Movement As Medicine Pt. 1/7: Breathing

Happy Wednesday!

I hope you’ve enjoyed practicing opening your heart to The One, and opening your Heart to Every-one.

I’ve been as busy as a beaver finishing off my new workshops for my Australia tour through Place of Chi, which is just a short week away for me, and off to the airport I go…

I’m very excited to share my new workshops in the four-day format I created:
May 15th: How To Empower Change In Your Clients
May 16th: Roll, Wiggle, Crawl and Climb to Walk, Run and Jump Pain- Free
May 17th: Primal Pattern Eating
May 18th: How To Design Exercise Programs for Unhealthy Clients

Prior to offering these one-day intensive workshops, I will be offering HLC 2 and the beautiful Lake Macquarie Resort in NSW, Australia.

I love teaching HLC 2 because it really takes people much deeper into their own awareness and healing, while at once teaching them how to effectively coach people with body-mind health challenges.

You can learn more about these training intensives at: www.placeofchi.com

Movement As Medicine Pt. 1/7: Breathing

Breathing is the most essential function to our survival!

We need air (oxygen) more urgently from moment to moment than we need food, water, movement, or even thoughts. If our brain goes without oxygen for more than three to five minutes, it starts to die, but the rest of our needs can be met with less urgency or frequency.

Every cell in your body-mind needs a regular supply of oxygen, which is the basis of oxidization, an essential process of metabolism.

Today in my vlog, I take you through the basics of how to breath. I inform you that the first 2/3rds of the breath should come by way of belly expansion, with the chest elevating only in the last 1/3rd of the breath.

I explain the importance of breathing through your nose to maintain balance in your autonomic nervous system, which has a direct effect on your mental-emotional function.

I explain that the breathing mechanism is our chief pump system, helping the heart circulate fresh blood to cells, and remove venous blood so the body can be detoxified and re-energized.

Breathing is also essential for the health of your spinal joints and organs and I explain the mechanisms of how this occurs through optimal breathing.

Because we are emotional beings, and our emotions are reflected in our muscles, organs, glands, and all body tissues, we can have health challenges due to breathing restrictions.

Today, I show you how the psyche (soul) invests itself in our body to create the body-mind construct. I explain how the different chakra (energy) centers are related to different themes or contexts in our lives.

When we are unaware of what we are withholding, or expressing with amplification, we can easily develop health problems that are treated symptomatically with drugs, various therapies, and all too often, surgery.

By being aware of where we feel discomfort or pain, we can take advantage of what I call the “PainTeacher”. The PainTeacher emerges as the gift of AWARENESS; pain makes us aware of what we are creating within ourselves.

If our body-mind expression of our thoughts and emotions is imbalanced, there are characteristic changes in the tissues associated with the theme or context of the mental-emotional challenge.

My blackboard diagram above shows the seven chakras and the general themes expressed by the psyche and the ego-mind within our body.

Understanding how these energy centers work, and their relationship to breathing can be very helpful, and is the basis of the “Zone Exercise” concept shared in my book, How To Eat, Move and Be Healthy!

I finish my presentation today by explaining how the PainTeacher typically manifests as either increased, or decreased tension in relevant muscles.

When we have poorly regulated muscle tone, our circulation of blood and lymphatic fluid is retarded; the more imbalanced we are mentally-emotionally, the more imbalanced we are in our bodies – As Above – So Below!

The topics I’ve planned for the remainder of this seven-part series are:
2. Joint mobilization.
3. Stretching
4. Stabilization
5. Working-In
6. Working-Out
7. The 5 CHEK Program design essentials

I hope you enjoy my video blog today:

On the stem of Love

This beautiful painting was created by CHEK HLC1 and PPS Success Mastery Practitioner Josette Curry, and I couldn’t resist asking her if I could share it with you.

Looking at Josette’s art has always been a visceral experience for me because I coached her as a PPS Success Mastery student for many years. In that time, we worked on how to manage all her thoughts and feelings.

Josette is certainly perfectly designed for artistic inspiration and spiritual investigation; her body is the sympathetic type and this type has tremendous thinking and feeling capacity.

Those gifted with this body-mind type often amaze the rest of us with their artistic and creative abilities, but many of us are glad we are not that sensitive. It is through her tremendous sensitivity that Josette can feel, see, intuit, and perceive beyond the ordinary, and then reproduce her experience so we to can engage in the mysteries.

As a means of helping Josette master controlling the flow of her thoughts and emotions, and as a means of “essentializing”, I gave her a series of homework exercises called “one line drawings”. She produced a series of very interesting drawings in which she only had one touch of the pen, brush or pencil – one line.

I enjoyed witnessing the affects and she enjoyed feeling them. Her art continues to grow in depth, beauty, and simplicity balanced with complexities. I have some of her paintings at home, and in my office and I love them.

I asked Josette to share what was running through her as she painted this piece, and this is what she shared:

On The Stem Of Love was inspired, as most of my pieces are, by the Chakras….  Coming from the Yin where all colors reside, to finishing it in the Yang, where the Light of the Divine can’t hide!  I love blending and playing with the light in colors and words, seen there between the mountains and the birds. Nature shows us why God plays with tints – it helps bring out her Magnificence! Moving past the Shadow and its negative pull, in the Light N.O.W. it can be transformed into a Seagull.  She reminds us that an Art Degree is not needed, it comes from the Heart! So may this little gem today inspire you to start! 

 A Ho Great Spirit! YOU ARE THE ART!  

I’ve recently started a page on Facebook called Jox 4 Health (www.facebook.com/JoxforLife) where I can share everything from Art, Poetry, Film and Dance to fun and easy to read articles on what I’ve learned on being Healthy! Most importantly I share resources that align with the CHEK Way, the only Way to Play! …. And may PPS be here always to stay. 

Love you Paul!   
Thank you for being YOU! 
Jox

I hope you all have a great day of breathing fully, living fully, loving fully, and following Josette’s lead with unbound artistic play in your self-expression.

Love and chi,
Paul Chek