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With every breath you are giving yourself the opportunity to return to yourself.

“In the breath that I am, I am always new.”
—Mary Burmeister
A life is defined by breath.
You take your first breath when you’re born, and your last the moment you die.

A core concept that forms the foundation of Jin Shin Jyutsu, is that breath is the basic expression of the life energy.  The breath is the simplest and most perfect of all the tools we have at our convenience.  It can be used at any waking moment to enhance and balance the life energy, so that we can enter the realm from which harmony and healing flow.  It is the first tool for relaxing the body and removing blockages.  With every exhalation, we release piled up stresses, physical tension, and FEAR (False Evidence Appearing Real).  Deep exhalation empties us so that we can receive more fully the next inhalation and its life giving energy.  All we need at any moment is to exhale deeply, and allow the new breath to enter our body naturally.  Now the life energy can move more fluidly through our system.  Inhale and exhale is a constant cycle of transformation. It is the process by which energy becomes matter and matter to energy.

CA_bigstock_lavender_39864757OPTThose times when a person breathes poorly indicate poor health and low energy. We need to fully exhale and inhale otherwise disharmony develops then disease.  This is particularly true after any stressful event, or a physical or psychological trauma, which produces a shock that causes most of us to hold our breath and lock it.  Breath is abundant unless we get scared.  When we have fear the first thing affected is breath.  Stress shuts off our systems.  This then jams the life force, keeping the breath from flowing properly through the body, and energy becomes stagnant producing disharmony on multiple levels.

The brain is the ultimate homeostatic regulator of the entire organism, and it needs breath.  Poor breathing can result in poor performance, childhood learning disabilities, dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease.  If the breath isn’t deep and doesn’t reach completely into the diaphragm, the toxins in the bloodstream aren’t being transferred over to the outgoing breath for release, and this can cause a great deal of trouble in the brain, because its functioning depends upon its receiving a proper blood supply and oxygen.

Breath is the means by which you are connected to the universe.  Without the breath, there would be no consciousness.  The breath builds and repairs the structure of the physical body, and it maintains a balance between the building material and the waste matter that can’t otherwise be removed.  You can gauge the essential nature of breath by the fact that you can live without food for a number of weeks, without drink for a few days, but without air, you can only live a few minutes.  You cannot abandon breathing as long as you are alive.

We can be refreshed and enlivened by the breath, ‘the purified essence of life’.  The life energy that surrounds us and permeates the universe is always available to us in the form of breath.  There is no scarcity of the life energy.  It is the most available of all natural resources.  So we always have available the power to transform our lives and our world.CA_bigstock-girl-28925150OPT

What that means is that you have the capacity to bring your conscious intelligence to your breathing, to receive more of the life force into your body.  The more you receive, the more you have to give.  Breathing represents your best opportunity to regulate and maximize the all-important flow of the vital life force in your body and your life.  And breathing, especially in challenging situations, allows you the opportunity to find your center in order to give a mindful response, instead of an instant reaction.  Opportunity and responsibility, you owe it to yourself to breath well.

Learn to breathe deeply and well and, above all, breathe in a loving way.  Breath anchors us in the present moment.  It is ultimate healing.  As we all breathe together, we become one in thought and being.