the Buddha's cousin and attendant, Ananda, comes to him and says: "Venerable sir, this is half the holy life, that is Noble Friends and Noble Conversations." When my teacher read this, I thought that the Buddha was going to correct, saying that these things weren't that important. Instead, the Buddha responds: "Not so, Ananda! Noble friends and noble conversation are the WHOLE of the holy life."

The reason is that someone posted how much they agreed with the quote from Mark Twain I posted on 4 July:

"The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are right."

It comes back to the real business of life...seeing that my precious relationships are in tact, maintained with authenticity and honesty...which to be truthful, after an "extremely expensive" education which primed me with the perverted wisdom of never displaying my emotions, are not always my strong suit.

But I guess Buddha knew, having grown up in an extremely controlling family, that unless we have a really good level of human honesty about ourselves no amount of meditation will prepare us for the eightfold path of right living. To neglect our loved ones, our human relations, for a path of solitary path of meditation, can be a costly affair. I for one know what it is to put a spiritual bypass around my problems - I just seemed to rehatch them into bigger and bigger eggs....

Here's another take on the subject:

"A good spiritual friend who will help us to stay on the path, with whom we can discuss our difficulties frankly, sure of a compassionate response, provides an important support system which is often lacking. Although people live and practice together, one-upmanship often comes between them. A really good friend is like a mountain guide. The spiritual path is like climbing a mountain: we don't really know what we will find at the summit. We have only heard that it is beautiful, everybody is happy there, the view is magnificent and the air unpolluted. If we have a guide who has already climbed the mountain, he can help us avoid falling into a crevasse, or slipping on loose stones, or getting off the path. The one common antidote for all our hindrances is noble friends and noble conversations, which are health food for the mind."

-Ayya Khema, When the Iron Eagle Flies

I think Ayya, a German Jewish Buddhist nun who fled the Nazis, is referring to guru with a small g and not a capital g. And this makes a big difference in how you consider her quote...I believe that she is looking to a friend who is perhaps just one step ahead of you on the climb, and with whom the position is often reversed...so there is a wondefully, loving mutuality of respect. A loving, authentic and honest relationship...

Ayya died in November 1997.

Thanks to Geoff Allen for his excellent page of Buddhist quotes, where I sourced this quote.

And by the way, don't you love the picture of Buddha transmitting wisdom to Ananda...

Breathing new life into old bikes

2006-07-17T21:42:00.000+01:00

Check out Bicycle Empowerment - fantastic project, recycling this superior form of transport. Heard about it on a BBC Radio 4 programme, driving home from London tonight.

The main man for manifesting change...

2006-07-16T23:31:00.000+01:00

Mike Dooley was in town over the weekend. I went to see him at the home of English Folk Dance, Cecil Sharp House, in north London...

He was inspirational...and pretty cosmic...although a little hung up on Ferraris...but his take on the universe is worth a look...

A fuzzy head and the need for simple truth

2006-07-15T06:42:00.000+01:00

A glass too much wine last night, so I leafed through a book for some mental relief and this is what I found. I really like this saying from Cicero - as it is apt for me: I cannot bear the simple, beautiful truth about myself and my relation to the universe without wrapping it up in a super-duper, many-layered, sophisticated, over-complicated, neurotic package. And I have to unwrap the whole thing every time I want to get to the real me....

"The clearest and simplest notions are almost always concealed by sophisticated meditations."

- Marcus Tullius Cicero

"Please, hear what I'm not saying"

2006-07-14T21:10:00.000+01:00



"Please, hear what I'm not saying"
by
Charles C. Finn 

Don't be fooled by me...
Don't be fooled by the face that I wear...
For I wear a mask, a thousand masks,
masks that I'm afraid to take off,
and none of them is me.
Pretending is an art that is second nature to me,
but don't be fooled.
For God's sake don't be fooled.
I give you the impression that I'm secure,
that all is sunny and unruffled with me,
within as well as without,
that confidence is my name and coolness my game,
that the water's calm and I'm in command,
and that I need no one.
But don't believe me.
My surface may seem smooth,
but my surface is my mask,
ever-varying and ever-concealing.
Beneath lies no complacence.
Beneath lies confusion and fear and aloneness.
But I hide this. I don't anybody to know it.
I panic at the fear of my weakness,
and fear being exposed.
That's why I frantically create a mask to hide behind,
a nonchalant, sophisticated facade
to help me pretend,
to shield me from the glance that knows.
But such a glance is precisely my salvation.
My only hope. And I know it.
That is, if it's followed by acceptance,
if it's followed by love,
it's the only thing that can liberate my from myself,
from my own self-built prison walls,
from the barriers that I so painstakingly erect.
It's the only thing that will assure me
of what I can't assure myself,
that I'm really worth something.
But I don't tell you this. I don't dare. I'm afraid to.
I'm afraid your glance will not be followed by acceptance,
will not be followed by love.
I'm afraid you'll think less of me, that you'll laugh,
and your laugh will kill me.
I'm afraid that deep down I'm nothing,
that I'm just not good,
and that you'll see this and reject me.
So I play my game, my desperate pretending game,
with a facade of assurance without,
and a trembling child within.
So begins the glittering, but empty parade of masks,
and my life becomes a front.
I idly chatter to you in the suave tones of surface talk.
I tell you anything that's really nothing,
and nothing of what's everything,
of what's crying within me.
So when I'm going through my routine,
do not be fooled by what i'm saying.
Please, listen carefully and try to hear what I'm not saying,
what I'd like to be able to say,
what for survival I need to say,
but what I can't say.
I don't like to hide.
I don't like to play superficial funny games.
I want to stop playing them.
I want to be genuine and spontaneous and me,
but you've got to help me.
You've got to hold out your hand,
even when that's the last thing I seem to want.
Only you can wipe away from my eyes
the blank stare of the breathing dead.
Only you can call me into aliveness.
Each time you're kind, and gentle, and encouraging;
each time you try to understand because you really care,
my heart begins to grow wings,
very small wings,
very feeble wings,
but wings!
With your power to touch me into feeling
you can breath life into me.
I want you to know that.
I want you to know how important you are to me,
how you can be a creator a honest-to-god-creator
of the person that is me
if you choose to.
You alone can brake down the wall behind which I tremble.
You alone can remove my mask.
You alone can release me
from my shadow-world of panic and uncertainty,
from my lonely prison,
if you choose to.
Please, choose to.
Do not pass me by.
It will not be easy for you.
A long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls.
The nearer you approach to me
the blinder I may strike back.
It's irrational, but despite what the books say about man
often I am irrational.
I fight against the very thing that I cry out for.
But I am told that love is stronger than strong walls,
and in this lies my hope.
Please try to beat down those walls
with firm hands,
but with gentle hands
for a child is very sensitive.
Who am I, you may wonder?
I am someone you know very well.
For I am every man you meet
and I am every woman you meet.

Charles C. Finn

Freedom, brotherhood and equality

2006-07-14T17:30:00.000+01:00

Just to clock one of the world's great revolutions - of 1789. It began with horrendous bloodshed; and then the monarchy were put back on the throne... But it did start a move towards a fairer way of co-existing despite the horrible bloody legacy...the oppression of the many by the few began to lessen...

But yet again man's humanity to man underscored a revolution that had noble aspirations.

So I return to my noble respiration - feeling uncomfortable in the realm of politics

A suprising but very welcome inspiration

2006-07-13T21:35:00.000+01:00

"It has been women who have breathed gentleness and care into the hard progress of mankind."

- Queen Elizabeth II

Now, here's a turn up for the books - writing with a sense of inspiration about the queen of my country...

And I accept, totally accept, the wisdom of her remarks. We have forgotten the nurturing mother in a mad paternalistic world...where men hold the reins of power but women sit at the seat of power - the heart... My wonderful wife, Josephine, has helped me more than I can say on my journey through the ruins of my life on to the freeway of the heart...

But I need to go one step further and thank the giver of breath for the kindness and comfort that it inhales and exhales into my life - balancing me on a metronome of grace. Inspiring me to give up my right to be miserable. Helping me reach out with a gratitude that leads to generosity. Removing my cloak of isolation so that I can more enjoy the fellowship of my dearest family and friends...

That's something I've wanted to write for a while now - so thanks, your Maj...

Portrait by Christian Furr

Threefold purity

2006-07-12T23:32:00.000+01:00

"So that's threefold purity. It provides good directions for practicing meditation-or any other activity, for that matter. Have no expectation about who you are--the generous one or the mean one or whoever-no expectation of your activity or process, no expectation of fruition. This is how we go from living by concept, freezing ourselves in time and space, to relaxing into the fluid spaciousness with which we were born."

- Pema Chodron, Shambala Sun

Tibetan monks,"the Olympic athletes of meditation."

2006-07-11T14:47:00.000+01:00

Check out this bit of new science...

As interesting as it is, the scientists come at this stuff with a sense of self-congratulory surprise, when monks, yogis and normal people have been relishing it for milennia.

It's a Time Magazine article from Jan this year.

Wise words from Jack on the "climb"

2006-07-06T21:51:00.000+01:00

"Even when we do receive good advice, it is easy to ignore it or misinterpret it. The places where we are stuck, those difficult layers of fear and attachment, the points of self-delusion and unworthiness we will encounter, are many.

They come in everyone's practice, and the more educated and competent we believe ourselves to be, the slower the climb and the more foolhardy the falls."

- Jack Kornfield

The day after independence day

2006-07-05T21:12:00.000+01:00

My American buddy decided over the weekend that is was definitely time for him to leave the UK.

Cody’s been here a while – raising his kids and doing business – and really become a bit of an Anglophile.

He’d had a row with his baseball coach on Saturday, and that triggered a row with a taxi driver, who raised the fare when he’d had to detour via a cash machine.

The upshot was that my friend underpaid the driver slightly…and I think a few choice words were exchanged. And before you know it the police were arresting him, after receiving the taxi driver’s complaint, without allowing him to contact the US Embassy.

He was finger-printed, a DNA swab was taken from his mouth, he spent a few hours in jail and was then released when the police realised the whole silly incident was less than a storm in teacup. But now his data is on the dreaded database.

So it became an Independence Day issue – now Cody could clearly see why so many people emigrated… to the US… and he was now returning to his homeland, and somewhat ironically leaving what for him had become the land of opportunity!

At the time of the call, I empathised with him - and felt almost violated on his behalf at the actions of the boys in blue.

As my indignation waned, it became more of a kettle calling the pot black issue. My experience with the US police literally outgunned my friend's. I had a gun shoved in my face. Admittedly the circumstances were a little challenging for the police – a psychedelic rent-raising party in 1969 California.

I saw Cody on Monday night, and we had a good laugh…. about it....

What does all this mean? What does it have to do with my breath blog?

Well, its just the timing and that very strong word: independence. My reflection was that independence is about an inner freedom. No matter where you live the forces of law and order are not always going to get it right... And in many cases downright wrong.

So, my blog is driven by the contrariness of the world; the sense of injustice that is not recoverable. And all this negative stuff is offset by the magic of resting back and relying on a power greater than me - inflating and deflating my lungs with awesome precision and precious care...

No matter what goes on I feel that I literally have to hang on to my breath, especially when the going gets tough....

Noble friends and noble conversations - again!

2006-07-04T08:46:00.000+01:00

"The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are right."

- Mark Twain

There's no time like the present

2006-07-03T10:40:00.000+01:00

"Your brain is capable of handling 140,000 million bits of information in one second, and if you take hours or days or weeks to reach a vital decision, you are short-circuiting your most valuable property."

-Jerry Gillies, the founding director of The Biofeedback Institute

What is significant about this information is that I have what has been called the "limbic system" of the brain which carries out the massive list of bodily functions, perhap even encompasses our unconscious mind, or even keys into the collective function, and it operates under cover.

In other words I "work" without even reflecting on it: digestion, memory, learning, all my physical and nervous systems are just ticking over, controlled by the totally amazing power house of my brain.

I tend to feel, though, that I am my cognitive mind - that prefers coco-pops over corn flakes, dislikes the neighbours, justifies procrastination etc. This part of me can only process a pathetic amount of data a second, and is not hard wired into all my systems and beyond. It is as if it acts like a constant brake to my amazing God-given ability. I mean "handling 140,000 million bits of information in one second". How far out am I? And you too! Because we're all at it.

Mr Gillies' point, I believe, is that I should learn to trust my big, big brain and not my more trivial mind (used here in its limited sense).

This comes up again and again in my life, letting go to my better nature, or higher self, and not listening to my cognitive mind, which seems to sift and amplify my neuroses of fear, anger and resentment.

The exponents of pyschoneuroimmunology like Dr Nichol Clarke at Helionics have demonstrated the power of the limbic system to move away from past patterns and improve the quality of my aspirations. Tim Galwey found the benefit of collaborating with the limbic system in his ground-breaking "Inner Game of Tennis" in the 1970s. Harnessing our hidden unselfconscious powers was found to radically improve on court performance and enjoyment.

Fantastic subject, but as far as I can go with it tonight after a long, heatwave day.

Keep the breath!

Wish fulfilling jewel

2006-07-02T22:42:00.000+01:00

Apparently, the wish fulfilling jewel is virtue.

If you are virtuous, you get what you want...

On reflection, I think that is true, do you?

Teachers and teaching

2006-07-01T06:53:00.000+01:00

"When after the rain, water flows from the roof through pipes, it seems to us that water flows out of these pipes, but in reality it falls from the sky. The same phenomenon can be seen with religious teachings taught to us by holy people. It seems to us that this teaching comes from them, but in reality these teachings come from God.

- Sri Ramakrishna (1836-1886, pictured above "in samadhi")

The passing of time

2006-07-01T06:28:00.000+01:00

Half of 2006 has just vanished - where I don't exactly know? (Does anyone?) It has made me think of my age - mid-50s...

And yesterday I came across a book The New Yoga for people over 50

I found two remarkable quotes in the excerpt they carry on Amazon asserting that physical age is not as daunting as one imagines when pushing up towards 60. A dear friend of mine once got involved with a zany group who believed in physcial immortality - until their friends starting popping their clogs.

The quotes are below. The pictures are (above) from Vigeland Sculpture Park in Helsinki by the eponymous Gustav and Goya below. The sculpture seems to be a vision of old age as something robust - even a feeling of defiance that it should be taking its toll. Definitely a couple of yogis.

Goya's vision is more frightening a feeling of falling into a petty, recriminating, helpless old age.

"We need to change our idea of what aging is. If I know my biological potential is 130 years, then I don't consider myself middle-aged until I'm 65... One of the great principles of mind/body medicine is that expectancies determine outcome. If you expect to remain strong in old age, you will."

Deepak Chopra, Ageless body, timeless mind

Advanced age is not a static, irreversible biological condition of unwavering decrepitude. Rather it's a dynamic state that, in most people, can be changed for the better no matter how many years they lived or neglected their bodies in the past - Yes, you do have a second chance to right the wrong you've committed against your body. Your body can be rejuvenated. You can regain vigour, vitality, muscular strength and aerobic endurance you thought were gone forever... this is possible whether you're middle-aged or pushing 80. The 'markers' of biological aging can be more than altered: in the case of specific physiological functions, they can actually reversed.

- William Evans: Biomarkers, the 10 keys to Prolonging Vitality

Benches: places of last resort and places to ponder

2006-06-30T17:53:00.000+01:00

There's something about a bench. People end up on benches when they have nowhere else to go, but they also offer a place to sit and ponder.

What I've been pondering is "my heart" - I started doing Tibetan Tonglen meditation about a year ago and I started to feel my heart as an energetic entity, not just a physical chamber pumping my life blood.

And then earlier in the week, there was one of those science programmes on the telly, which always manage to tell you stuff that your common sense had figured out a long while ago.

Although my common sense had in a way clocked this information about the heart, it was inspiring to hear that science has detected that more information is sent from the heart to the brain than vice a versa.

Nice to remember when I'm in a dilemma - knowing that whether I am aware of it or not, my heart is doing its bit for me....

And I'd like to spare a thought and prayer for all those for whom benches are a place of last resort tonight!

This bench is at Cockmarsh on the bank of the River Thames

Quote of the new millennium

2006-06-29T19:31:00.000+01:00

"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation."

- Herbert Spencer

Grumpy old man and flying pigs

2006-06-29T16:31:00.000+01:00

My wife's - pictured right - comments on me giving up my "right to be miserable" were as scathing as those about my taste in shorts.

"Pigs might fly," she said.

And look what happened!

Overcoming my shadow self

2006-06-29T06:34:00.000+01:00

The miracle of my breath tells me to be happy, confident and generous; my shadow self tells me otherwise - to be wary, cautious, penny-pinching and miserable.

Every day now, I focus on giving up my "right" to be miserable.

And today, I read the 29 June entry from Leo Tolstoy's Calendar of Wisdom, which has sparked this post.

The count views misery and depression like this - in his usual unequivocal, straightforward way:

"Depression is a state of the soul in which you can see no sense in either your own life or in the life of the world. This state is not only painful for the people around you, but it can influence them, and a truly good person deals with this unpleasantness, when he is alone. When you have had bad spirits or are in a low mood, or you are irritated, you should be so in solitude.

When everything you see appears in dark, gloomy shades, and seems baleful, and you want to tell others only bad and unpleasant things, do not trust your perceptions. Treat yourseld as though you were drunk. Take no steps and actions until this state has disappeared.

You should never feel depressed.

A man should always feel happy, if he is unhappy, it means he is guilty.

O Lord, help me to always be happy and to rejoice following and fulfilling your will.

Both our physical sufferings and periods of depression are part ot our life in this world, and we should patiently wait until they are over, or our life is over."

------------

This is hardline stuff - and I agree that it is best to delay any important decision-making until misery has lifted. But total isolation to deal with depression. Well, I get the point that misery can be infectious, but a very important part of my humanity is to be able to share my misery with others and to help my friends and family bear their particular load.

This approach, which is based on the "a problem shared is a problem halved" premise, is valid for me, but is only "half" the battle. For profound unhappiness to shift, as the count says, prayer and reliance on our higher selves, or higher power, is pretty much essential...

So I am back where I started: in awe of the power that breathes life into me...

(The disturbing picture of Misery is sourced from a New Vic Theatre press release.)

Green Tara - Tibetan goddess of compassion

2006-06-28T22:49:00.000+01:00

In particular she represents compassion in action, since she's in the process of stepping from her lotus throne in order to help sentient beings.

Her mantra is the soothing:

Om Taare Tuttaare Ture Svaahaa

Yet another "song" I am adding to my growing repertoire.

Here is a bit about mantras from: Wildmind Buddhist Meditation

"But trying to understand mantras intellectually is probably a bit like deconstructing a joke - you can do it, but by the time you have finished the task you've completely lost the point of the joke in the first place. Some people hold that mantras have an inherent "spiritual meaning" - that is that someone chanting the mantra of Avalokiteshvara will develop a connection with the compassion of Avalokiteshvara, even without knowing anything of the meaning (inasmuch as there is one) of the mantra, and without knowing anything about the bodhisattva himself. Others hold that the one develops associations with the mantra as one chants it and begins to learn more about the bodhisattva. Certainly, it is possible to benefit from a mantra while knowing nothing about it.

As an object of concentration - like any other -- a mantra can help to still the mind. While you are reciting a mantra out loud or internally, there tends to be less mental chatter. Even if there is a parallel stream of internal discourse going on at the same time as the mantra, the chanting creates more of a sense of continuity, which will grow with practice. The word Mantra is said to mean "that which protects the mind."

What do you do when you meditate?

2006-06-28T22:10:00.000+01:00

This is the penetrating question that my wife asked me last night.

I'm not quite sure why she asked me, as she has been meditating for over 30 years like me.

But this made is all the more important to answer with care and consciousness. I really had to think about my reply and what I said was more or less: "I sit and experience my breath going up and down in my body, and wait, hope and pray as that gentle swinging motion helps me transcend my mundane thinking and move into a state of transcendent peace and mindfulness."

I remembered this chat when I was looking for an inspiring quote from one of my breath books.

I came up with something from the godfather of yoga, Patanjali, author of the Yoga Sutras, regarded as the seminal work on the subject.

This is his take on Mystical awareness from his Yoga Sutras:

"The next level of the practice is becoming proficient in turning the senses inward in order to temporarily sever the link between your mind and senses, and external stimuli... This enables you to separate and disentangle yourself from the conflicts and contradictions that are occuring in the mental field so that you can look down into the Lake of the Mind and become aware of thoughts and feelings that you are not normally aware of."

The secret history of our enemies (and families)

2006-06-27T16:53:00.000+01:00

This quote posted on 23 June by Ellie Finlay on her blog Meditation Matters has a great resonance for me, as does the notion of pain caused by others being a great teacher.

"If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each person's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility."

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Psychopathic school teacher as "guru"

2006-06-27T11:07:00.000+01:00

Something remarkable has happened - my singing voice is starting to heal...and it has to be down to the Healing the Family and Ancestors workshop.

I can sing on my own again (or perhaps for the first time). To be honest that I might sound like an out-take from Pop Idol doesn't phase me for a second... As I am actually singing, yes actually singing out loud and feeling very pleased with myself...

My introduction to singing was at the prep school I unwillingly attended as a boarder from the age of seven to 13.

It went something like this: we trouped up to the music room in the attic of the school, and the mad music teacher got each boy to come up to the piano to sing notes that he played. I was one of the poor unfortunates who could not sing these notes. For whatever reason, this inability seemed to enrage him to the point that he would lash out and hit me about the head.

This effectively "froze" my voice before I was even a teenager.

The sorry saga has more to it: in my efforts to please. I volunteered to help him record the choir during their practices using a reel to reel tape recorder. My stategy failed as it didn't stop the abuse. I can even remember him jumping on me in the gym - feigning horseplay. I say feigning because I could feel his erection in his grubby, baggy corduroy trousers. (He was one of three teachers who abused me sexually.)

I'm not trying to get the sympathy vote here, but it is a trauma not to be minimised - to have the music beaten out of you violently and at the same time have your innocence violated.

The consolation is that I've never really given up on getting better, and tried to live a spiritual, searching life for the last 40 years... And the return to singing is a real bonus...

I have found my voice singing a Tibetan mantra Om Ah Hum Vajra Guru Padme Siddhi Hum - the first three words are seen in Tibetan at the top of this post.

This is what we sang all day for five days on the Healing the Family and Ancestors workshop - but whilst there I still found that I couldn't sing it on my own and maintain the tune... Returning home I had tried with the help of my wife, but still couldn't manage it on my own, until yesterday when I was saying goodbye to her at the front door, I suddenly "burst out into song" - and, yes, I was singing and I could hear that I was singing it more or less correctly, and I felt that something had been restored, and that more of the past had been healed, and that I could lay to rest another grievance that has been festering in my pysche against my parents...

The characters below are the Tibetan for the famous Om Mane Padme Hum mantra - which I can also sing. And the picture above is of more Tibetan mantras carved into rock. This focus on the Tibetans, as well as giving me the means to help find my lost voice, is based on their belief that life's hardships are there to teach us what we need to learn.

So psychopathic school teacher as "guru" is not as far fetched as it sounds!

Downloads of me singing will be released in the quite distant future....

Stillness and absorption in the moment

2006-06-26T17:19:00.000+01:00

I love herons for their total focus, something that many creatures have.

Just now, they fly all around the river and sometimes land on the river bank outside our house. This one was two doors down, outside the pub!

I suppose I just wanted to clock my admiration for its powerful "darshan".

And also register that my wild-life photography needs attention...which I intend to give it...

Healing family and ancestors - summer solstice

2006-06-25T14:45:00.000+01:00

Meet the dragon from the Earth Spirit centre near Glastonbury, venue for last week's five-day Healing the Family and Ancestors workshop.

Dragons are held in high regard in the East, symbols of prosperity and transformation; in the West we seem to be keen on slaying them. Our patron saint George being a case in point.

Well, this particular dragon became my mascot for clear-sightedness and moving into a new field of family and ancestral resonance during Jill Purce's revelatory workshop. I found a sense of harmony, compassion and understanding towards my family - that had previously been blackened by memories of abuse and dysfunction.

As the effect of the intense five days begins to filter through into my conscious mind - as cause and effect rather than deep emotional resonance - these are my first thoughts.

The biggest gain was changing my perspective on my now deceased parents.

Although there was prosperity in my family, there was massive dysfuntion. No sense of family community, no real communcation. This gave way to a strange kind of caring neglect - I was sent away to posh schools, where I was sexually abused by teachers, and my parents refused to let me come home and I was too shamed to disclose the abuse, as I was only 11 or 12 years old.

I wanted for nothing except love. When I wanted love and affection and understanding, it was withheld, as if my parents had no notion of these concepts and that their children might be craving them. The fridge, though, was always full.

Jill's extraordinary work combining shamanistic trance, the cradle of communal Tibetan Buddhist chanting (picture is the Tibetan goddess of compassion, Tara), and family therapy ideas incorporating the family sculpture work of Bert Hellinger pushed back the boundaries of these memories. And it really softened them as I started to understand why their particular predicaments would have caused them to behave as they did.

I saw them as real people not as people trying badly to play and fulfull the role of parents.

As people they were frail - having lived through two World Wars. Frail in the sense that they did not seem to have a strong sense of their own worth, preferring instead a marriage to conformity. And that, I suppose, has been my view, filled with sadness, hatred and contempt, for virtually all my life.

My new perspective is now that they were brave, even iconoclastic, people, brave enough to challenge and confront the accepted social conventions of the day. My father, a Jew, married my mother, a non-Jew, against the strong wishes of both families.

My hope is that they were swept away on a wave of liberating passion. Because once the marriage began its everyday reality, neither would visit their in-laws. My sister and I were the ambassadors of a reconciliation that went unresolved to their graves.

The details of the ensuing family dysfunction now no longer seems to matter that much. I have therapised over it for years and years.

But when I got to act out my own family and ancestral psychodrama, with fellow workshoppers acting as my immediate relatives, it was as if I was standing on their shoulders seeing thing for the first time from an elevated point of view.

I saw my parents' pain and identified with it: the horrible feeling of rejection when you are forbidden to folllow your heart.

They too must have understood the feelings of alienation and exile that became my constant companions.

It was somehow easy now to sheath my burning sword of resentment. This virtual emotional enactment of my past shored up the recent research that revealed that many of my mother's relatives were womanisers and alcoholics. I could accept my mother whom I had falsely idolised on new terms. Her only mistake was that she really didn't understand - something that I am determined not to go on repeating.

Nothing, though, prepared me for the trauma lurking beyond my father's parents, Jews who emigrated from Germany at the end of the nineteenth century. No one in my shrinking family knows anything of my paternal grandparents. And then it became clear, that my father's entire family must have been wiped out in the Holacaust!

My all too harsh judgements of him have suddenly softened. No wonder, I thought, he did not discuss his religion of birth. (My sister and I were never told that he was Jewish - it was something we surmised from him refusing ever to eat bacon.)

His obsession with appearance and his living denial of his Jewishness were more than likely his subconscious way of shielding my sister and I from any future persecution...

Rather than denying us he was actually protecting us... God bless him!

Noses: the unsung heroines of our anatomy

2006-06-24T22:05:00.000+01:00

After sitting cross-legged for 10 hours at Jill Purce's six day Healing the Ancestors workshop, I pondered my relationship with my breath and wanted a fresh look at the fascinating part the nose plays in my life, so I leafed through:

Donna Farhi's excellent Breathing Book and found this extract:

"We don't usually appreciate the nose until it becomes blocked. We all know how awful it feels to wake up after a night spent propped up on our pillows swallowing for air like a goldfish. The unsung heroine of our anatomy does more for us than sniff out pleasant and unpleasant aromas; the nose prepares the air before it enters the delicate lung tissue so that it is at just the right temperature and humidity. Air drawn into the nose is separated into right and left caverns, and is swirled through nasal hair and along passageways lined with a light blanket of mucous that serves to catch any dust, bacteria, or other tiny particles. The air then enters a three-storied chamber. The brain, eyes and optic nerve are just above the top chamber, the nasal cavity occupies the middle chamber, and the bottom chamber is just above the roof of the mouth. These chambers are called turbinates and the aerodynamics of their curved walls cause the air to swirl round and round, passing over a much greater surface area than it would otherwise. While the air is doing the Viennese Waltz in your turbinates, it is picking up moisture so that it will be at just the right humidity before entering the lungs. By the time the air has passed through these chambers it has also reached body temperature.

We also know that air alternately enters the nose through the left and right nostrils during the course of the day. Blood shifts from one nostril to the other every 90 minutes or so, causing one nostril to open and the other to become congested. Scientific studies show that when the left nostril is open the right hemisphere of the brain is more dominant, activating the more creative feeling side of the mind. When the right nostril is open the left hemisphere of the brain is dominant, facilitating more analytical, rational and intellectual mind activity. Yogis observed this phenomenon thousands of years ago and developed a sophisticated practice called "alternate nostril breathing" or nadi shodhanam, in which they deliberately changed the flow of through the nostrils to balance their psychophysiology. They believed that when the right nostril was open the surya, or sun/heating element, was dominant and that when the left nostril was open the chandra, or moon/cooling element, was dominant. By opening and closing the nostril in varying patterns one could adjust the physiology of our body just like regulating a hot and cold faucet to produce warm water. Although present research on the subject is controversial, many believe that right nostril dominance stimulates the arousal-producing sympathetic nervous system and left nostril dominance elicits the relaxation-producing parasympathetic system. By alternating the flow of air in a regulated way yogis could have been trying to create an equilibrium in the two sides of the autonomic nervous system and a balance between excitation and relaxation."

Healing my ancestors and family

2006-06-23T11:56:00.000+01:00

Have been away for a week or so on a workshop with Jill Purce focussing on healing my ancestors and family...

It was illuminating to say the least - I will try to digest it and write more over the weekend.

Meanwhile, the article above is what I wrote about her for the London Daily Mirror back in February 2002.

17 June - A big breath day for me

2006-06-16T08:17:00.000+01:00

It was 35 years ago tomorrow, that I met my first guru, who introduced me to my breath in a totally uplifting and inspiring way. No longer was it something that I just did automatically.

He taught that becoming aware of it could lift me to a new level of awareness - a plane that I had visited on LSD, mescalin and marijuana. Back from California, I could simply not handle the angst of taking drugs any more, after three years of constant use. So, to move on to a natural high that was wonderfully simple turned despair into hope.

The above is a picture of his arrival at London's Heathrow airport back in 1971; he was just 13 and I was 21. I was in the grips of post-hippie disillusionment, I was a lost boy; and he was Peter Pan.

Since then I have practised the meditation, called the Knowledge, on most days...

I am very grateful to him.

Ancestor struck by lightning

2006-06-15T08:30:00.000+01:00

My wife and I are going on a Healing the family/ancestors retreat tomorrow for a few days.

So I've been asking my surviving relatives about the family - with some interesting results...

My great-grandfather on my mother's side was a chap who liked to gamble and have a drink or three. He relied on his horse to get him home after a night of cards - and that was to be his final undoing as he was struck dead by lightning on the way home one night.

Just what all this means, I hope to discover...

Astounding full moon in Sagittarius

2006-06-12T17:55:00.000+01:00

Taken last night from our back garden...

Breathtaking...

Small but powerful images of decay and death

2006-06-12T06:46:00.000+01:00

I was walking through a field yesterday, feeling the early morning sun and cranking up a measure of joy into my life.

Then I saw this feather and a dead frog, which had not yet become ants' breakfast...

The effect was profound...not depressing...just that it was more important than ever to clarify my thinking about my life...and in that process to follow my bliss by following my breath...

The kindness of the breath

2006-06-11T08:32:00.000+01:00

Returning from my walk after sitting by the river, where some cows came over to check me out, I was struck by the absolute kindness of my breath...

That is comes and goes with incredible efficiency...and looking at the other sentient beings, a funny Buddhist phrase, (I would normally say "cows" but I'm being spiritual this morning), I started to think: "How kind am I?"

How important is kindness in my life?

What difference does it make?

When I feel the kindness of my own breath, I actually realise that kindness is essential...

Sentimental as it sounds, I will be trying to be kind today...with the faith that it will actually make a difference...

breathblog, breathblog

Don't sacrifice the breath for the posture

2006-06-10T21:49:00.000+01:00

Got back into Astanga Vinyasa Yoga with my trusted David Swenson CD this afternoon. I was extremely - unusually so - uncompetitive with myself - and it felt great. And for once listened to the instructions about not sacrificing "the breath for the postures."

It had been something I'd been promising myself for a long while... It's always a good feeling when procrastination comes to an end.

The pic is of Radha, who teaches Ashtanga, in Crete at Yoga Plus. I've been a couple of times, lovely place, great food and a tough but flexible yoga regime...

breathblog, breathblog

Noble conversations and Nightmares

2006-06-10T07:22:00.000+01:00

Woke this morning in the wake of a scary, scary dream... It was centred on some really grim behaviour...but the real sting in the tail was "getting caught" and feeling the terrible shame of being found out. It felt unbearable, but then I woke in a cold sweat.

I then called a mate of mine just before seven o'clock, and we shared our trials and tribulations as we often do of a morning...and the detritus of horror started to clear and then sort of vanished, when it became clear that the dream mirrored my everyday reality and that there were conclusions to be drawn and lessons to be learned....

I'm not taking a deep breath, just posting a tag

2006-06-09T22:12:00.000+01:00

In the great quest for visibility on the Web, I'm informed I should post a tag.

Here goes:

breathblog

And I'll see what happens....

If anybody sees this, I wish you a wonderful weekend....