Thursday 14 February 2013

The Inbreath Society

Breathing in means taking up energy and strength. We blow up our rib cage in order to impress the people around us. The chin goes up and the back gets hollow. We create space for ourselves. So we are ready to face any challenge. The inbreath activates sympathicus, the branch of the autonomous nervous system which is responsible for stress. On the exhale, we relax and go into the parasympathetical mode. 

When we are able to practice this simple rhythm, our organism stays in balance on a basic level. When a system gets overstrained to the disadvantage of the other, imbalance is created. In our society which is oriented towards achievement and which is demanding the maximal output from people, this imbalance is an integral part of the economic system. 

The working environment is shaped by the inbreath mode, and the outbreath mode is advised to leisure time. But the art of shutting down the internalized achievement expectations as soon as we close the office doors behind us is managed by not too many people. Most people take the stress with them and limit the regenerative effect of their free time. 

Our organism is not set up for performing high efficiency over longer periods of time without relaxation; for doing so, it has to go back to its resources. Then the leisure time mainly has to serve for filling up the containers which have been depleted by work and the stress around it. Instead of evolving our creativity we merely regain the strength needed for the pressure which is dominant in most working areas. 

Also mentally, the working environment plays a dominant role with most people in our culture: What is to do, what has to be managed, what is expected from me, what do I have to fulfill? Is there not anything, I might have forgotten? And what happens, if I really forgot something of importance? These are the topics of the inbreath person who is steered from the outside – unfinished business from the past tortures the mind as well as worries when looking ahead into the future. 

Compulsive thinking keeps the tension system in a permanent activation state. It forces the breathing to only focus on the inbreath and to neglect the outbreath, or to just use it as a bridge for the next inbreath. So the pressure of the inbreath continues during the outbreath. The function for relaxation inherent in the outbreath is taken away. In this way, the inbreath-type person is formed as characterized above, tailored for a materialistic society and culture which is run by squandering resources. 

Outbreath means surrender 


When breathing out, the muscles and tissues relax, we give energy away and sink inside. We give up control and become vulnerable, be it just for a moment. We surrender to what happens now, become receptive, open for new impressions. The perceptive field opens up on the outside and on the inside. 

 On the outbreath, we access our creativity. For as soon as we stop to monitor and control the outside world, it comes up to us with its ideas. At the same time, our inside world becomes active and starts to share. We invite new impulses and use the next inbreath for taking in the energy needed for implementing our ideas. 

How about an exhale society? 


 When the outbreath becomes more vital than the inbreath, we tend to be receptive before becoming active. We give our primary attention to what comes from the outside and from the inside. The inbreath serves as support of what comes to us in the outbreath, and gives us the strength to carry on with our ideas. 

In an outbreath society, the pole position is not filled with achievement and control, but with listening and observing. We are not stuck in the past with our doubts and justifications, nor are we anticipating the future with our worries, but we are more aligned with the present moment and its needs and possibilities. Our actions do not come from the pressure of internal or external expectations but from relaxation. 

For becoming outbreathers, we have to learn to exhale. Confucius has written, that the first thing a man has to be taught is how to breathe. Today, 2500 years later, we have to say that the first thing we have to learn and to practice as modern people is the outbreath. We are used to take the outbreath as a prolonged alienated inbreath, so our outbreath is loaded and constricted by pressure as if we would want to press all the air out of our lungs. 

Instead, when we learn to let the air free with the exhale by relaxing all the muscles which take part in the breathing process, then we experience how the air leaves us by itself, and no action from our side is required. We experience what happens when we allow what wants to happen by itself, and how we can be present with that. 

We change the direction: We stop to only react to problems the world presents to us, but start to feel which world we would like to have and invite the ways in which we can support this vision. We practice trust as we trust our outbreath by surrendering to it, trusting that the inbreath will come by itself so that the cycle of life moves on.

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