Jack Angelo - Self-Healing with Breathwork: Using the Power of Breath to Increase Energy and Attain Optimal Wellness

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Gill Bailey, for her constant encouragement and guidance during the creation of the book; my editors Claudia Dyer and Charlotte Ridings, for further creative guidance, and the whole Piatkus team; Jan Angelo, for her creative input and patient review of the manuscript; and my teaching students and workshop participants over the years, who have made so many positive contributions to the creation of this manual of self-healing. I would also like to thank all those involved in the editing and preparation of the excellent U.S. version of the book.

List of Exercises

Note: All the breathing exercises provided in this book may be practiced alone, but if you have any kind of respiratory problems or breathing allergies, or are undergoing any form of medical treatment, you should consult your medical practitioner before you proceed. The exercises should not be used for purposes other than those specified. No more than three exercises should be practiced in any one session.

What We Once Knew: A History of the Breath

Breathing: Back to Basics

Breathing and Subtle Energies

Breathing and Polarity

Breathing to Counter Stress

Breathing and Meditation

The Healing Breath

Your Breathing Day

The Breathing Voice: Vocalizing the Sacred

Your Breathing Environment and the Sacred

List of Illustrations

Introduction

THE FUTURE HAS ARRIVED

In the 1930s, the inspired mystic and healer Alice Bailey warned that centuries of cultural conditioning, and especially social and psychological conditioning, have created large populations of spiritually dysfunctional people who struggle to realize their full potential and discover who they really are. The solution to these problems, Alice Bailey predicted, would be the widespread use of carefully designed breathing exercises, with their ability to reorganize and readjust a persons energetic constitution and so bring about self-healing. Self-Healing with Breathwork announces that that future has arrived!

THE HEALING POWER OF THE BREATH

We all breathe all the time. Breathing is that simple. Yet the secret of life and healing, contained within the breath, is almost always remote from our everyday awareness. Being aware of a persons breathing has always been an integral part of my healing practice, and it has been a large focus in my work with groups. As a practitioner, I sense how the availability of the healing life force to another person is enhanced through conscious breathing. Further, the availability of the healing life force is proportional to a persons awareness of the sacred source of energy within the breath. This is crucial for our own healing and for those with whom we may work. The special techniques presented in Self-Healing with Breathwork offer you the opportunity to strengthen your link with the sacred life force through the breath. The natural side effects will be healing on all levels of your being, enhanced good health, energetic balance, a new self-awareness, heightened consciousness, and the ability to help others. You will have discovered that the secret of life and healing is the breath.

REMEMBERING THE BREATH OF LIFE

The window where I write looks out on a lake, with a mountain rising up behind it. Today, there is a commotion down in the car park. People are laughing and chatting together, shaking hands, and donning boots. Once a month, a group of walkers meets here for a hike into the mountains. A man stands up and thumps his chest. Smell that mountain air! he exclaims, and the women laugh. My attention is drawn to a bent figure, leaning on a stone wall and watching them from a distance. I recognize the outline; it is Charlie, a friend for over twenty years.

When I first moved to South Wales in the early 1980s, Charlie showed me the mountain walks and pathways. He was a retired miner, broad and strong, with keen brown eyes that studied you from under the peak of his cap. In those days, Charlies labored breath was just becoming noticeable. Its my chest, hed mutter, grinning as if hed at last met up with the miners traditional adversaryemphysema. Charlie would talk about his days underground and how miners valued fresh air. There was nothing like the first breath when they came up from the pit. On our walks together, Charlie savored the scents of the mountain: the smell of the sheep, a rotting carcass, a bank of heather, the tang of iron in a rushing stream.

Now, twenty years later, Charlies breath comes in gasps. A few steps exhaust him with the effort of breathing. On this sunny spring day, with the help of a stick, he makes it to a gate to watch the walkers set off on their hike. I treasure my walks with Charlie. Without saying anything, he reminds me how nature calls us to embrace the breath of life as it comes to us, unconditionally.

THE BREATH OF UNITY

The breath carries the life force, so the breath is our moment-by-moment connection with the source of life and all healing energieswhich can be called the Source, or God. Through the simple and natural act of breathing we can become more aware of this breath of unity and open ourselves to the flow of healing energies. This is why conscious, mindful breathing is integral to self-healing and all other forms of therapy.

Breathing is our moment-by-moment link with life itself. When we breathe we take in the energy of our surroundings, as well as physical substances such as air, so that breathing is an interaction between our inner emotional, mental, and spiritual selves and our surroundings. Thus, just as it affects our physical body, our breathing also affects the emotional, mental, and spiritual aspects of ourselves. Therefore it is vital that we know how to breathe effectively at all levels of our being. The first step in self-healing through conscious breathing is to become aware of the breath as a function of our connection with the Source. This book will show you how the breath is our pathway to well-being, to balance, to mental clarity, to the absence of stress, and to a deep awareness of the gift of life.

Over centuries, as the words and concepts relating to the breath and breathing were absorbed by Western cultures, they became adapted to suit various religious and philosophical agendas. Consequently, today there is some confusion about the meaning of many of these terms. In English, for example, the word spirit can refer to the individual soul as well as one aspect of the Christian triune vision of the Source: the holy Spirit. In addition, spirit is defined as the force that animates the body of a living being. For the sake of clarity, in this book, Spirit (with a capital S) signifies an aspect of the Source while the term spirit (with a lowercase s) refers to the animating energy of the Source. This book includes a glossary elaborating on certain terms and phrases that may either be unfamiliar or have a meaning unique to this book.

LESSONS IVE LEARNED ABOUT THE BREATH AND BREATHING

We dont have to remind our body to breathe; if something prevents us from breathing, our brain alerts us to take steps to breathe. In my years as a healer and practitioner of natural spirituality and shamanism, I have discovered that this necessity to breathe and to join with all other living, breathing beings in this way can be a basis for finding meaning in life itself.