NICOLA CAROLI | – Page 9

Breath Token October 2021

5. October 2021

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

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

The question for this month is: When do I need to take a break?
A pause in breathing is part of the natural breath cycle at rest. By taking a break, stopping, pausing in our daily lives we can mirror this natural pause. It’s really about finding out in what situation, at what time or in what way I can take a break so that it feels easy and comes naturally.

A way to eat air

29. September 2021

Breathing Science

by Nicola Caroli

When it first came out in 2020, James Nestor‘s book Breath -The New Science of a Lost Art shot to the New York Times Bestseller List.

Breath gives an overview of different breathing methods through study, self-exploration, and scientific testing. The journalist James Nestor travels the world to research the story about how diverse ancient and more contemporary breathing methods like Tibetan Summo, Buteyko, and Holotropic Breathing, for example, came into being and tests their efficacy.

It‘s all money and smoke, that‘s what they eat and breathe.

19. September 2021

Breath in Literature & Art

by Nicola Caroli

After I’d had a tooth extracted last week I spent time watching my favourite films and series. One of those is the BBC dramatization of Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel North & South (1855).

Margaret Hale, a young woman from the South moves with her family to a town called Milton in the industrial North after her father leaves the clergy, on a matter of “conscience”. This is incomprehensible to his wife, Mrs Hale, who struggles to come to terms with the local customs, environs, and bad air quality. Shortly after the move, her health worsens and she succumbs to respiratory disease.

Deep peace of the flowing air to you

9. September 2021

Breath Diary

by Nicola Caroli

Last year I took part in a poetry chain mail, sharing poems that help us through difficult times. My friend Mina Haeri, an acupuncturist in London, kindly contributed the following Gaelic blessing:

Deep peace of the running wave to you
Deep peace of the flowing air to you
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you
Deep peace of the shining stars to you
Deep peace of the gentle night to you
Moon and stars pour their healing light on you

Breath Token September 2021

7. September 2021

Breathwork

by Nicola Caroli

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

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

The question for this month is: What makes me glad? This is an invitation to sense how gladness expresses itself in the body and the breath.

AIR

31. August 2021

Breath Diary

by Nicola Caroli

In the great documentary The Last Dance about basketball legend Michael Jordan and The Chicago Bulls, there‘s a moment when we see Michael Jordan driving away in a red sports car. The licence plate reads „AIR“. „Air“ or „His Airness“ were synonyms for Michael Jordan, relating to his game where at times he seemed to be airborne, in the air as if he could fly.

I feel like I can‘t trust myself

26. August 2021

Breath Diary

by Nicola Caroli

Yesterday I was at a grrrl gang open mike event in Berlin and met a young woman named Bella.

I‘m currently collecting questions about breathing and after chatting for a while I asked her if she had a question for me. Rather than asking a straightforward question, Bella told me that she has a heart condition and that is very sensitive to the influence of internal and external stress because her heart immediately reacts. She tried to describe how she felt about being in her body, the experience and the knowledge of her heart not working properly and not being there for her the way it naturally would be. „I feel like I can‘t trust myself“, she said. Her body needed a backup plan, a pacemaker that took over when her heart couldn‘t regulate itself.

How to breathe yourself thin?

17. August 2021

Breathing Science

by Nicola Caroli

When physicist and „surfing scientist“ Ruben Meerman saw a photo of himself surfing with his belly bulging out, he was determined to lose some weight. And this brought him to ask himself, as a scientist, how that actually works. What causes weight loss? Where does the weight go when you lose weight?

In this Ted x talk he speaks about his in-depth study of the correlation between the gases we breathe and diminishing fat deposits. Did you know that it takes an hour of breathing at rest to metabolize an apple, whereas it takes 7 hours to metabolize a piece of cake? As well as fun facts like these, this talk is a fascinating look at what goes on in our bodies when faced with food and how it relates to our breathing.

Breath Token August 2021

5. August 2021

Breathwork

by Nicola Caroli

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

In 2021 the breath tokens are about our relationship 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 connect breath with touch?
Is there a connection for me at all, and, if so, what’s that like? Or is this something yet to be discovered?

I wanted a sieve, a mask (…) to breathe through

1. August 2021

Breath in Literature & Art

by Nicola Caroli

“I knew I was breathing the expelled breath of everything
that was alive and I couldn’t stand it,
I wanted a sieve, a mask, a, I hate this word — a cheesecloth —
to breathe through that would trap it — whatever was inside everyone else that entered me when I breathed in.”

This is an excerpt from the poem Magdalene — The Seven Devils, part of the volume of poetry Magdalene in which Marie Howe re-envisions the biblical Mary Magdalene in modern time. Like Magdalene in the bible, the modern Magdalene is plagued by an incomprehensible mix of anxiety, guilt, shame, and the many different emotional responses that the concept of sin evoke in her.

Being a woman, her sin is sexual and defined for her by the church fathers and biblical authors alike. Both the idea of sin itself and the idea that sexuality can be a sin at all create a separation from one’s body, the soft animal that breathes naturally.