April Breath & Breathing report by Dan Brule

A bright golden moon is already rising over the Sea of Cortez and soon it will be coming into full view over the small mountain that sits between the farm and the east coast of the Baja Peninsula. The stars are on notice that they will have serious competition tonight. Some of them are already being out-shined, and others are quickly fading from sight.

 

A fox just walked through the orchard. She stopped and stared at me and the glow of my laptop screen for a long moment. She must be on her way home to feed her little ones: there was a mole and something else hanging limp from her jaws.

 

It is late night. I am up in the hopes of confronting some wild pigs that have visited us two nights in a row. I think they've set their sights (and noses) on the watermelons and cantaloupes popping up in the new gardens. Last year, while I was away, they ate up the entire crop of melons in one night. (No wonder they are called pigs!) Yesterday we started covering some of the tomatoes with screen netting, to make them less inviting to all the birds that seem to think that we planted them just for their delight!

 

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I guess I am not a serious farmer, or maybe I am just not very attached to the fruits of my labor, because it's really a delight to observe the play of nature here. Since there is such abundance, and because life is always giving us exactly what we want and need, this competition over the goodies in the garden is not so much a matter of survival as it is a game, a lesson, an experiment in balance, harmony, and resourcefulness the play of peaceful coexistence.

 

 

It's been almost three weeks since I returned from Russia and Kazakhstan. It's been a time of harvesting seeds: lettuce, sunflower, broccoli, basil, nasturtium, peas, corn, and others. We've been drinking chamomile, peppermint, and lemon grass tea; and we ate the first papaya this week planted last June so it was exactly nine months from seed to fruit. Amazing! We also ate the first bunch of bananas, and the strawberries are coming up faster than we can eat them!

 

Tomorrow we will irrigate the "prana gardens.” Trino closed the gates on the dam in El Chorro earlier today, and so pure water flowing down from the Sierra Laguna Mountains is building up behind the dam. Tomorrow he'll open the gates again and we'll perform a weekly ritual: flooding the orchard and feeding the avocado, plum and mango trees, just as the farmers before us have been doing for three generations.

 

It is quiet on the farm. Maya Laura, Shane, Rebecca, Daniel, Kina and Joshua have all left for the time being. Kina (Freedom Retreats) is in London for the summer; Rebecca is back home in Northern California, Maya Laura is driving up the Baja, and on her way to Ashville. Daniel ( "The Blue Collar Healer”) is heading to Toronto to present his "Healing is Primary” workshop. I am offering a weekend intensive to local breathing enthusiasts.

 

Life Skills, Healing Arts, and Breathwork Practitioner Training and Spiritual Retreats are ongoing here.

 

The next major event will be the First Annual Baja Bio Sana Summer Solstice Gathering, June 19-21. I am inviting all breathworkers and any lovers of life to visit Los Cabos in June. Just about all the tourists will be gone, and there will be great deals at the spas, resorts and hotels in the region. And of course everyone is welcome to camp on the land.

 

This year our gathering coincides with the first ever "Concert for the Living Waters:” a global event celebrating our miracle ability to re-structure water by generating love and gratitude toward every ocean, river, stream, lake, pond on the planet. It will be the first grand experiment using the 528 sound/musical frequencies and the original Solfegio scale. We will be using Jonathan Goldman's "Holy Harmony” CD for our meditations. (Please visit www.liveh2o.org  for more information.)

 

If you cannot participate in our celebration, or cannot attend one of the many Live H20 events around the world, then I hope you will take part in some small way, through some personal ritual, wherever you live. We don't need a special reason to generate love and gratitude in our lives, but this event is a great excuse to do so! Find a source or body of water near you, or just turn on the tap in your house for a few moments, and offer heartfelt conscious love and gratitude for our Creator and for the life-giving waters that flow to us with such ease and abundance!

 

The Fall program here begins in October. The focus will be on individual empowerment, self-sufficiency and self-determination, community building and creative expression. You can come for a few weeks or a few months. Also on top of the agenda will be the food gardens. If anyone would like to come and help plant and tend the organic gardens, you are most welcome!

 

 

As summer approaches, we are moving into the next phase of our project here. We are wrapping up the second year of a five year plan to create an intentional community, a model for sustainable living and a permaculture demonstration site. We are preparing to do the earthworks and build the central kitchen. In the meantime, life provides us with a perfect spiritual retreat and nature resort.

 

On behalf of the first eight founders of Baja Bio Sana, I hereby welcome you my family, friends, students, teachers, clients and associates to be one of the five remaining individuals to complete the Founder's Circle. This is an invitation for you to support the "Solution Revolution,” and to secure for yourself an eternal home, a place for healthy vacations, or a safe and fertile refuge in the coming times of planetary upheaval.

 

Each of us has invested $15,000 USD. This enabled us to form a non-profit corporation and to purchase 20 acres of land. The remaining five founders and their contribution of an additional $75,000 USD, will enable us to complete the earthworks, establish solar power and satellite communications, build the group meeting and living spaces, the  nursery greenhouses, food processing lab and other facilities.

 

 

One of my favorite teachers pointed out that "awareness cannot exist with duality, and mind cannot exist without duality: awareness is non-dual, and mind is dual.” As I've said many times, awareness is the first step in breathwork. And it may be the only step that is needed for healing and growth, enlightenment and liberation. There is no quicker or better way to awaken to who we really are than to simply step back a little and observe the mind. Find a way to create a little distance between you and your mind.

 

I see it as the process and practice of living upstream of your mind being at cause rather than effect. Thoughts are creative, and left unchecked or unquestioned, can cause us to live in an illusionary bubble. Our personal mind-made realities can block us from the direct experience of ultimate divine reality. We need to raise the quality of our thoughts at every opportunity. We need to master our emotional mind, otherwise we will be victims or slaves to it. When our private personal thoughts are in perfect harmony with the divine universal mind ( "as above so below”), we naturally experience freedom from suffering, and we live in heaven on earth.

 

 

I love shaking up people's minds. For the most part our thinking is so unconscious, so habitual, so repetitive, dysfunctional, disempowering and even destructive. During my recent trip to Russia and Kazakhstan, I was able to see how easy it is for us to fall back into old habits of negative, limiting, self-sabotaging thoughts, emotions and behaviors even after the most profound transformational breathing experiences, and despite the most powerful awakenings to love, peace, joy, and freedom.

 

During spiritual breathing sessions or in the spiritual community that is created at a seminar or a training, a beautiful space of freedom and safety opens up within us and around us. In this space, our essence, our real true self is invited or allowed to emerge and express. It is as if a light within us is uncovered, and we are able to shine! Anyone who has done this work has seen it in the eyes of those who engage in the process. There is a natural ease, and a flow of love that can be witnessed and felt and shared.

 

Conscious breathing spiritual breathing awakens us to our divine nature, we actually open up to life and love in a bigger, deeper, or higher level. And it is expressed in the way we live, and in all of our relationships. It may often be hard to describe or put into words, but it is an unarguable experience: our hearts and minds literally open and shine!

 

This happens because the moment to moment practice of awareness, relaxation and breathing burns through or dissolves the veil, the mask, the personality, the ego that covers over our spirit like a filter or a shell. The process clears away all the thoughts, feelings and sensations, and emotions that hide or dim our inner light, until… the process of "recovery” occurs… And we begin to take back on the same old thoughts and feelings, the same the old attitudes and habits that cover over the pure love and light within.

 

And so, I am coming out to state publicly that I am against recovery! Please don't recover after a session or seminar! Remain uncovered. Remain open and shining! This is a great challenge, because of the power of long held habits. And in a world hungry for light, it is easy to feel that you will be eaten alive, or swallowed up by what some would call the "forces of darkness.” (I like to think it is merely unconsciousness.)

 

The only solution is to use every opportunity to strengthen our connection to the light within. Do it consciously with every breath. Don't allow mental, emotional, or physical stuff to trap or block all that light. Remain conscious and open to the infinite, and let your love and light flow. Seek out other lovers of life and beings of light. Shine your light, and support others in shining theirs.

 

Catch yourself whenever you default back into to the old programs and conditioning. Wake up again and again. Remember who you are when you are lost in thoughts, swimming in emotions or caught in sensations. Turn to your real true self whenever you are drawn into identifying with anything else. And gently remind others in your family, like-minded friends, circle or community to choose love and peace and joy. Oneness and wholeness, freedom and safety, and generosity of spirit are the only rules. Forgiving ourselves and each other again and again whenever we fall back and recover: this is the way to stay open to love and light, and to keep growing in peace and power.

 

One of the best descriptions breathwork that I've heard is "it's the art of cleaning and balancing your energy body.” Conscious breathing is a way to find yourself, to return to your self. Breathe consciously whenever you get caught up in negative or limiting thoughts, feelings or behaviors. Doing twenty conscious connected breaths every day, or when something happens that makes you forget who you really are, is a good idea.

 

 

 

 

 

Stephen is a teacher, a family counselor, and an author. He helps people to become more effective in their role as parents. He teaches parents how to create an environment that nurtures and enhances a child's development. He teaches parents to be advocates for their children, to provide opportunities for growth based on individual needs.

 

The following is a recent review of Stephen's new book: "Wisdom in the Family."

 

 

Stephen created the "Parent College and he hosts a national radio show. Visit www.familyground.com for more information.

 

 

July 4 - 14: Barcelona,Spain

July 16 - 23: Crimea

July 25- August 9: Kazakhstan (Issyk-kul Lake)

August 11 - 20:  Urbino, Italy (The Hill that Breathes)

August 23 - 26: Ufa/Neftekamsk, Bashkortostan

August 27 - Sept 1: Tyumen, Siberia

September 3 - 13: Moscow, Russia OpenWorld

September 24 - Oct 2: , Bahamas

October 14 - 24:

November - May Baja, Mexico