• Awareness,  Potential

    More To Say About Breathing

    More-about-breathing

    There can never be too much to say about breathing. Especially since it takes practice and attention to not leave it behind when we are doing the most mundane things. James Nestor, author of Breath, The New Science of a Lost Art, provided a 30 minute video for the Feldenkrais Summit this past May. I had talked to people about his book, listened to radio interviews and watched some of his YouTube videos. None of them moved me to buy his book, until I watched the summit video. I was intrigued by his explanation of the size and position of the mouth and throat and how over time,…

  • Awareness,  Performance

    Waking up to breath

    Coordinating breathing and swallowing is the first act of coordination that we do as infants. Once that is learned, infants average 30 breaths/minute the first 6 months of life, meaning that infants breathe almost 8 million times by the time they are 6 months old. Pretty amazing! What does that mean for adults? Well, breathing does slow down to 12-20 breaths/minute. If we average 15 breaths/minute, we will have inhaled and exhaled 394 million times by the time we are 50 years old. That is a way larger number than 99+% of us will ever see in our bank accounts. But pretty much we spend more time thinking…