In his Audio CD „Natural Breathing“, Dennis Lewis talks about his personal discovery of natural breathwork. He gives a succinct, measured and accessible explanations about how breathing works and includes introductory breath explorations. I’ve been listening to his CD for a couple of years now and never get tired of his measured and thoughtful language and tone of voice. He makes several statements about doing breathing exercises that are key and I‘d like to share one of them with you:
„To reclaim the natural, authentic breathing that is our birthright, simply doing breathing exercises is not enough. Let me repeat that: doing breathing exercises, however wonderful they are, is not enough. We also need to begin a process of re-education of our perception. Without this re-education the exercises that we undertake will, at best, have little influence on our lives and, at worst, will cause new problems. This re-education involves not only a process of deep inner self-sensing but also a new way of thinking. Now there are some who will try to tell us that since breathing is experiential we don‘t need to think about it, that, in fact, thinking will just confuse things. This is clearly not correct, at least not based on what I found. Our thinking is part of our experience of living. The way we think or don‘t think about something – the associations and images we entertain in our mind – can have a powerful influence on our actions and our perceptions and, I might add, on our breath.“
Source: Dennis Lewis, Sounds True Incorporated, 2005