East: Air, – Every breath a new beginning.
Greeting the Four Directions
To start (this exercise), take a few deep breaths and then let your breath return to its natural, relaxed rhythm.
Sherzad Chamine, Founder/CEO – Positive Intelligence Inc.
All of us, always, everywhere. Waking, sleeping, breathing, with the name of God on our lips.
Sandra Thurman Caporale
When, according to tradition, Moses had the nerve to ask God what her name was, God graciously answered that the name was YHWH, as was recorded in the original Hebrew.
Over time we’ve arbitrarily added an `a´ and an `e´, resulting in `YaHWeH´, presumably to improve the legibility by means of the vowels.
Down through the ages, scholars and teachers have noted that the letters YHWH represent breathing sounds, or aspirated consonants. When pronounced without intervening vowels, it actually sounds like breathing.
YH (inhale): WH (exhale). Try it yourself!
So, when we let out our first neonatal cry, we are speaking the name of God. Or conversly, God is ever-present in each present moment of all living beings; this realisation requires only our conscious participation in this present moment.
My attention was first drawn to conscious breathing many years ago when, in an effort to strengthen my sense of embodiment, I first began to work out in the local gym. My trainer became exasperated because, instead of taking a deep breath before a moment of exertion, I would hold mine in.
It took quite some practise to reverse the bad habit. On reflection, it occurred to me that holding my breath was an attempt to hide the fact that exertion was at play, as if there were some payback of safety or protection in keeping the exertion hidden. Something in me was convinced that if I could always appear unperturbed and `in control´, there was less chance of being attacked. Associations of a childhood full of noise and fierce competition rose to the surface in this context.
The trouble was, of course, that I was not in control and lived in the fear of those things beyond my control, like the nightly panic attacks over several years in the pre-teen phase, or the fear of physical pain brought about by peers or older children.
Shallow breathing also became the norm, and is often at play even today, despite much breathwork experience in a variety of workshops and retreats over the years. Only when I consciously pay attention to my breathing, does it reach fully down to my diaphragm. I may make a decision to breath consciously today and find, three minutes later that I have become completely derailed in my intention. Whereas in the past I might have believed the judge saboteur telling me that there was no point in even trying, today I simply reset and start again.
There is no getting away from breathing. In sadness, we breathe heavy sighs. In joy, our lungs feel almost like they will burst. In fear we hold our breath; we are helped when we are told to breathe slowly and deeply to help us calm down. When we’re about to do something hard, we take a deep breath to find our courage.
These last few weeks, my participation in the Positive Intelligence (PQ) programme hosted by Shirzad Chamine, have been very fruitful in this respect. Shirzad refers to a multitude of body-based practices as PQ Reps. These include wriggling one’s toes, feeling into the soles (souls?) of our feet, high-definition visual exercise and conscious breathing. The label PQ Rep echoes the `reps´ one does when working out in the gym.
The idea is that such exercises strengthen the brain muscle in the right side of the brain, the seat of empathy, exploration, innovation, navigation, and activation which, in turn, helps deflate the forces of ego, resident in the left cerebral hemisphere and manifested in what he calls saboteurs, such as the Judge, the Controller, the Stickler, to mention just three of a total of ten. Constant repetition of these PQ Reps on a daily basis is required to achieve sustainable weakening of the saboteurs such that the probability of me getting hijacked by their force is kept to a minimum. The hijacking, or derailment, takes place especially in situations that I experience as stressful.
The two-pronged approach is therefore to keep as fit as possible by means of regular PQ Reps and, by agency born of focused discernment, where necessary, working through what Jung referred to as `the shadow´, i.e., self defeating habitual reactions to current situations which have their roots in – originally successful but now both defunct and counter-productive – survival strategies drawn up in childhood. Past experiences can still cast a shadow on today’s interactions if they remain in the unseen. They can be brought to light and, in gratitude, relinquished. This is often achieved by means of psychotherapy and body therapies, many of which have been developed over the past forty years.
Despite all that is currently going on in the world, we live in a Golden Age of healing and recovery. The ancient wisdom of the expansion of consciousness had been re-formulated in each new generation since the dawn of human existence. I admire how it has been laid out by Sherzad Chamine and his team in language which is inclusive and accessible.
Also, since the advent of psychotherapy almost 150 years ago, great strides have been made in neuroscience and associated imaging technologies, and behavioural psychology, resulting in a swathe of innovative, mostly body-based therapies to help us work through and transform the personal and collective baggage each of us carries.
The combination of the message and these easily applied tools and methodologies is very powerful. Where these two streams meet, we will always find the breath. Ours is the opportunity to apply these gifts of the cumulative, collective human experience, one breath at a time, in the creation of a New World which is more reflective of our positive potential than what we are manifesting right now.
