Welcome to Body Breath Intelligence
My goal is to help people regain mastery over their lives by promoting a better understanding of how the mind and body are connected and interact with one another. Through a process of guiding and watching both the breath and the mind, we can naturally restore harmony and balance to our bodies. These practices and tools, which access the internal wisdom of our bodies, help us to achieve:
- Improved Focus, Concentration, and Attention Span
- A Calmer Mind and More Resilience to Stress
- Elevated Sense of Balance and Wellness
- Improved Quality of Sleep
- Reduced Onset and Endurance of Breathlessness
- More energy and stamina
- Greater resiliency to sickness from airborne pathogens
Moreover, many of the benefits of harmonizing our bodies and breath are being studied and verified through numerous research projects and clinical trials. That is, the power of breathwork described in the ancient wisdom schools is being corroborated by current theories of respiratory physiology.
What do you want to make of your life?
As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, First Part
Breath is the link between mind and body
Dan Brulé
We spend much of our time either actively engaged in thinking or maybe just lost in unconscious thought. At times we may not even be aware of what it is that we are thinking about or even why. The thoughts just seem to bubble up out of “nowhere”. We may even assign value to these unbidden thoughts and begin to believe that they define who we are. However, it is good to remember that we are far greater than what we think. Our mind is a powerful tool, but it is not who we are. So, who are we? What makes us tick?
To more readily live up to our potential and achieve the goals that we have set before ourselves, we can begin by acknowledging and embracing an understanding that there is an organic connection between mind and body and spirit. Moreover, there are explicit methods, which can help us tap into the inherent wisdom of our system. Whether we call these methods science-based approaches to modern problems or living congruently with ancient teachings or simply “life hacks”, the important question to ask yourself is this: do they work for you? Take a chance. Trust yourself. Remember that you are the master of your fate. You are the captain of your soul.
Integrating Body and Breath
You may be wondering: How is our breathing related to the health and well-being of our bodies? How can one affect the other? How can an activity as routine as breathing be so powerful? To address these questions let’s briefly consider a bit of physiology and what we will refer to as the body’s innate internal intelligence. The human body is a remarkably resilient organism. We are able to adapt to a daily barrage of environmental changes, which could potentially disrupt our physical, mental, and emotional balance. To cope with this, the body has evolved elaborate regulatory mechanisms to help maintain equilibrium within our respiratory system, blood chemistry, heart rate, mental state, and other physiological functions. The body continually monitors the relationship between itself and its immediate environmental conditions, assesses appropriate biological responses, and then initiates reactions as needed. Largely this progression of events occurs in the background without our conscious awareness. It is governed by the body’s innate internal intelligence, which helps regulate the physiological functions designed to maintain balance and equilibrium. A central and critical player in the balancing process is the breath.
Breathwork and the Body: A Perfect Balance
The breath has been described as a gateway to the autonomic nervous system, which regulates our involuntary physiological processes. If we had to actively will our hearts to beat, our breathing to occur, our eyes to see, and so forth, it would have been “game over” for us right from the start. We can be grateful for our autopilot system, which regulates our vital processes. Since breath is a critical component of our autopilot system, and since we can take active control over our breathing, through breathwork, we can consciously intervene in how our body functions. That is, through breathwork, we can take control over our lives to improve our health, well-being, and mental clarity.