Following your breath

We have all been told - and told others - to take a deep breath as a way of collecting our thoughts or changing our states. Taking a deep breath is as appropriate in the quiet of private reflection as it is before a performance. It's interesting language: take a breath. We don't take it from anyone else: breathing adds as much to the air as it takes.

What if you changed your language. Instead of taking a breath, what if you followed it. Your attention would have to make choices. Would you imagine your breath as starting at your mouth and moving down (as it does) or would it seem to start at the bottom and move up (as all your muscles shift to accommodate the depth of your breath)?

It's harder than it sounds, this business of following breath and deciding what comes first: the air or the intention? Either way, following your breath will lead you to the space in between breaths, the space where there is nothing to follow. In that moment that hangs between one breath and the next, you can live an eternity. You can probably think of one of those moments when time was suspended between two breaths now.

This is the space of utter stillness when, with no pattern to place between you and the world, you must just wait and be. In this waiting, you hope the next breath will begin and when it does, you might feel just a little relieved, a little energized by the thought that you have made it to another breath and all the new possibilities that ride its wave, in and out, up and down.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Yes" sets for building agreement and manipulation

I recently watched a video of a solution-focus therapist working with a client. The clip began with a number of questions and statements with which the client would agree.  In hypnosis and sales, it's known as a "yes set." If you're not familiar with the concept, it works roughly like Simon Says.  In that game, you get into a pattern of doing what "Simon says" so that you eventually do what the leader says even when s/he does not insert the magic words "Simon says." In the "yes set," you get used to saying yes until such a strong pattern of agreement exists that you agree with statements or instructions you might not otherwise give your agreement. The more times in a row you have said "yes," the greater the probability that you will say "yes" to the next statement. Yes sets can be seen in two ways. The first is that you are offering someone evidence that you are observing and accepting their experience. When every
Read more

The hypnotic contract

Under what conditions would you allow someone else to tell you what to think?   If you have watched a stage hypnotist, you have seen what looks like one person exercising remarkable control over the thoughts and actions of another. It is fascinating, in part, because we have all seen it happen in real life. Suddenly someone we know seems to be relying on someone else to do the thinking.  Even if the influence is good, it is a little frightening. The secret is that there are no magic words.  In order to lead someone into hypnosis, that person has to be willing to go there. Often the people you see on stage are more than willing. For whatever reasons, they are enthusiastic about giving up self control and allowing someone else to take charge. They know that there are limits to what can happen on stage and they are only agreeing to give up control within those limits. What you see in hypnosis is an agreement between two people. Like all agreements between human beings, it stretches as far
Read more

The fine line between observations, suggestions and commands

I have been watching Tony Robbins this week in the documentary called " I Am Not Your Guru ." You can read a nicely ambivalent review in the Financial Times here.   I think the ambivalence is built into the process, which might be surprising given the loud celebration that characterizes the Date with Destiny in the film. For those of us whose work has evolved from NLP, there are lessons to be learned from modelling the most famous and successful practitioner of NLP (Robbins has far surpassed all the founders by all measures of success). Because he does so much so well, Robbins lets us see how fine the line is between observing and suggesting. Let me explain. Robbins frames his "interventions" both with the exercises and performances we do not see in the film and with his invitations. The film opens with an intervention with a young man who says he is suicidal; it is only later that we see Robbins say he is looking for someone who is suicidal to work with. Since
Read more