Tag: breath

Breathing “elastically”

15. September 2019
Breathwork
by Nicola Caroli

In the German lifestyle magazine Carpe Diem,breath teacher Norbert Faller spoke with Nicole Kolisch about breathing „elastically“ in a given situation.

“Are you breathing „elastically“ in a given situation?
A few questions to something that should be a matter of course, but isn‘t.

Carpe Diem: Mr Faller, you are a breath teacher. Of course, the obvious question is, why should I learn to breathe? Can‘t I do that already?

Norbert Faller: We wouldn‘t live – none of us – if we couldn‘t. Most people who are born healthy, breathe reasonably well. But there are conditions in life that can lead to the loss of something actually quite intuitive that is self-regulated by the body. This can have many causes: monotonous movements or lack of exercise, poor posture, tension, stress, mental problems, sometimes it is also due to certain thoughts that „take our breath away“. There are also environmental influences (allergies) or smoking.

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Are you a breath bully?

15. July 2019
Breathwork
by Nicola Caroli

I just discovered a blog post by master breath teacher Dennis Lewis from 2012 called “Don’t bully your breath”. What a great way of naming what we do when we unnecessarily employ the breath with breathing techniques. In attitude, it really is no different from domineering and messing someone around in the playground. Except, we’re doing it to ourselves.

Breathing techniques were developed by people who led exceptionally disciplined lives and practiced mental, emotional and physical strength, flexibility and hygiene on a moment-to-moment basis.

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Breath Token June 2019

15. June 2019
Breathwork
by Nicola Caroli

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

I‘m travelling this weekend and as I lay in the hotel bed in the evening, I started to open out my arms and then fold them over my chest. The movement was very fluid and, the longer I did it, it felt like the movement of breathing itself: opening and closing, expanding and narrowing. It was very satisfying and so I‘d like to offer it here as a breath token.   

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Breath sweeps mind

14. March 2019
Breathwork
by Nicola Caroli

Breath sweeps mind is the title of a series of talks on meditation by Zen master Jakusho Kwong-roshi. In the first talk he explains how he came to this title: 

„Over twenty years ago…I drew my first Ensō. An Ensō is – you‘ve seen them before -one of these Zen circles…dipping the brush into the ink and feeling its texture, the thickness and thinness of the ink and as soon as you lift the brush off the ink pad, painting in the air with the tip of your brush and letting it rest on the rice paper and swiftly holding the point straight and making the circle. And after I finished it I decided to put these words inside the circle Breath sweeps mind. Unkowingly – my hand knew it and the brush knew it – but I didn‘t know what the meaning of that was exactly until over these many years I‘ve come to know it more thoroughly.“  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

A divinatory lung diagnosis by slime mould

12. October 2017
Breath Diary
by Nicola Caroli

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

Ghost

2. October 2017
Breath Diary
by Nicola Caroli

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

„Asthma became part of his art – if indeed his art did not create it.“ 

15. July 2017
Breath in Literature & Art
by Nicola Caroli

In his post „Writing and Breathing: Proust and Beckett“, Mark Bowles draws parallels between how Proust‘s asthma, Walter Benjamin‘s heart palpitations and Beckett‘s breathlessness are embodied within their writing styles. He himself was inspired by an essay called „Beckett‘s atmospheres“ by Prof. Steven Connor, Professor of English in the University of Cambridge.

“And what I’m doing, all-important, breathing in and out and saying, with words like smoke, I can’t go on, I can’t stay, let’s see what happens next.”  (Beckett, „Texts for Nothing“) Read More