“the evolution of the diaphragm follows uprightness”

8. January 2018
Breathing Science
by Nicola Caroli

To welcome the new year I’d like to share an exchange I had around this time last year with Steve Elliot from Coherence Breathing. Our email correspondence was about the movement of the diaphragm in connection with the upright posture. He’d just sent me the new issue of his online magazine Swan & Stone which had sparked off questions I’d had about this for some time.

 

From: Nicola Caroli [mailto:hallo@nicolacaroli.com] 
Sent: Friday, December 30, 2016 2:56 AM
To: steve.elliott@coherence.com
Subject: Re: Swan & Stone, Volume 1, Issue 15: The Breathing State Of Mind

Dear Stephen,

as always I enjoyed reading your new issue. I have a question to the following statement:
“In September 2010 I asserted the theory that in land dwelling vertebrates, the evolution and sophistication of the diaphragm follows uprightness – the degree to which the head is carried above the chest and the chest is carried above the legs, where the more erect, the more prone the blood is to pooling due to gravity.” Read More

Breath Token December 2017

15. December 2017
Breathwork
by Nicola Caroli

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

Now that we‘re coming to the end of the year, rather than add a new exploration, let‘s revisit a breath excercise that resonated with us, that felt good, brought joy or comfort.
“Airing the armpit” from October or “Sliding the knees” from April are favorites of mine, for example.
Let‘s repeat and sense how something has the same or a different effect. What’s changed and what’s stayed the same? Let’s meet it with acceptance, let’s meet ourselves with acceptance, receiving ourselves as we are.

I wish you all a good transition into the new year. Let’s stay in touch. Let’s be breathed.

 

Initiate or wait?

15. December 2017
Breathwork
by Nicola Caroli

I just spent the weekend in a workshop held by Erika Kemmann, with whom I was lucky enough to do my breath training. Every year, since 2000, she‘s offered a yearly research workshop for breath teachers. In one aspect of the research we explored the importance of the direction of the hands and arm movement in connection with the breath movement.

This really connected to something I‘ve been reflecting on this year: the difference between initiating and waiting. As I was exploring the movements, I realised it‘s not just a choice between waiting and initiating, there can be more steps in between: initiation-invitation-acknowledgement-openness. Read More

Budfish

14. December 2017
Breathwork
by Nicola Caroli

In a breath session I gave this summer, we explored the upper and lower breathing spaces. We began by writing about what we associated with the spaces „above“ and below“. Then we went on to explore those spaces: the lower breathing space by stroking the legs and circulating around the sitting bones, the upper breathing space by stroking the arms and circling round the tip of the sternum. (This is an area that is not often mobilized and can become quite stiff.) After each exploration we wrote down our associations to „above“ and below“. Read More

“…a swinging door, which moves when we inhale and when we exhale.”

16. November 2017
Breathwork
by Nicola Caroli

Last month a young woman came to my breath session for the first time. We began with stroking along the body walls which she found almost immediately emotionally challenging. Touching her own body, getting in touch with herself, triggered sensations akin to a centrifugal trauma. When I asked her if she felt a movement impulse, she said „I want to leave“. I asked her what the next best alternative – provided she wanted to continue the session – would be. She said „to leave the room“. „Ok, let‘s try that“, I said. Read More

Breath Token November 2017

16. November 2017
Breathwork
by Nicola Caroli

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

Accompanying the exhale (base of skull)

The other day I had a headache and I let my head gently hang down and began stroking with my fingertips from the centre of the base of the skull following the curvature to just below the ears. The sense of relief was particularly strong if I stroked out on the exhale while lifting up the head. Read More

“When breath becomes air”

13. November 2017
Breath in Literature & Art
by Nicola Caroli

Maria Popova (for Brainpickings) has written a beautiful introduction to Paul Kalanithi‘s book When Breath Becomes Air.

When Breath Becomes Air: A Young Neurosurgeon Examines the Meaning of Life as He Faces His Death

“When you come to one of the many moments in life where you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world…”

All life is lived in the shadow of its own finitude, of which we are always aware — an awareness we systematically blunt through the daily distraction of living. But when this finitude is made acutely imminent, one suddenly collides with awareness so acute that it leaves no choice but to fill the shadow with as much light as a human being can generate — the sort of inner illumination we call meaning: the meaning of life. Read More

Breath Token October 2017

17. October 2017
Breathwork
by Nicola Caroli

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

Airing the armpit
Let’s open and lift one arm slightly outwards so as to create a space between the armpit and the inside of the arm. Then we release the arm back to the torso. We repeat this as often as we like and then change sides. We can then open and lift both arms to the side at the same time, like a young bird preparing to open its wings. Read More

“Measuring Breath: from cadavers to spirometers”

15. October 2017
Breathing Science
by Nicola Caroli

I‘d like to share another fascinating post from the Life of Breath project blog about spirometers. New Life of Breath post-doctoral researcher Coreen McGuire introduces her research and also shares a link with lots of pictures of historical breath measuring devices.

 Measuring Breath: from cadavers to spirometers
Last seen fleeing the scene of the crime, the suspect was a white male in his mid-40s and was approximately 5’9, of a somewhat stocky build…

This is the way that we describe people when we’re trying to be as accurate as possible. By invoking close approximations of age, height and weight. These are obvious ways to make direct measurements of a person’s body. But what happens if you need to measure something completely apart from these things? What if the thing you want to measure is something intangible, invisible, and intimately personal, like breath? Read More