The Tao of Natural Breathing_ For Health, Well-Being, and Inner Growth - Dennis Lewis [2]
I quickly realized that Chi Nei Tsang—with its penetration into my physical and emotional energies through touch and breathwork—provided a direct, healing pathway into myself, and as I learned more about it through its action on me I soon found myself taking classes from Gilles and even beginning to work on my friends. I also found myself taking classes in healing practices and chi kung, many of which involved special breathing practices, from various Healing Tao teachers, including Master Chia. After more than a year of CNT classes and many hours of clinical practice, I was tested by Master Chia and certified by him to do CNT professionally. And after many Healing Tao classes and retreats, as well as intensive work on myself, I also became certified by Master Chia to teach some of the Healing Tao practices. Since then I have done CNT work both on my own clients and at a Chinese medicine clinic in San Francisco, and have taught ongoing Healing Tao classes and workshops, with a large emphasis on breathing.
As a result of my work with the Healing Tao, as well as with other teachings, such as the Gurdjieff Work and Advaita Vedanta, two facts have become clear to me with regard to the relationship of breath to health and inner growth. First, that our poor breathing habits have arisen not only out of our psychosomatic “ig-norance,” our lack of organic awareness, but also out of our unconscious need for a buffering mechanism to keep us from sensing and feeling the reality of our own deep-rooted fears and contradictions. There is absolutely no doubt that superficial breathing ensures a superficial experience of ourselves. Second, that if we were able to breathe “naturally” for even a small percentage of the more than 15,000 breaths we take during each waking day we would be taking a huge step not only toward preventing many of the physical and psychological problems that have become endemic to modern life, but also toward supporting our own inner growth—the growth of awareness of who and what we really are, of our own essential being. It is my hope that the ideas and practices explored in this book will help make this possible.
INTRODUCTION
A Miracle and a Warning
The process of breathing, of the fundamental movement of inspiration and expiration, is one of the great miracles of existence. It not only unleashes the energies of life, but it also provides a healing pathway into the deepest recesses of our being. To inhale fully is to fill ourselves with the energies of life, to be inspired; to exhale fully is to empty ourselves, to open ourselves to the unknown, to be expired. It is through a deepening awareness of the ever-changing rhythms of this primal process that we begin to awaken our inner healing powers—the energy of wholeness.
To breathe is to live. To breathe fully is to live fully, to manifest the full range and power of our inborn potential for vitality in everything that we sense, feel, think, and do. Unfortunately, few of us breathe fully. We have lost the capability of “natural breathing,” a capability that we had as babies and young children. Our chronic shallow breathing reduces the working capacity of our respiratory system to only about one-third of its potential, diminishes the exchange of gases and thus the production of energy in our cells, deprives us of the many healthful actions that breathing naturally would have on our inner organs, cuts us off from our own real feelings, and promotes disharmony and “dis-ease” at every level of our lives.
What is natural breathing? How would this kind of breathing alter our lives and our health? To answer these questions we must undertake an experimental study of breathing in the laboratory of our own body.