What happens if you stop breathing? You stop living. What happens if you breathe more fully? You live more fully. Breathing is the one involuntary metabolic function that becomes voluntary the moment we choose to take the reins. How ironic that the most powerful, positive tool we can use to gain our own mastery and enlightened states has been within us all along. Our own breath! Simple, free, accessible, self-empowering, it is literally right under our noses!
The key to a healthy body lies in the oxygenation of its cells, yet this process will not happen unless you are breathing fully, utilizing the whole respiratory system in a relaxed way. Breathing stimulates the release of endorphins, neuropeptides, and other beneficial chemicals into the bloodstream to create blissful and euphoric states. Restricted breathing patterns support subconscious defense mechanisms in "stuffing down" unpleasant emotions. Each of us has our own unique way of breathing, and you can learn to diagnose your own patterns, which, when opened up, super-oxygenate the body, particularly the brain. Internal changes take place, such as feelings of lightness and peace.
Fortunately, reaching higher, more enlightened states of consciousness is now a realistic and attainable goal, but how do we stop the constant chatter that rules our minds? How can we experience what lies in the spaces between our thoughts. Breath is the connecting link between our mind and body, bringing them into harmony and balance, opening the door to our mystical/spiritual nature in the 21st century breathing is going to be known as the fast-track method to enlightenment, health, and peace.
When we breathe fully, we are accepting our full relationship to the life force itself. When the breath is flowing as a perfect wave, life itself flows in a natural rhythm of grace and wisdom. Laughter, the most obvious expression of joy, becomes abundant as we begin to express who we really are.
Judith Kravitz travels extensively across the globe, working with the breath as an agent of transformation and healing. The mother of eight children, Dr. Kravitz was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1979. She refused drugs and surgery, relying instead upon the power of conscious breathing and focused affirmative prayer. Transformational Breath(TB), her unique brand of breath therapy, developed out of that experience, and she's "breathed" more than 100,000 individuals and professionally trained and certified 3000 TB therapists over the last 20 years. She wrote Breathe Deep, Laugh Loudly. In 1991, she co-founded the International Breath Institute, and in 1996 she founded the Transformational Breath Foundation as well as its training and graduate programs. Judith now serves as the Foundations' Director and head of its National Board of Certification. An ordained minister with a doctorate in metaphysics, she's facilitated A Course In Miracles groups, rebirthing, kundalini, yoga, inner sensitivity classes, children's yoga, and women's empowerment groups, and we welcome her return to Rowe.
"If we could pull all the peoples of the world into one room and let Judith Kravitz put them through the experience she gave me with Transformational Breathing, the world would be a better place."
- Norman Lear, TV Producer
"That one breath session was worth more than two years of therapy."
- Gabrielle Hass