06 October 2008
Posted in BreathWork

Hello Everyone,

Welcome to the September 2008 Breath and Breathing Report.

I will be in Santa Barbara, for private sessions, public seminars, and practitioner training from October 20 to 28. Anyone who'd like to take part in this training is invited to come. Contact Serena: 805 964 1835. You can also reach me on my US cell: 508 345 7574. I was in Lithuania from Sept 10 to 22. It was wonderful as always. There were many new faces. Among them were relatives of some the original breathers, including Skirma's mother, Maria's husband, and their two daughters. I also got to spend quality time with Andrius, Virginia, Sabina, Rita, Jurga's little boy, and others. I send love to everyone who attended the trainings and who dove so deep in their sessions. Special thanks to Andrius of Shambu Yoga Center. You are a genuine western yogi: a bright and powerful force for personal and planetary awakening. And it is an honor to be your friend.

From Vilnius, I flew to Kiev, where I was met by Lesia, Oksana and Maxim who traveled to India with us last year. They gave me a place to stay in the center of the city. This trip to the Ukraine has been such fun. A few days ago I visited Yalta, where Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt met to carve up the world, and divvy up the spoils of war in 1945.

For several days now I've been in the city of Sevastopol on the Black Sea in the Crimea. Lena who also travelled with us to India has been my host and driver. Yesterday I had the sweet privilege of giving sessions to her two beautiful children Julia and Andrew; and I had a great time with Sergei and Lera, who organized the first breathwork training here.

Now I am perched on a cliff, looking out at the sea in Laspi, another Crimean resort. The waves are washing over the rocks below. Andrei Fleshel has arranged for me to attend a small festival and enjoy a few days of rest and relaxation: an unplanned vacation. After two months of non-stop seminars, and wall to wall sessions, I have time to simply sit and be. The grapes, plums, apples and peaches here are at their peak. The weather is perfect. It's a good time to turn inward and to reach out; a good time to catch up and to get ahead.

I want to thank everyone who has been writing to me. It is wonderful to hear of all the healing and growth that Spiritual Breathing brings. I love getting session reports from practitioners, clients and students. Your poems and prayers, your dreams and visions are lovely. And your questions as my friend Mohan pointed out awaken my inner teacher; so I am happy to share whatever thoughts and feelings arise or come through in response. But I have to admit: reading and answering so many e-mails can become a full time job!

With the coming release of the film: What If? (www.whatifthemovie.tv), and the huge interest in breath and breathing, the large and growing number of practitioners, and with the next life skills and healing arts training in Mexico, I need to organize, coordinate and streamline my internet communications a bit. So in the next few months, I'd like to re-work the websites (www.breathmastery.com, www.danbrule.com) so that questions, reports, feedback, etc., can take place in something like an open forum or a chat room.

I'd like to set up a system that makes it easy for people to down-load the print and audio-visual materials. And I'd like to promote and link up with my favorite teachers, trainers, healers, students, breathworkers, and associates. Anyone who has any ideas or expertise in this area is welcome to pitch in and help out!

I'll be in the Boston area visiting family and friends from October 10 to 14. Then I'll fly to Amarillo, hop in the Corvette, and drive to Los Angeles. It looks like I may be passing through Sedona and Las Vegas on the way to Santa Barbara.

After California, I'll head south to Mexico. I plan to be in Los Cabos from November 1st through to next August. The Life Skills and Healing Arts Program and the Breathwork Practitioner Training at Baja Bio Sana will be ongoing. You are invited to join us there. Registration is open. My Mexican cell is: 624 166 0883.

Last week I was in Kharkov for the Annual Ukrainian Psychological Conference. The theme of the conference was "Destiny and Improvisation.” I presented three workshops there. Here is a brief synopsis of them:

1. Thought, Breath and Touch: The Ultimate Healers

More of the world comes into intimate physical contact with you through the breath than in any other way. Think about it. When you breathe in, you take in the energy and the substance of everything and everyone around you. The world enters your lungs and then makes its way into your bloodstream; from there it permeates every cell of your body. When you breathe out, a bit of your essence and the substance of who you are flows out and mixes with all the other energies in the world.

The air you breathe carries elements of the world into your system through the "bronchial tree.” The main trunk in your throat splits into two branches leading to the lungs. Within the lungs, smaller branches lead to even smaller branches; and at the end of the smallest branches are millions of tiny air sacs called alveoli. Through a microscope, they look like clusters of grapes. The total surface area of your lungs, if stretched out, would cover half of a tennis court! And so the idea that you and the world come into full intimate physical contact through the act of breathing is not just a poetic notion, it's a fact in reality.

Breathing is a profound form of communication. In addition to the physical aspects of the breath, there are also emotional, psychological, energetic, and spiritual levels. The breath carries information of every kind to and from you; but only a fraction of that information registers in your conscious awareness. The rest is filtered out by your mind-body system. What you experience and what you don't experience depends upon your early childhood programming, and your on-going social conditioning both conscious and unconscious.

Everything you see, hear, taste, smell, think, feel, imagine, remember, or love occurs in your consciousness. The breath supplies life force to whatever exists in consciousness. In other words, with each breath, you bring life to whatever you focus on. So be careful what you focus on while you are breathing! You cannot afford the luxury of a negative or limiting thought.

The energy in the breath is pure, raw, primal, creative life-force energy. And it can be shaped and molded into any form under the sun. The form it takes depends upon what you think, how you feel, what you believe your intention, your attitude, your will. For the most part, this formative process is automatic and unconscious: it is determined by your habits of thinking and feeling.

In fact, for most people this formative power has been given over to others, or it has been usurped by others. The average person's consciousness is constantly being manipulated and controlled by fallacious authorities, clueless televangelists, mindless mullahs, hollow pundits, pin headed TV and radio personalities, profit driven advertisers and politically motivated news reports. (Only bad news is considered good news in this crazy world!)

What to do? Turn off the TV. And tune in to your Higher Self. Use those newspapers for compost, to kindle a fire, or to cover the floor of your birdcage! Commune with nature. Generate luminous thoughts and sacred emotions. Give and receive simple loving touch. Breathe in a relaxed and conscious way. Create an inner atmosphere and an outer aura of natural comfort and organic pleasure. Create a lasting sense of peace and love and joy. Associate with conscious loving people, and only those committed to the same goals.

There was a time when you could not turn over, turn a doorknob, tie your shoes, use a fork, or think for yourself. Thoughts and feelings of helplessness and hopelessness made sense when you were an infant: you depended on others for almost everything. And even though you have matured and grown in power, you sill carry those infant thoughts in your unconscious, and harbor those old feelings in your body.

Many political and religious leaders prey on these feelings rather than heal them; and many therapists feed off these programs and fuel them rather than free people from them. That's what makes Breathwork so unique. Spiritual Breathing eliminates the middleman, and produces genuine inner peace and power. It clears away those early programs, and brings spiritual, psychological and emotional freedom.

We have the power to unshackle ourselves, and to neutralize all the limitations that we have absorbed from an unconscious world. From this bright shining inner state, life looks very different than it does through the lens of fear and scarcity, of political and religious conditioning and social engineering. Thought, breath and touch are natural healing forces that life provides to balance, harmonize, and unify us in spirit, mind and body.

Spiritual Breathing is about awakening to our Essence and to our Ultimate Potential. It's about total liberation. People who are awake are free. People who are free cannot be manipulated or controlled. But don't expect your ego or your conditioned emotional mind to automatically support your process of awakening. And don't expect the unconscious world or those who rule it to support or encourage your spiritual liberation.

The "anti-civilization” wants people to remain unconscious. The anti-terrorists need terrorism. Banks need borrowers. Arms manufacturers need wars. The drug tsars need the drug lords. People need to be kept in fear and ignorance. How else to maintain unnatural order and artificial control?

I love that Breathwork was called "Free Breathing” when it spread from the USA to Russia during the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was the perfect movement for the times. It was a natural antidote to years of oppression, suppression and anti-individual ideology. I am so grateful to the thousands of people there from every walk of life who helped to create and develop the Spiritual Breathing Movement, who are participating in the awakening of human potential and the liberation of the human spirit!

2. A Taste of Freedom: Feeling Good No Matter What

Freedom comes from within. Imagine what it would be like to feel good no matter what was happening in you or around you. Feeling good means feeling alive and at peace, free and safe, open and relaxed. It means being in your power and being yourself. It means being centered and connected, creative and loving. And, as more and more people are proving, this state is really not so difficult to attain. In fact it is our nature, our birthright.

As Byron Katie says, everything in life happens when you are lying down, sitting down, or standing up. So all we need to do is to master those three simple things! Sitting in court waiting for a judge's ruling can be stressful: but simply sitting is pure pleasure. Standing in a long line at the bank can be frustrating: but the simple act of standing is pure pleasure. Lying in a hospital bed before surgery can be frightening: but simply lying is pure pleasure.

One of the most profound and liberating insights of my life came when in the middle of awful suffering I realized that it was not happening to me, it was just happening! The fundamentals of Zen, the yoga of Pantanjali, the way of the Buddha, and Jesus' reminder about the lilies of the field… All these teachings, any of them, can bring real freedom if we actually take up the practice if we dare to live the principles.

If you look at your inner world, everything you experience falls into three categories: thoughts, feelings and sensations, and emotions. Most of our experience is a combination of the three. Becoming conscious of these three aspects of experience, detaching from them, and attaining mastery over them, is the key to feeling good no matter what. It is the way to end all suffering.

Thoughts, feelings and sensations, and emotions form a kind of cybernetic loop, an internal matrix of experience. When we have a negative thought, it triggers negative emotions and negative feelings in our body. When we have a negative emotion, it triggers negative thoughts and negative physical feelings. When we have a negative feeling or physical sensation, it triggers negative thoughts and negative emotions. Unless… But…

With conscious breathing we can contain, dissolve, or transform negativity instead of allowing it to fester in us and spread to the other levels of our being. We can learn to expand and relax to breathe when a negative thought, feeling, or emotion arises. In this way we can interrupt the chain reaction of negativity.

Even if we are stuck in negative thinking, we can still generate positive emotions and pleasurable physical feelings if we choose. Even if we're stuck in a negative emotion, we can still generate positive thoughts and pleasurable physical feelings if we choose. Even if we are stuck with physical pain, we are still free to think wonderful thoughts and to generate pleasurable emotions if we choose to do so.

Every experience in life has a certain potential for enjoyment. It is up to us to maximize that potential. Very often, people are not willing to enjoy something because they don't know how to enjoy it: fear or pain for example. But what about scary movies? And what about childbirth? Millions of people find those things quite enjoyable!

We don't need to know how to enjoy something before we can let ourselves be willing to enjoy it. The fact is we need to be willing to enjoy what is happening before we can ever know how to do it. Willingness comes first. And very often, willingness is enough. And in the end, as everyone who has mastered Spiritual Breathing knows, even if you cannot enjoy what is happening, you can always enjoy yourself while it is happening!

And that brings us to a very important point about enjoyment. Watch a child closely when they play. They do not just get enjoyment out of what they do. They do not just get joy from what is happening. They put enjoyment into what is happening. They bring their own joy to what they do! The ability to feel good no matter what is a natural ability.

Re-awakening the ability brings happiness, contentment, satisfaction, and fulfillment. It's a great personal goal. Happy, satisfied, contented, fulfilled people make the best partners in life. They are peaceful, creative, productive, sensitive, resourceful, and exciting. Their joy is contagious and uplifting. They are an inspiration to the world, and they are fun to be with!

3. "Spiritual Breathing: Opening Your Heart to Love”

The heart is the one part of us that is capable of opening to infinite love. The mind is not big enough to wrap itself around love, yet it tries to own it, earn it, and control it. The body will shake and tremble when filled with love, and ultimately it will dissolve and disappear into love. But the heart simply grows. It opens and expands to accommodate an increasing flow of love.

The heart is a transformer. It can take fear, anger and sadness, and transform it into love, determination and gratitude. It can take something dirty, dark, fearful and ugly, and turn it into something pure, bright, loving and beautiful. (Notice that the average mind seems to have the opposite ability, and a different tendency!)

I love the analogy that Michael Ryce uses in his book: Why is This Happening to Me… Again? (This book is free on the web, by the way.) He writes about a two-dimensional world: with only length and width, but no depth: a world inhabited by two-dimensional people.

These people can never really know what a ball is for example, because a ball is a three dimensional object, and it simply doesn't fit in their world. However, all the priests, politicians and pundits in that world profess to know exactly what a ball is. They push their dogmatic beliefs, quote their favorite scriptures, or lay out mathematical proofs. Yet we know that they have no idea what a ball really is!

Imagine that we could take someone out of that world, bring them into ours, and actually play ball with them. It would shatter everything they were ever taught or believed was true about reality. Now imagine that person returning to their world and trying to tell their two-dimensional friends what a ball really was. They would be ridiculed or condemned, and most likely be called crazy! They wouldn't even have words to describe it. They'd have to become poets or mystics to even give others a hint of what they had experienced.

The moral of the story is that people in our world have the same problem. We are missing a dimension in life. And therefore we cannot know what is really real. We may think we know, and we may think that we can prove with certainty that we know. But because we are missing a dimension in life, we cannot know what is real. That dimension is love!

Maybe that's why Jesus called love the first law of life. He spoke the Aramaic language by the way, and it is interesting that the Aramaic language has an expression found in no other language: "A mind without love is stupid!” It means that if you look at the world without love, you will not see what is real. If you look at another soul without love, you will not see who is there. If you look at yourself without eyes of love, you will not see who you really are.

Spiritual Breathing is a key to peak performance, optimum health, and ultimate potential.

It is the simplest and most effective way to calm your nerves, settle your stomach, quiet your mind, and open your heart. With practice, the mind becomes clear and quiet, the body becomes soft and relaxed, sublime emotions replace separating emotions, our perception is no longer limited, and ultimate reality opens up to us. When all of our resistance, judgments and reactions fall away, what is left pure open awareness of the shining truth: all that is and who we are, is Love. Good luck in your practice!

May every breath be a prayer.
May every breath be a blessing.

Dan