Category: Allgemein

The experience of the breath will make you open to life.

10. October 2021

I was happy to learn in the Süddeutsche Zeitung that someone dedicated a book to one of the original German somatic practitioners Carola Spitz.

Christoph Ribbat‘s homage to Carola Spitz is called „Die Atemlehrerin“ („The breath teacher“). Unfortunately it is only available in German but we can learn about Carola Spitz’s teaching in her book Ways to Better Breathing.

Here I‘ve pieced together a loosely translated summary of the book review for “Die Atemleherin” by Johan Schloemann.

„The techniques of mindfulness – a positive, concentrated sensing of the self for the wellbeing of body and mind – do not only originate from a commercialized Buddhism in the US. They were also imported by two Jewish emigrants from Berlin who‘d both been students of the German gymnastic teacher Elsa Gindler. Their names were Charlotte Selver and Carola Spitz (who, once in the US changed her surname to Speads for easier pronunciation).

Joe, relax. Breathe easy.

22. July 2021

Allgemein

by Nicola Caroli

I‘ve just re-watched the brilliant crime drama The Wire. In The Wire, the worlds of drug dealers, policemen and women, politicians, school teachers and children, as well as the media people of Baltimore are intertwined in revealing and challenging-to-watch ways. The drug dealers and the politicians drive around in the same cars, albeit through different streets. The crime stats are fluked as much as the school test scores to get the next mayor elected.

Each world is so multi-layered and complex with its themes, its characters and their different codes and languages that you could finish watching The Wire and start all over again straight away.

In season 5, episode 4, aptly called “Transitions”, is a fantastic breathing-cum-execution scene. Proposition Joe, an enterprising gangster who does big business out of his repair shop meets his maker, the top gangster Marlo with his right-hand man Chris.

The night is breathless

26. May 2021

Allgemein, Breath in Literature & Art

by Nicola Caroli

„The night is breathless.“ This line of the poem Hotel Room by Vladimir Nabokov intrigued me. How does the night breathe or not breathe? Does it mean that the air is stifling hot? Or that the night seems to be holding its breath? Or that the night has died?

Breath Token May 2021

3. May 2021

Allgemein, Breathwork

by Nicola Caroli

A breath token is a breathing exploration that I develop for friends & clients and send out as a gift.

In 2021 the breath tokens are about our relation-ship to breathing.
In the current climate, rather than giving an instruction, I feel like taking a step back and formulating an open question instead.

The question for this month is: How do I sense the breath flow? Is it more of an exchange between inside and outside or is it deep in the body, for example?

We can explore the question through touch, movement, sound, writing, drawing… We can explore it any time, anywhere…

If you have any questions or would like to share something with me, please feel free to contact me: hallo@nicolacaroli.com.

Breath Token January 2021

31. January 2021

Allgemein, Breathwork

by Nicola Caroli

A breath token is a breathing exploration that I develop for friends & clients and send out as a gift.

In 2021 the breath tokens are about our relation-ship to breathing.
In the current climate, rather than giving an instruction, I feel like taking a step back and formulating an open question instead.

The question for this month is: How do my lungs feel at this moment?

We can explore the question through touch, movement, sound, writing, drawing… We can explore it any time, anywhere…

If you have any questions or would like to share something with me, please feel free to contact me: hallo@nicolacaroli.com.

Your diaphragm is a back muscle

14. October 2020

Allgemein, Breathwork

by Nicola Caroli

Here’s a great article by Tiffany Turley from Alignment Lab about the function of the diaphragm as a postural muscle, clearly outlined and with an exercise video at the end. The aptly named Alignment Lab have a great body work approach, combining Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilisation and Yoga Therapy.

“When you think of your diaphragm you probably think of it as something that helps you breath and not much more than that. But your diaphragm is actually one of your major back muscles! Because of its attachments to the spine, ribs and sternum, the diaphragm is integral in supporting the joints and disks of the back and in keeping your spinal column upright and stable.

Breathing with a block

16. June 2020

Allgemein, Breathwork

by Nicola Caroli

I’d like to share with you this hands-on video by Athletic Therapist and Fascia Master Deanne Hanson. She goes into great detail about the connection of the diaphragm to posture, circulation, digestion, detoxification and body temperature. Deanne Hanson is the inventor of Block Therapy and, in this video, she demonstrates how to use the block for stimulating the breath movement.

(Just as a note, the demonstration of “correct ” breathing shows isolated belly breathing, maybe to make the difference between upper & lower body breathing more easily recognisable. It’s not a demonstration of the natural three-dimensional breath wave.)

Bats, our mammalian friends

13. April 2020

Allgemein

by Nicola Caroli

Bats have gotten particularly bad press lately, so I‘m devoting my April blog posts to our mammalian friends.

Yes, bats are mammals and we, as humans are actually „more closely related to bats than we are to dogs, cows or whales.“ says Clint Witchalls in the academic journal The Conversation. „Bats are the most unusual of the world’s 26 mammal orders, or large groups, such as rodents and carnivores. They are the only land mammals that navigate by echolocation, and the only mammals capable of true flight.“

Bats are not only unique in the mammal family but, unlike ourselves, a keystone species. „Bats are key-role players in insect consumption and keeping insect populations in balance, pollinating flowers and dispersing plant seeds. They sustain whole ecosystems from rainforests to deserts; they live on remote Pacific islands to the Andes.“ says bat expert Merlin Tuttle in an article for National Geographic. „One bat can catch over 1,000 mosquito-sized insects in a single hour. … Without bats we could be buried in pests. They are critically important to the ecosystem and if we would let them, they would help us reduce our dependence upon pesticides by controlling crop pests.

I don’t know of any group that is more fascinating or diverse. They’ve been around since the age of dinosaurs; they were here tens of millions of years before there was ever a human on the planet.“

Breath Token March 2020

16. March 2020

Allgemein, Breathwork

by Nicola Caroli

A breath token is a breathing exploration that I develop for friends & clients and send out as a gift.
In 2020 the breath tokens are about connecting breath and sound.

Sounding „E“

Let‘s begin with sensing where we have contact: on the chair, or on the floor, for example. We sense the weight of our body, letting it sink towards the ground. Let‘s stroke along the body walls to fully arrive in our body and its boundaries. We can accompany the stroking with gentle humming, moving the mouth.

Let’s now explore imagining, shaping, speaking and sounding an “E”. We repeat the exploration three times or as often as we like.

Breath Token August 2019

15. August 2019

Allgemein, Breathwork

by Nicola Caroli

A breath token is a breathing exploration that I develop for friends & clients and send out as a gift.

Holding the shoulder to calm down
I read more and more about breathing techniques and how they‘re supposed to help with regulating ourselves, usually calming down or being alert.

We don‘t need a breathing technique for either. I‘d like to propose a simple touch that has a calming effect without unneccessarily interfering with the self-regulatory breathing mechanism. (This is just one example, there are countless other possibilities)