Breathwork is the greatest Technology in existence - The Helix Library
Author: thehelixlibrary.com
Length:• 15 mins
Annotated by Merlin Mann
Breathwork is the only technology you need.
Fine, fine fine, don’t yell at me, I hear you. You need your smartphone, internet, and car. Plus central heating, solar panels, generators, algorithms for cryptocurrencies, airplanes, duct tape, canoes, and those thingies that open pickle jars. Shush and let me re-phrase.
Breathwork is the most important technology in existence.
I know, I know, doesn’t seem like a technology, but let’s argue about those semantics later. Yep, breath technology is so vital I don’t even know where to start to tell you how vital it is. Help! What do I do. *Faints.
Breath is the Bridge Between Worlds
The autonomic nervous system is a pal. It takes care of bodily processes that you don’t have to be conscious of, such as digestion or the relentless beating of your epic, bloody heart. You alive over there? Flick me an eyelid so I know it’s real.
Breathing is controlled automatically as well. But unlike digestion or heartbeat or other automatic functions, the breath is different.
It can happen unconsciously OR consciously.
What does that mean? Because it can be automated OR conscious, it provides a chance to access and change the subconscious parts of you. It bridges the worlds in a way that nothing else can.
Breath is a bridge between worlds: not only between the conscious and unconscious, but between the robot and what is alive. Between external and internal, mind and body. It also offers a way of integrating or bridging the aspects of the brain: the pre-frontal lobes (that sovereign genius), the neo-cortex (that big mind visionary) the mammalian amygdala (that emotional beast) and the reptilian brain-stem (that repetitive, robotic, automated primitive).
Breath is the bridge between separate worlds and it has the ultimate power to unify them. What that means is the balance and harmony and enlightenment you have long sought.
The Ways Conscious Breathing Helps you are Infinite + Indescribable
So, let me go ahead and describe them for you. Ahem.
But first, who even uses breath technologies? A veritable HOST of Satan’s hordes, I mean these cool folks:
Navy Seals use breath technology before battle, to prepare the body for perfect action, focus the mind to ensure a fine-pointed performance, tap into the creative think-on-your-feet intuition needed for real-time rapid choices, and neutralize fear. Professional athletes use proper breathing to streamline and vitalize every move. Shamans use it to stimulate the cascade of natural DMT from the pineal gland and to do a whole host of other things, including communicate with other intelligences, alter reality, and interface between dimensions.
Necromancers use it to fly and steal the souls of demons, which are apparently tattered, smelly things. People who want things use it to support manifestation. Actors use it to focus and shift personality and emotion. Witches use it to cast spells. Naturopaths recommend it for calming the heck down. Healers use it to evict stagnation from the body. Meditators or yogis use it as a vehicle for the mind and advanced meditators use it to hack the program. Ælves and Heartmages use it to activate heart intelligence and they manipulate breath to correspond with the high imagination in order to generate more expansive realities.
It’s a useful tool.
One. Bio-Hack the Subconscious Change your Emotional State
Having a panic attack or familiar with chronic anxiety? No? Well la-ti-da aren’t you a lucky charm. Shoo, go light up a city street with your brilliance. Aside from that guy, most of us are familiar with fear and stress and anxiety and yes, panic attacks. I am. She is. He is. It’s unfortunately quite common.
What about hatred or anger or rage or jealousy, got those? No? Arrogance, un-caringness, irritability, exhaustion, bitterness or numbness? What about despair, depression and despondency? Umm, why are all those distressed synonyms d-words? Cause they’re dumb and we don’t want dem.
Every emotion corresponds with a particular breathing pattern. And all those low emotions? Are sustained because you are breathing in a pattern that sustains them.
To change your emotion, change your breathing pattern.
Anyone stuck in loops of emotions they don’t want anymore, are stuck in programs. And the way to re-program the program is the breath (coupled to heart and imagination). There is all this talk lately about how we live in a simulation, how we are programmed, how we are automatons or zombies, how we are robotic and barely alive, how we are trapped in this damn matrix and compelled to live out shadow lives on negative loop after loop of pre-programmed algorithms designed to keep us in emotional bondage and slavery. Weee, fun! Welcome to planet earth.
Breath may be the only aspect of the reality matrix that is not programmed. Breath is beyond the program, and because it transcends it, it can modulate the program. It is the highest authority with a login password to access the program you want to change.
Breathwork can release stagnant emotions and bring you into touch with ones you thought were gone for good. Joy, excitement, peace, contentment, wonder, inspiration, laughter. Breath can re-sync your entire life to a totally different algorithm than the one that is scripted in fear.
Breath is non-programmable—and it can be used to re-program. You’re gonna need the heart too, and some vision. But it starts with breath. Get at it, robots.
Two. Interface with your Soul
If you don’t believe you have a soul, skip this point and go skiing (bring me back a snowball). If you know you have a soul and a higher, more expansive identity, how nice for you, aren’t you all evolved and shit, and would you like an award?
The word soul is used historically and poetically to describe our life-essence, spirit, or anima and this essence is activated, sustained, and infused into the body with every breath. The breath-body is the soul-body. Breath is alive. It is the “spirit” of things, and it has intelligence and sentience.
Breath is alive, conscious, and aware of you.
What if you actually are the breath? What if you are actually nothing but the breath? What if what you think you are breathing, is breathing you? What if, past all the other masks of identity you wear (such as mental self, emotional self, physical self, etc) you are just the Sovereign, and the Sovereign is breath? What if breath was all you needed to focus on?
Soul is breath.
By breathing, you are infusing your body vehicle with your soul, and let’s face it: you need that. We need that. We need the sovereign essence in the driver’s seat. We are acting like massive morons down here on planet earth. We are not acting AS souls, we are acting as terrified, stupid, conflicted, separated minds, and we are creating a dysfunctional hell-hole of horror here on the planet.
The word spirit comes from “spiritus” in Latin, meaning breath. Breath is the life-force. Creation myths around the world speak of “first animation” when clay or earth shaped into a human is first animated by God or Spirit breathing life into the clay, to infuse the life-force or soul into the body.
“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” [Genesis ii.7]
Mythologically speaking, breath was correlated to soul and awakening. In many spiritual or self-inquiry traditions, becoming soul or being able to live AS soul, on earth, is really what enlightenment is. So become enlightened by breathing. Build up the breath-body and become Real. Breathe your soul, and don’t let it happen automatically. We ain’t building robots here people—we’ve already acted like dead things for some time now. Consciously breathe. How often?
Ceaselessly.
Three. Invigorate, Oxygenate, Alkalize & Fly
Breath oxygenates your body, and oxygen is vital. You breathe in the vicinity of 20,000 times a day and if you don’t, you die.
Oxygenating your blood and catalyzing proper blood chemistry is the yogic Holy Grail. Kundalini Yoga, for example, has many pranayama techniques (pranayama basically means breath control or breathwork), many of which are designed specifically to balance the blood chemistry, because a harmonized blood chemistry is a key health component.
Wim Hof, the human miracle who has baffled and excited scientists by learning how to control his autonomic nervous system functions via breath (this very cool human climbed Everest wearing only a pair of shorts and he can immerse in ice for hours yet keep his core body temperature stable), educates people about breathing because it is that powerful: a specific type of conscious breathing is his technique for his apparently “supernatural” abilities and yet he insists—anyone can learn.
Breathwork Alkalizes the Body
...which is a teensy bit important since most disease and ill-harmony cannot exist in an alkaline body. Cancer for example, can only exist in an acidic environment, which is why many cancer therapies include oxygenating the body. Breath also vitalizes cell functions, increases mitochondrial activity in cells which increases performance, and contributes to producing the feel-good hormones serotonin and dopamine and the tryptamine molecule DMT, among a host of other biological and physiological changes, and all for the better.
DMT? Umm, yes you heard that right. Do some breathwork properly and produce DMT, the spirit molecule, the drug that everyone seems to want these days. Nevermind crack cocaine or acid or ayahuasca: you can get high off the breath. Fly, sweethearts. Get addicted to breath. Let breath be your fix.
Yo, anyone know where I can score some aci—oh, nevermind.
*Inhales.
Four. Process the Pain and Detox
There is a whole host of satanic toxins in the world, and most people’s livers are constantly detoxing accumulations from the environment, food, beauty and skincare products, household products, and many other sources. Toxins also accumulate in the body-mind system when negative emotions are sustained over long periods of time.
Despair, anxiety, suicidal feelings, grief, and any other challenging emotion (wheee, fun!) —if not processed, become stuck in the body-mind complex like persistent, pesky parasites and can clog the free flow of energy through the meridians, contributing to ill health and being trapped in loops of low cycle emotions, which sustain themselves. Emotions involve physiological changes throughout the whole system and whether negative or positive emotions, they impact the body strongly.
Conscious breathing and specific breathwork techniques help to stir up and then release stagnant energy through the exhale. It may take many, many cycles to fully release all of the pain and emotional stagnations, as most people tend to let these build up in their system over months, years, and decades.
Exhaling releases what is stagnant
Not only can you excrete old stagnant emotions on exhale, but also waste products such as gaseous waste that is a byproduct of metabolism. The lymphatic system, when charged with oxygen, functions better and detoxes through lymphatic fluids. Breath also stimulates the digestive organs, and a better functioning digestive system is the core of body health. Oxygen also helps your body absorb nutrients and vitamins more efficiently, and having these resources assists the body with detoxing. Conscious breathing can create more white blood cells, which can speed up the release of waste products.
Detoxing physical and emotional toxins is a whole ‘nother blog post, a vital practice, and a lot of work, but suffice it to say that conscious breathing is one of the best detoxing methods. If you start a breathwork practice, you may find old emotions rising to the surface to be processed. Don’t be alarmed if you find yourself having the release through tears.
Breath detox is free, too. Hey, anyone know where I can buy some DMSO and glutathione patches and castor oil and magnesium chloride and—oh, nevermind.
*Inhales.
Five. Inspiration from your Muse
Inhale: artistically, you are now connecting to your Muse. Exhale: now create. No, no, not like that!
Aww, just joking.
Your Muse is breath? Yes. That’s why “breathing in” is called “inspiration.” So, whatever your creative goal or intention: you want to build a business, make a better life, write a poem, sext something original, forge a novel, compose a symphony, found an organization, paint something way cool, fix the planet, create your sovereign self, generate some bad-ass code—any creative endeavour—will be enhanced by your direct and conscious connection to the muse of breath.
The etymology of the word inspiration is revealing. It means the “immediate influence of God or a god” from Old French inspiracion “inhaling, breathing in; inspiration.” Also from Latin inspirare meaning “blow into, breathe upon” and “inspire, excite, inflame.”
Inspire the True Muse
To breath consciously is to inspire the true muse: your breath body, the soul of life, the spirit that has knowledge of Creation. That spirit means the essence that separates a living body from a corpse, and implies sentience and consciousness. Source directly from the source, and when you do that and then create a re-source, what you create will be inspired, vital, and relevant. Breath is spirit which is intelligence: it is the very source of intelligence. So consciously breathe, and become more intelligent.
Connect with the interconnective medium of origin. Connect with the first source. Breath is air, and air is the holographic “field” where ideas are located, on higher and lower frequencies. Higher frequencies can be accessed by pure breath. Many different frequencies are “on the air” — the low frequencies of hatred, competition, fear and survival, or higher channels of love, awareness, and harmony. Inhale to tune in to the channel of breath.
The channel of breath is the only station that’s broadcasting the full-on truth. The rest are just derivatives.
RE-SOURCE BY BREATHING. Become original. Every breath. Breath sources ideas, so originate them by breathing. Inhale your Muse as often as you call for her. Or him.
And get ready, because your creations will matter.
Six. Exit the Mind Trap: be Presence
Presents? Like, gifts? Well, yes. Because if you live NOW, you have won the game. (Won is Now spelled backwards). Breath is the way to come back to the present; it is the bridge to the only time that has any power whatsoever.
The mind will be the subject of many writings on this website. It is a complex and wondrous instrument, and a dangerous one. The mind has low-mind aspects, and high-mind aspects. The majority of humans on the planet are daily embroiled in low mind activities, which include base actions of survival and competition, recurring unwanted thoughts, dreads, negativities, hells, sufferings, crap, jealousies, hatreds, scattered-ness, and a million other distractions and reactions of a mind in the dungeon of turmoil and suffering.
I recently saw someone post on twitter: “I can’t get out of my mind. There is no exit.” The exit, my friend, is the breath. One of my favourite people on the planet, James Mahu, writes: “If you are not in your breath, you are in your mind” and elsewhere, “Here in breath. Every breath. No mind to refract reality.” The task of enlightenment or becoming real or becoming sovereign, is to use the High Mind when it is time for mental activity, but otherwise to exist in silence of mind so as to perceive without its filtering effects. But the low mind? No, it is not necessary to engage inside it—and yet that is where almost everybody lives, all the time! This is the equivalent of living in hell. Ugggh. We hate it here! Get us out! Is the collective screeching chorus of all humanity.
Silence the Mind? Whatever.
For most people, silence of mind is impossible based on their preparation point. Tell the average person to sit there and meditate and not think for an hour, and after they laugh or swear at you or demon-curse the next seven generations of your offspring, they will try. But their minds will roil and toil and loop on endless thoughts: cats, a shameful moment, the Chinese online firewall, you have to go the bathroom, getting old, the alphabet, political revolutions, Italy, don’t forget to get toilet paper, damn why didn’t you say something in response to that insult, rainbows, human trafficking, emails, pencils should be sharper, cancer, the love revolution, bikinis, boobs, why the suit of spades is really just hearts in goth disguise, etc etc etc.
As soon as you notice your breathing, you exit that endless labyrinth of endless thoughts. As soon as you notice your breath and glide on it consciously, you exit the world of mind and exist in the world of the sovereign, the soul, the eternal land, the myth-time, the presence, the present, the flow of awareness in present. You exit the mind and its machinations. If just for a brief, brief moment into the eternal present and the mythic world of creation.
Oh breath bridge. We like you. Take us out of hell. Take us home.
Seven. Word.
So we all realize that without breath, we could not speak. Breath washes over the larynx and with the manipulation of the tongue, creates sound.
Most people speak. Some people speak atrocities. But what if you could, as outlined above, inhale to connect with your muse, and exhale something—inspired? Would your Word be potent, powerful, perfect? Would you have something—important to say? Would your sound be closer to truth?
Conscious breathwork will bring you closer to source and closer to truth, and your power of speech will level-up.
Word.
“And in the beginning was the Word.”
The Year of Breath
I am making an executive decision and declaring this the Year of Breath. Yeah, yeah, I know, it is probably the Chinese year of the moo cow or the hamster or the chicken. Nope, I googled: the Dog.
Fine, it can be the Year of the Breathing Dog, then. And if you reverse the letters of dog, it is the Year of the Breathing God: you. You are breathing God, when you breathe. If you don’t believe in god or use other words to describe some “creative intelligence,” you are breathing source, origins, harmony, inspiration, magic. You are breathing alive. You are becoming alive.
Marry the Breath
This year I have only one resolution and plan: to consciously breathe. My agenda is breath. This year, I marry the breath.
If anyone else wants to join me in this experiment, please comment below and let me know you will be committing to practising conscious breathing. If we do this, the year will surprise us–perhaps with unfathomable beauty, perhaps with cosmic jokes, perhaps in other ways. I’d love to hear about your decision to go for it, and if you’d like, your experiences with the practice and the year.
I’m not trying to suggest that problems will go away. Ha ha ha ha ha (sounds of maniacal laughter and then some kind of suspicious explosion). No, they won’t, but harmony will increase in your life, and the artifacts of your old life will start to slip away because you are tuning in to a new reality: the one aligned to the world of breath, soul, life, vitality.
Breath is life, soul, muse, maker.
Fuck the breath, ride the breath, marry the breath, do the breath, spell the breath, orchestrate the breath, play with the breath, re-arrange the breath, control the breath, compose the breath.
The breath is your best friend, your mate, your soul.
One Breathwork Technique
I will make another post about different breathwork techniques. You can also do an internet search if you use discernment, there are many described. But it doesn’t feel right to end this article without at least one technique, so I’m sharing my favourite. There are many I do, all excellent; this one is gold.
Level Breath: Breath Levels
This technique has been used in many different applications and traditions. James from Wingmakers calls it Quantum Pause. Navy Seals use this particular technique and call it Box Breathing. It is commonly called square breathing, and in eastern traditions can be called Samavritti Ratio (samavritt means equal movement).
Whatever you call it, it is a powerful technique, in part because it gently compels the four-square matrix program to become open to modification by applying breath directly to the matrix of the box, thus neutralizing the power that the 01 Polarity program has over you. If this makes no sense, ignore it. It may not make sense until you have used the technique for some time. In essence, it is infusing what is artificial with what is natural and infusing the infinite into the finite, and in this process, aligning, neutralizing, uniting and transcending.
I call it Level Breath (or Breath Levels), in part because the word Level is a palindrome and reads the same backwards or forwards, which corresponds to the equalizing codes of this technique. Also because of the technique’s ability to both level and balance, and be the shapeshifting door to other levels of reality. Ummm, also because there is an elve or elves inside it, and elves are mischievous coders, love levels, and quite frankly that’s enough about that mystery right now.
Here is how it goes. As always with breathing techniques it is best if your spine is straight in a good posture. If you can’t sit in cross legged pose, you can also be on a chair or couch, as long as you are sitting up straight, not slouched.
1. Inhale to the count of 4 (or any other count, but make the count the SAME in each segment)
2. Hold for the count of 4
3. Exhale for the count of 4
4. Hold out for the count of 4
5. Repeat a number of times
Repeat this level breath cycle (1-4) a number of times and then return to normal breathing. After you breath normally for a bit, repeat the Level Breath cycle, again a number of times. During the normal breathing phase, you can choose to do a number of different tasks. You could
a) rest in stillness of mind (hahaha)
b) use the heart virtues and apply them to any thought or emotion that arises,
c) use the mind to focus on high imagination
d) activate the heart with appreciation by focusing on your heart and breathing there, and projecting care, gratitude, appreciation and compassion to a situation, person, group, self, or place.
e) wild card: you choose.
The whole cycle would be something like: 1) level breath cycle (repeated a number of times), normal breathing, 2) level breath cycle, normal breathing, 3) level breath cycle, normal breathing and you can continue on even longer. Do this morning and evening and hopefully once more during the day. This is the basic bare bones of this technique, but sometimes a skeleton is nice, then you can choose the clothes.
I will post another article about breath with further breathwork techniques when the To Do Hydra in my life is better under control.
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