In my last post Capturing Breath Bubbles,I wrote about a workshop with Jayne Wilton at the „Catch your breath“ exhibition. Part of the workshop was a global engagement art project by Jeppe Hein, called Breathe with me.
The participants and browsing visitors were invited to paint one brushstroke with an exhale on a large paper canvas. One after another, the visitors took the brush from the ink pot and painted a line down the paper.
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At the beginning of May I attended a talk at the Berlin Volksbühne by iconic feminist writer Hélène Cixous. It was fascinating to see how this tiny woman in her eighties filled the stage and held the undivided attention of the audience just by speaking, by the sheer energy of her thinking. Two quotes stayed with me in particular and one of them involves breathing:
“The past must no longer determine the future.”
“We inspire ourselves and expire without losing the breath.”
I would like to share a poem by Marie Howe called „Prayer“.
In a nutshell, it‘s about intimacy, about relation-ship. In the poem, Marie Howe finds words for the breathlessness, the relentless restlessness that stems from a deep fear of connecting to oneself and others.
I discovered the poem by chance online and after reading it a couple of times I realised I didn‘t understand it. So I read it out to several friends and was lucky to have an exchange with Almuth who helped me find my way into the poem. In retrospect I‘m baffled what I didn‘t understand, a bit like with riding a bicycle. Marie Howe also had „help“ with writing her poem „Prayer“, she was inspired by the 12th century mystic Ibn Arabi. So thanks to him, to Almuth, and to Marie Howe, always.
I‘ve included Ibn Arabi‘s poem and my conversation with Almuth in the post.
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I recently got to know the humanist and existentialist psychologist Rollo May (1909 – 1994) in a post by Brain Pickings. Rollo May was especially interested in the themes of freedom, courage and creativity. “Freedom”, he said, “is the capacity to pause in the face of stimuli from many directions at once and, in this pause, to throw one’s weight toward this response rather than that one. The person becomes able to say, “I can” or “I will”.”
The pause also plays a major part in breathing. It’s one of the three breath phases: inhale – exhale – pause. The pause occurs naturally, at rest, when air has left the body with an exhale and before air comes back into the body with an inhale. Read More
In my teaching process I focus on ways to enable people to find out for themselves what helps them with their breathing. Trying to put that into writing the other day, I formulated „find out what works for you, what‘s helpful for you and what inspires you.“ And I thought, hang on a minute, why only „inspires“? It could equally be „expires“.
„Expire“ etymologically means “to breathe out”, from ex– „out“ and spirare „to breathe.
To „expire“ used to be synonymous with dying, the last breath marking the end of life. In a way, each exhale or expiration, marking the end of one breath cycle, metaphorically stands for the end of a whole life cycle.
Last month I went to the opera „The dead city“ by Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1920) in which breath and absence of breath, as signifiers of life and death, played a major part. Let me first tell you the story: A man, Paul, in his grief over the death of his wife Marie, takes a mistress called Marietta, who, in many ways, resembles the deceased Marie. He is unable to accept that death has taken Marie away from him – and wishes for Marietta, a dancer full of joie de vivre, to embody Marie. She, at first, plays along, accepting this as another role, wearing Marie‘s clothes and posing next to the countless photographs of Marie placed all over the bedroom. Read More
I recently re-discovered the song Breathe by Pink Floyd on the album The Dark Side of the Moon. As a teenager, I practically knew the record by heart. That is, I knew the lyrics but didn’t think about what they might mean. On the website song meanings, I found an interesting range of comments on the possible interpretations…
Today, being interested in breathing, the line that strikes me is “Don’t be afraid to care”. When I’m afraid, I can immediately notice it in my breathing and my breathing, in turn, reacts to me being afraid. And thinking about the moments when I’m afraid, more often than not, it is about caring. Read More
Last month I participated in the Connection Project at Mirabellenhof in Biesenthal, Barnim. The theme of the workshop was “Imbolc”, the celtic spring festival. At Imbolc people celebrate the phase in nature where everything is preparing for the coming spring in the earth, even if it’s hardly visible above the earth, except, for example, in a snowdrop or a winter rose.
Last weekend I went to the workshop SWARM | CELL | CITY by Heather Barnett at Art Laboratory as part of their exhibition “Nonhuman Networks”. Heather is an artist who works with slime mould. As an introduction she gave a presentation about slime mould: how it behaves, how it moves, how it communicates, in what conditions it thrives or withers, and what it likes or dislikes. We learnt, for example, that slime mould likes to eat oats and doesn’t like salt. Even though slime mould, as an amoeba, has no central nervous system or organs, it displays the same intelligent behavior as other living beings. Read More
In this image of a wolf howling, one can see the visible shape of the warm air coming from inside the wolf‘s body meeting with the cold atmospheric air.
The reason we can see the air, is because the moisture contained in the air, from the moist environment of the airways, takes longer to evaporate in cold air than in warm air. In the window of time it takes for the moisture to evaporate, we can see the breath. But it seems to be more than moisture and an amalgamation of trace gases emanating from the wolf‘s throat. The fleeting but distinct shape hovering above its raised muzzle conjures up a ghost-like presence. The word „breath“ is indeed related to the word „ghost“; etymologically „ghost“ is rooted in the Old English gast, „breath, good or bad spirit… and the Old German Geist, „spirit, ghost“. Interstingly, they are presumed to stem from the PIE root gheis-, used in forming words involving the notions of excitement, amazement, or fear, emotions and states that are palpably connected with breathing.
Source: http://www.etymonline.com
