The Shaman's Breath

Announcer 0:28

Hello, and welcome to speaking spirit where we talk about all things spiritual. Your host, john Moore is a shamanic practitioner and spiritual teacher. And now here's john.

John Moore 0:44

Hello everybody. I have a little bit of a funny story before I get started or as I get started here.

Um, so, you know, I've said before many times that I tend to record these in the morning, I'm a bit of a morning person. But sometimes I get up in the morning and I'm a little foggy, you know, foggy headed, I always have my trusty cup of coffee. As I'm doing these here, I'll, I'll take a sip. Delicious. And, um, so this morning, I got up and I prepared and I you know, I record this through a soundboard and got everything set up and started talking, probably said something brilliant, I don't know. And there was no sound coming out into my headphones that I listened to as I'm recording this. And sure enough, I had plugged the microphone into the wrong thing. So no sound was coming through. So I started over again. normally don't do false starts or any editing or any thing like that. But I figure you probably don't want to listen to you know, an hour of blank air talking into a microphone that's not connected to anything recording. Anyway, podcasts technical issues. I am a technical person, and I'm was before I became a shamanic practitioner. But that doesn't mean I always do things perfectly. Nobody's perfect. And I certainly am a prime example of nobody being perfect. As I speak, my little chipmunk friend is up on my porch in front of me and running around screaming for some food. So I'm going to, after this throw some food out for him because they're getting ready for the winter. Winter is coming to quote, Game of Thrones. I'm in the north eastern part of the United States. I'm in the state of Maine, which is in a region of the Northeast called New England, we are the North Eastern most state of the US. So if you're not in the US, you look or if you're in the US, you don't know where Maine is. If you look at a map, and you follow the Continental part of the United States, all the way up to the upper right hand corner, you'll see Maine, and that's where I am. And I live in the woods. So we have lots of creatures and birds and things. And it's something I love dearly about where I live, love wildlife. Today, I'm going to talk about breath, and breath as a gateway to spirit. And, you know, talk about it from a number of different perspectives, I have a significant amount of experience with breath work, different types of breath work. So I have done pranayama, for example, which is yogic breath work, and I'll talk about that. And I have done breath work through, you know, a few decades of martial arts training. And I have done breath work as a meditation practice of all kinds. And so I do want to talk about that and why breath is important, and how we can have mindful moments using the breath and powerful moments using the breath and all kinds of things. So I hope this will be both interesting and useful to you. You know, one of my things, one of the things that I like to look at when I examine spiritual topics is how they're handled historically, and sort of globally. Right. So I practice shamanism. And you know, I have looked at certainly not every form of shamanism because that would take me an entire lifetime. I'm sure but I have looked at examined, studied, you know, some things more in depth than others different forms of shamanism as they have existed. You know, as we have historical records for some, and we don't have historical records for a lot, but as they're still practice today, I think, you know, I feel personally that having, being well rounded is important to me.

It's, you know, for some practitioners, it's not and there's nothing wrong with that. It's not a criticism. I'm just saying it's, it's personally important to me to understand like, I want to know about the practices of Hawaiian shamanism or shamanism from West Africa or South American shamanism or shamanism from Scandinavia, or, you know, shamanism of the Celts or shamanism in Russia or wherever. Because I, you know, you can, you can learn a lot, it can inform your practice, I'm not stealing anybody's practices, I, you know, I only practice and teach things that have been freely shared with me and have been cleared to teach. Excuse me while I take another sip of coffee, which is, I just love coffee. You know, that being said, I have participated in lots of ceremonies and rituals and things that I would not lead or teach because I don't have, I don't have enough knowledge, and I don't have the connection. And I don't have an authority to do that. So I have participated in Native American pipe ceremonies. And I have participated in sweat lodges. And I've done certain types of shamanic dances from different cultures and done some practices from other shamanic cultures, and I don't teach them because I, you know, I don't have a connection to them. And I'm not about misappropriating culture in any way. But I do find that participating in different things and learning about different things makes me more well rounded. And so when students or clients or or whoever comes to me with questions, I feel like I'm answering them from a more informed perspective. Although very frequently, when I'm working with clients, I am, as we shall say, in spirited or inspired, we're going to talk about that word, spirit and where that comes from. And, you know, that sort of thing. So because we're going to talk about breath, and we have this word, spirit, and you know, all its different forms spiritual and spirituality. And, you know, we can tell that that is related to the, you know, the word inspiration. Right, I'm feeling inspired. And when something is no longer useful, we or or deceased, we might say that that thing or person or living being is expired. And so, the interesting thing here is that the word, the word spirit, comes from the Latin word speeder tos, and spirit tos in Latin, means both spirit and breath. And they are synonymous. Interesting thing, and I'm gonna expand on that a little bit. Right. So to be inspired means to have, you know, to have taken in spirit, but also to have taken in breath. So literally to inspire, to inspire means, you know, means to breathe in. And you know, in one one way in English, you know, English is this language where we have one word that means, you know, hundreds of different things. And if you're not a native English speaker, I apologize on behalf of the people who came up with this crazy thing where we have, you know, single words that mean many, many different things. I talked about the word love in English, which is so weird because it doesn't feel weird to people who are native English speakers, because we just use it. But when you really think about it, I can say, you know, I love The sandwich that I'm eating, and I love my children. And that is not the same thing, I hope, hope you're not eating your children. And I can be in love with a person, you know, romantic love, that's we have to put modifiers on it, you know, I can love my family, I can love my children, I can love my country, you know, have a sense of patriotism.

I can love my community. And these may all be different things. And I know in other languages, you know, I've heard, for example, that Persian has 90 plus words for love, and some other languages are the same. And, and gosh, I love that See, I can love that I can love that fact. And that's not the same thing as loving a cheeseburger or loving my children. So, you know, the word inspired when when somebody is inspired, it means they're, you know, they're motivated, or they're, you know, we could say they're full of spirit. Or, it could mean that, you know, inspiration could also mean I am I have I'm, you know, that the act of breathing in. And expiration is the act of breathing out. Or it's the act of dying, right? Because the idea is that when your breath leaves your body, so does your spirit or your soul becomes detached from your body. So in. In Latin, there's also the word ennemis, where we get the words, Animal, and animate, and animated, and probably a bunch of others. And this is also another word for spirits. But it also can mean breath, or wind or puff of air. So there is there's a link in Latin and thus English, you know, where we have borrowed from that and probably other romance? Well, English is not a romance language, but probably in romance languages, there, there are links as well, between spirit and breath. So then, when I look out at other cultures that I am, you know, that I have at least a passing familiarity with or have even just, you know, read something about. I see the same thing occurring in a lot of places, right. So in Greek, we have the word numa, which is another word for spirit. And numa is where we get lots of things having to do with lungs and breath, pneumonia, for example, or pneumatic or, you know, all kinds of things having to do with air and breath, also having to do with spirit. In Hebrew, and, you know, I will apologize if I am mispronouncing this stuff, as I've explained them a native English speaker. I have limited studies in other languages, we can credit the public school system in the United States with that, I know in other countries, languages, multiple languages are taught in public schools, from a very early age, that is not the case. In most of the United States, we don't start learning languages until way too late, unfortunately. So, you know, in Hebrew, there's the word ruak, which is spirits and also breath. In you know, in Chinese, we have the word Qi or you know, Qi or Chi as some people pronounce it or, and in Japanese, we have Qi, which has to do with spiritual energy, and is very, very associated with breath is where we get the word Qi Gong, which is like, energy work in Chinese. And, you know, Qi is, yes, it's this vital energy that runs to the meridians. It's the thing that acupuncturist effect and martial arts martial artists use it to disrupt to their opponent's bodies and that sort of thing. And so it is the animating factor of the body. It is the thing that keeps processes running. And it is very, very, you know, it's it's complicated because there are different kinds of key there's key That comes from your food, there's key that comes from the air that you breathe. There's key that you can absorb from the universe. So there's different sources, but still, the word is very much associated with breath.

And it's clear to see why that is, right. Because when a person or an animal dies, we stop breathing. Right? You know, modern science has, you know, some different definitions of when somebody is dead, you know, we can check somebody's heart and their heart stops bleeding. And then some minutes after that the brain, the brain dies from lack of oxygen. And we can measure those things. But in ancient times, before we had modern medical equipment, you know, when a body ceased its breath, it was either dead or practicing some very advanced meditative practices. There are, there are some, you know, there are some meditative practices where the breath can be held for extremely long periods of time, or stopped. And there is there's pranayama, which is practice. I can't remember the term for it at this point, which is practice on the breath is held on the exhalation for longer and longer periods of time. And now, there's some scientific research showing why that is how it can have a positive effect on the body. I should say, don't try this. Don't try this on your own. There are, there are implications of breathwork for different types of medical conditions, and I am not a doctor. And so certain things like breath holding exercises can be unsafe for people with certain medical conditions, or if they're pregnant, or if you have medical conditions that you don't know about. So I'm not recommending you just start practicing things. without, you know, checking in checking in with a doctor always do that anyway. But I know that there are breath hold exercises, where you know, we think about holding our breath when you're a kid, and maybe you're swimming you like take a deep breath and hold as much air in your lungs as you can and dive underwater. But there are exercises where you exhale and hold the x exhaled breath for as long as possible. And there's some physiological stuff that happens there. That's pretty cool. having to do with carbon dioxide and vezo dilation and cool things happening. Interesting things happen with this breathwork. So I know, I know, there is, you know, there are Hawaiian systems of breathing. And I know that there is, you know, you know, we hear the word Aloha, which is like, you know, greeting, hello, goodbye. I think it means much more than that. But the hard part is an exhalation and in at least some part of Hawaiian culture that is done, you know, you touch foreheads, and you say Aloha, and you exchange breath. It's a spiritual exchange. So there's an, there's an exchange of breath there. So, so it's very, you know, it's easy to see why from ancient times the breath has been associated with spirit of spirit being the animating part, like, you know, and see the body. What animates the body. Right is are we just a pile of chemicals and electrical impulses that randomly move us around towards food and whatnot. You know, from a materialistic realism, you know, atheistic perspective. Yep, we're a random pile of chemicals that self organizes and uses air and chemical electrical impulses to eat and reproduce and sleep. And you know, that that kind of thing. And, you know, I'm, I won't argue with anybody who takes that perspective. That is your prerogative to believe that is the case. But my experience, my experience is very different. And you know, where you're, I'm not going to discount your experience. I expect my experience not to be discounted, although, you know, people certainly do.

But humans are humans and all all beings are spiritual, and even, you know, the rocks and the rivers and the land. You know, in shamanism, we, shamanism is very animistic. And we see spirit everywhere and in everything. So that means your car has a spirit and your, you know, the picture frame that your picture of your family is, has a spirit and so does the picture. And so their spirit everywhere, and some aspects of spirit have a material world representation. So human beings are one, you know, an example of that we are a spirit. And we have, we also have physical bodies, there are lots of spirits, many more spirits do not have physical bodies than do. So, there's this, you know, there are many, many worlds full of spiritual beings, some of them are close to our physical reality, some of them are quite different than our physical reality. And this is something that is explored by shamans all over the world. And so, you know, not all living, not all living things from a spiritual perspective, brief. From a physical perspective, all living things breathe, they have some sort of, you know, some sort of exchange of, of chemicals, you know, obviously, you know, fish, fish, gather oxygen from the water. From guy like mushrooms, breathe oxygen, and exhale, carbon dioxide. So they're actually closer to animals than plants, even though we might think of them as plants and plants, you know, plants through their cycles, have, you know, breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen, that's a very, you know, obviously, incredibly oversimplified explanation of what plants do through photosynthesis and whatnot. So, breath is important as human beings because we can have control over it, and it is a gateway into spirits. So, breath, as you know, is an autonomic nervous system function. Meaning we do not normally have to think about breathing, we do it without thinking it's autonomic, it's, um, you know, will breathe on our own without thinking about it. However, you can actually, you know, you can certainly affect your breath by thinking about it. And it is the easiest autonomic function probably to control just by, you know, control to have volition over. So, for example, I can hold my breath, or I can choose to inhale or exhale, or I can choose how rapidly I'm breathing. And that will have different effects on the left effects on my body will have effects on my mind. And yes, it will have effects on your spirit. And, um, you know, one of one of the things that I like to teach and share with people is that, you know, this view that body and mind are two separate things, and that body, mind and spirit are three separate things, I think, is a bit of a false belief. I understand it's, like, easy to, it makes it easier for us as human beings to categorize things to put things into neat little category categories, right. Um, and so, you know, if, if I were just, you know, looking at a human being, I would say, okay, the mind, the mind is the brain, the brain and the mind are synonymous, and you know, okay, but the brain is part of the body. So the mind is really like the electrical impulses in the brain. And oh, but we have a nervous system, and oh, we have chemicals that affect our consciousness. And, you know, we're inputting data through our sensory organs And oh, by the way, our stomach produces, you know, our gut area produces the serotonin that we use as neurotransmitter and there are neuropeptides throughout our body and, well, we, you know, what we think of as our conscious mind is, you know, sort of located in our prefrontal cortex of our brain. There are a lot of mind processes in fact, the vast majority of mind process processes that we're not conscious of.

right you're probably not conscious of your digestive tract, being regulated or your you know, your your acid base levels of your body or Are your heart rate, it's hard to affect your heart rate with thought there are people can do it, you can practice that. One way to affect your heartbeats. So it's an autonomic function is through your breath, you can take control over that. And so this is a place where mind and body are really connected. Right, I can think, and control my breathing, control my body. Right, and my mind controls my body and all kinds of different ways. So that's, you know, that's sort of One Direction, right? There's the control. And then, you know, sensory input goes in the other direction, I can feel where my body is in space, the position I'm in, I can see things, I can hear things, I can taste and smell things. I have a vestibular system that tells me if I'm off balance, and part of that autonomic like, part of that is relegated to the autonomic system, like my head, I don't have to think about holding my head up straight, it does it on its own. If you ever do, you know, don't, don't, don't do anything I ever talk about in any sort of unsafe way, make sure you are physically, spiritually mentally and emotionally safe at all times. Um, but you know, one thing that is really interesting, because I have trained in martial arts before that I've done training blindfolded, and how much of your balance is affected by your vision. Right, if you if you are a sighted person, now, if you are a person who is visually impaired, your other systems, your vestibular system, and your kinesthetic system will take over. And so you don't have people who are visually impaired falling over most of the time, right. But if you tried to, you know, stand still with your eyes closed, you might have a harder time staying balanced, you don't even really think about it, like you have a natural reflex for your head to become level. Right. So the horizon, if you're looking out at a scene in the horizon, is going to go straight across, that's where we get the word horizontal from. Why because we don't stand on our heads and look at things upside down, or we don't tilt, we don't walk around with our head tilted to the side, most of the time. So there are, you know, there are inroads to the autonomic nervous system. And one of the easiest ones is breath. And so you can affect the body chemistry with the breath, you can affect the heart rate with the breath, the rate of digestion, all kinds of things. And there's whole schools of breath work out there who are dedicated to gaining health through breath or doing spiritual work through breath. I also do not so you know, the difference between mind consciousness and our physical representation, there are like interpenetrating, interconnected, you cannot really separate them out in any deeply meaningful way. I'm sure on the surface, you can. And you know, I don't know how it works in other countries, but I was talking to someone who is a therapist as a mental health therapist, recently, and I said, you know, it's really interesting to me, that in the United States, you know, I can go off for hours on our healthcare system, I will not needless to say, I'm not, I'm not incredibly proud of it. And, you know, the way that we have done things that we have the most costly health care system in the world, and everybody gets health care by buying insurance, and if you can't afford insurance, you know, you're, you're kind of screwed. And even if you can afford insurance, you know, it's, it's only going to cover some of, you know, what can be potentially life altering hospital bills, if you get sick. We do a really poor job of health care in this country. However, one of the things is that we treat mental health different than physical health. When we separate, we separate them out, as you know, like, they're different things.

You know, there's some, there's some, you know, there's some overlap there where you know, you can go to a psychiatrist and you can get prescribed some medication, which will affect your body and hopefully, affect your emotional state or whatever it is, or help you you know, alleviate Some psycho sees or something, you know, there's different different psychiatric medications. So the body and again, there's the body in the mind interacting, and we treat treat them very often as separate things. But your mind can certainly affect your body, your body can certainly affect your mind. And from my perspective, as somebody who does shamanic healing with a lot of clients, the spiritual component of human beings, is also inseparable from the body and the mind. They're, they all interact they all interpenetrates Yes, I mean, you can, you know, through shamanic journeying, or like astral projection or whatever you can separate part of your part of your soul, not the entire thing. It's your entire soul separates from your body, you die. But part of you part of your consciousness splits off and you can experience other things, other realities, that sort of thing. So, these things are connected. And so spiritual disease, spiritual disorder, spiritual fractioning, all kinds of things can certainly cause physical symptoms, can certainly cause mental health symptoms. And this is where this is where I work, I work on the spiritual components of healing with my clients, I do not I'm not a doctor, I'm not a mental health therapist, I'm not qualified to work from that angle. And all my clients who come to me with physical or mental health, and, you know, emotional issues, I always tell them that they need to, you know, the best thing to do is to, to sort of attack the problem from as many different angles as you can. Because we're, you know, we're these overlapping systems, we're systems of systems, right? So, you know, if you are suffering from depression, for example, you know, go to a therapist, but that might not be the only thing you need to do. Like, go talk to your doctor, you might decide to take psychiatric medication, or you might decide to try to do some things physically that have been shown to help alleviate depression, things like exercise and meditation and timeout doors and social connection. And, you know, there's, there's a bunch of things you can do. And, you know, so if somebody came to me with depression, I would you say, okay, you know, are you talking to a therapist? Are you talking to your doctor? Okay, now, let's address the spiritual aspect of depression. And there might be, for example, there might be some soul loss there, or there might be some ancestral healing that needs to take place, or, you know, many, many other things that can happen. So take care of that part. And people can, you know, after a single session, sometimes feel a great deal of relief. And that can fade if they're not taking care of the other parts of themselves. Or continuing to take care of their spirit usually give clients some homework to do, you know, some, some practices that they need to take with them to sort of keep, you know, integrate the healing that's been done. And I really think that that's a key to help. I really think that addressing human beings as holistic systems of systems and looking at the entire person, not just as a machine, as complicated as it might be, but you know, as body mind and spirit. So breath is, breath is an entryway into that, you know, they're breathing, breathing exercises that you can do that can change your consciousness. Right. I'm not going to teach any of them here because most, most really intense breathing exercises really need to be done under supervision and I would caution that I would you know, if you go out and learn to do some intense

you know, some really intense breathing exercises that can for example, cause you to have visions, and some people might say hallucinations, but I'll say visions cause you to have visions or to dissociate, feel separated from your body, or, you know, to facilitate shamanic journey. or that sort of thing. I would urge you not to learn those through self study, go find a qualified teacher to supervise you. And learning that stuff. Because you know, if you don't know what to look out for physiologically that's problematic. And there can be, there can be some negative repercussions you can as you can affect your body positively with the way that you think, and negatively with the way that you think you can affect your body and mind and spirit negatively, by the way you breathe or positively by the way you breathe. You can find breath coaches out there, and you can go to breathwork classes, or you can take a yogic meditation class and learn pranayama you know, safely with an instructor and follow their instructions, the breath is very powerful, very, very powerful. So, in a lot of shamanic work. And this is, you know, currently, because of the pandemic, I am only working with clients remotely over zoom, we tend to have these, you know, Healing Sessions over zoom. And they work just fine. Because there, there is no real difference in time or space with spirit. Spirit is formless, it doesn't have matter. And, you know, physically, time and space are, are intimately linked to matter, right? gravity, gravity, time and space matter, relativity, all of that stuff, which is, you know, I maybe understand a fraction of a percent of, but I know enough to know that. You know, there's things like time dilation, relative to gravity. So Time, Time passes differently in space than it does on Earth. So if you take a clock on earth, and a clock, and you put it in space, at the same time, the clocks are going to be off after a very short period of time, because time, travel is different, you know, try and tie it in the pace of time is different. You know, and that might seem really weird, and it is, but gravity, matter, mass affects time, the flow of time. And space as well, you know, without your time, space and matter are all intimately linked physically. So, because spirit doesn't have matter, it is timeless and spaceless. So I can do a healing for somebody on the other side of the world. And has, you know, it can be just as effective. That being said, there are, there are some advantages to being in the same space and putting hands on a person and having them witnessed the work that I'm doing. And that is, I would argue, primarily psychological. That's not to say that it doesn't make a difference. Because psychology is important. And when I do, you know, when I do zoom sessions, I turned my video on, so I can talk to people and they can see what I'm doing and, you know, that sort of thing. And that that does make a difference. Because it's going in through their psyche, as well as their, you know, as well as the spiritual work that I'm doing, which can be very subtle, sometimes. Sometimes not so subtle, sometimes people can have these huge shifts. So one of the things that many shamans do in healing is that you will see them blow into the body of the client that they're working with. And this happens in different ways. So in some cultures, they might have a tube or a hollowed out bone that they blow through. In some cultures, they'll take, you know, you'll be lying on a table, and they will, you know, take a little bit of alcohol or something onto their lip and then blow it out over you.

You know, essentially like spreading the blessing out over you. It's not really spitting. It's not really the same thing as spitting on somebody definitely has a very different meaning and a very different spiritual implication. So they will, they will breathe on you and a lot of them that will sort of Like cut their hand into a hollow tube, so like make a very loose fist that they could blow through and blow into different parts of your body, the top of your head, your heart, you know, other parts of your body. And during that time, there's a transfer, there's some sort of transfer. So when I do power animal retrieval, face to face, I wouldn't blow that power animal into the person's body. Or if I'm doing soul retrieval, the soul parts that I bring back, I'm blowing them into the body of the person. Now is that to say that the power animal now lives inside the person's body? No. But we are blowing the energy of that power animal in. So that connection that you know, connection or reconnection is made. And, you know, with soul retrieval, the soul parts that come back that get blown into the body, get reintegrated. So, you know, we blow them into the body, even though spirit is again doesn't really have physical form. You can see you know, sometimes there's spiritual form people can see auras or spiritual doubles or you know etheric bodies, and there's all these different words for them. Um, ultimately, the, you know, the spirit body is formless, you have a soul body that has more of a form and can take on the shape of the person sometimes or, you know, when people talk about shape shifting, really going down the tangent here, you've heard of shape shifting before, you know, with shamans turn into the form of animals or, or what have you. Primarily, what's happening is they are changing their, the part of their soul body that journeys into the shape of an animal, usually an animal. And, you know, taking flight or doing doing whatever, I have not, in fact, personally experienced physical shape shifting. In infinite and expanding universe, anything is possible. But I have never seen witnessed or been able to change shape. Right? I've never seen a person's physical body turn into a raccoon. Um, do I think it's possible? I mean, again, I think anything is possible in an infinite expanding universe. But what I can tell you is that, from my perspective, from my experience, and granted, I've only been on this earth, while I'm coming on 50 years, folks, and that seems like a long time for me. But in the scope of things, in the scope of human existence, that is not very long, in the scope of the the world's existence, that is not a very long time. So but in my experience, shape shifting happens on the level of the soul or astral body. And it is a very frequent practice in many spiritual systems. So in ancient Egyptian practices and practices that sort of Neo, I guess, Neo Egyptian practices, like, you know, the practices of the Golden Dawn, and the Oto, and into some of those organizations that came up, you know, in the past couple of centuries, to teach mysticism and adopted some, some Egyptian stuff. People do what's called assuming God forms. And that means you meant mentally astrally take on the form of the God that you are worshipping. And you know, that the hope the intention there is to be able to commune with that God force and to be able to to be able to I guess, wield the power for lack of a better term of that God if we're doing magical workings, for example, I might

take on the form of Thoth. The, you know, the Ibis headed god of Egypt, who was the God of writing and magic and that sort of thing. So, you know, they'll, they'll, you know, mentally psychically, astral Take on this form of the god they might dress, you know, in, they might dress up in Egyptian garb and take on certain poses and do certain chants and have all kinds of things to sort of, you know, move that along, but I don't think I have never seen anybody actually physically change into the shape of, you know, one of these God forms. Um, you know, and, you know, it's an interesting idea, another another idea that, you know, that comes out of sort of the Western mystery tradition is the, you know, the whole idea of a god form, and that, you know, some of these scholars and, you know, spiritual, you know, spiritually kind of, I'm not gonna use the word enlightened, knowledgeable people. You know, they had the idea that the way to talk about the god form the shape of the God, they really, you know, recognize that these spirits that they recognize as gods were formless because they showed up first of all, they showed up in different forms. Right, so you have Horus in Egypt, who is the hawk headed God, which is some, sometimes he's a he is a hawk, right? So he shapeshifted into different forms. And there is the, the concept in the, in the western mystery tradition of enthroning a god so when we give human beings give form to a God through a statue, or, you know, a mat just imagining the way that God looks or whatever you are providing a throne, a house, a seat, for that God to interact with you. But that is not the true form of the God is that would be incomprehensible. So all the statuary and stuff you see, you know, I don't know how how serve your everyday person believed, like, maybe they believe that's what the gods look like. But there certainly were, you know, spiritual, elite, spiritual, spiritually, knowledge, people who took those forms of the gods as not literal. Right, so formlessness. And I realize I've got way off the path of breath. But I think it's all important as we talk about the formlessness of spirit, and also how it replicates breath, right? Because air doesn't, air doesn't really have a shape, like lick like liquid, it takes the shape of the container that it's in. Right, so when I breathe into my lungs, the air that fills my lungs are basically the shape of my lungs. But it's very hard to understand the shape of air outdoors, for example, right, like weather systems, you know, an air movement, you know, there's a lot of chaos there. Because, you know, we're talking about subatomic particles up to huge hurricanes and weather, you know, giant weather fronts, and that sort of thing. So the level of, you know, air movement, and air temperature, and all of those things, is sometimes a little hard to get a grasp on. And that's why that's why people who predict the weather can be wrong a lot. And you know, computer systems that are very complex and trying to predict the weather can be wrong, you know, some good portion of the time because they're guessing they're using best guess so air and spirit or formless is another connection, and why it's easy to equate air, breathing with spirit. And I do like to look at air, as I've said, as not just air, but breathing air, there is the spiritual component of air, which is you know, you have the elements the traditional elements of earth, air, water and fire. And air is one, you know, air is the dry, cool moving components of, of,

you know, of those elements, and, you know, those are, you know, alchemical elements are, are conceived of as spiritual components that make up not just physical matter, but also parts of the Spirit as well. And so Air and breath. So we'll talk about breathing as an inroads into spiritual work as a as a way to, you know, they're not, they are used as synonyms in many languages. I think, you know, spirit is different than breath. But it is an inroad that's a pathway in it is a spiritual breath can be a spiritual tool, a very powerful spiritual tool for affecting your consciousness for getting in touch with, you know, your higher self, for doing all kinds of work. Because your breathing can affect your body, mind and spirit. And your breathing does, you know, if you're unconscious of it, you're unconsciously affecting your body, mind and spirit with your breath. If you're unconsciously breathing, people, most people tend to over breathe. Most people breathe very shallow, very quickly, and from the upper lobes of their lungs most of the time. And it can feel really weird to take a big full breath. And this isn't to say that full deep, slow breathing is always the way to breathe either, right. But most people, you know, our lung capacity I forget is about seven liters, we'll say. And I can be wrong in that, you feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. And we tend to take in about, you know, a liter or two of breath each time we breathe. So we leave, you know, most of our lung capacity. Over breathing is also a problem if you expel too much carbon dioxide. And you know, most people think of carbon dioxide as waste. But it's not it's physiologically important. The chemical process that strips The, the oxygen molecules off of your hemoglobin in your blood requires carbon dioxide, to release that oxygen, which is why if you hyperventilate, you breathe too fast, you expel carbon dioxide too quickly, you can get faint, and you can pass out and all of those things. And that is in part because your the the chemical process required to remove the oxygen molecules from hemoglobin and give them to your cells isn't happening. And so you need to down regulate your breath. So there's all kinds of different Brecht breath techniques, and they all have different, very different effects on the mind and body. So there's the, the Tibetan practice of trumeau, which is the inner fire, which you know, is amongst other things, a breathing exercise now is more much more than that. You may have heard of this, but people who have trained in this, and in this is a super dangerous practice to just start training on your own. So I don't recommend that at all. You know, if you if it's something you want to learn, go find a, you know, a Tibetan tumo master who will take you on and teach you. But it can actually raise the body temperature. So, you know, monks can go out into the mountains and you know where it's cold and melt the snow around their bodies, or wrap themselves in wet blankets and and dry out the blankets from the heat coming off their bodies.

You know, and that's an interesting physiological effect. I believe that So, and I apologize for not translating this into centigrade, but I live somewhere where we're still using Fahrenheit but so body temperature, normal body temperature is about 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. And they have measured the body temperature of people practicing tumo as up to 117 degrees. Now that is crazy hot. If you were that hot when you arrived at a hospital, they would assume that you're dying of some kind of horrible infection. Like 105 is a you know a really bad fever. Above that is life threatening, but these people practice tumo, they can heat their bodies up to 117 degrees. And not only do they have no ill health effects, but they have tremendous health, good health effects from that, and they can keep warm. But it is it is ultimately a spiritual exercise, even though it strongly affects the body and can be used as a survival technique, if one is caught in the cold and exposed to cold. Imagine being able to prevent hypothermia. Like that, it's pretty amazing stuff. It also shows us what the you know that the human body is capable of amazing things that maybe we haven't even discovered yet. But again, it's that mind body spirit connection. There are certainly Hawaiian breathing practices I have seen. I've seen certainly Native American breathing practices and chanting practices I've seen Intuit chanting that I can tell is stimulating certain types of breathing. I don't know enough about the culture to talk about it too much. But I've seen this sort of chant happening that forces a rapid, a really certain type of rapid breathing. And my thought is that there must be a spiritual component to that. Be very interested in finding out perhaps I should learn predecessors and do some research. So I hope this has been helpful I do, I do like to leave, always leave off with some sort of helpful advice or tip or something along those lines. And I will do that today. You know, but as I said, you know, breathwork can be if practice incorrectly can be dangerous. So don't, don't do anything. Don't do any extreme breathwork without proper instruction and supervision. But I will give you this one tip that you can take with you during your day. And this will help you. If you practice this, it can help you de stress. And this is just the idea of mindful breathing. Now, mindful breathing isn't necessarily about taking control of your breath. This is about taking a few moments in your day, to simply observe your breath. Simply watch your breath without trying to change it. It may change. Because the act of observing anything changes that thing, it may change in a perceptible way, by you observing it, and you know, that's totally fine, be fine with that be fine with whatever your breath is doing. We take a minute or two with eyes closed or eyes open, whichever is safe and comfortable for you. And just watch your breath coming in and out. And if you have difficulty with this, you can focus on the physical sensation of it. A couple of places where you can focus our whatever is the first place in your body, or wherever is the first place in your body that you can feel your breath. Sometimes that's the nostrils, sometimes it's the throat. Sometimes it's the lungs, and you can pay attention to Hey, where is the first place in my body that I feel my breath.

And just, you know, just observe the sensation of breathing. You know, and you can do this little short spurts. And this will help bring your mind into the present moment. It'll help bring you know if you're if you're uncentered you have sort of a scattered soul body, it's like all over the place that will help recenter you can practice this with some grounding exercises. So this is just a little exercise of mindful breathing, which will help to ground and center your spirit and it will help you to calm your body relieve a little bit of stress and you know calm your mind as well center your mind as well. So I hope this has been helpful. I hope it's been interesting. This has been the shamans breath although I've talked about all different you know angles of talking about the breath. If this is interesting to you, and you want to learn In some breath work, I would highly recommend, you know, taking a class and breath work or finding a teacher who teaches breath work and you know, is willing to take that on, or go to, you know, go to a yoga school where they do pranayama. And you can you can ask about that, you know, how much pranayama do you do? You know, there are different types, all different types of yoga, and some of them focus very heavily on pranayama. And some of them, some of them do just a little bit of it. So you can ask. So, that is it for the day. I love you all. Wherever you are in the world, I appreciate you tuning in and spending some time with me, I hope that you will. If you have not already hope that you will subscribe to this podcast, I hope that you will come to my website and follow me on social media and all that sort of thing. I have some cool stuff coming up. Next month, I'm taking part in this big miracles mastermind with about 20 or 30. I don't know how many other teachers, a ton of other teachers, and it's free. There'll be details on my website very soon in the next. And the next few days. Actually, there will be there'll be some details on my website. So follow up there and I am teaching and doing all kinds of things. So check me out. I love to hear from people and we will talk very soon.

Announcer: 1:02:07

You have been listening to speaking spirit with your host, john more. For more info or to contact john go to MaineShaman.com that's maineshaman.com