20 Pound Weight Loss and Breathing for Awareness

After six servings of watermelon yesterday, my weight stabilized at 120. That's a 20 pound loss over 14 days. Stripped naked in front of the mirror, I now look like those in the holocaust pictures. You should be able to count my ribs at ten paces. Of course I have "slightly" different circumstances: private bath, color TV, daily visits with a physician, etc. So I certainly don't compare my situation to the camps - just my physical appearance.

Since all of my fat which stores mercury is gone, at least one minor benefit has been the elimination of the +2 s.d. excess (years of amalgam fillings) that was in my body. The coating on my tongue cleared up by midday. My body must be shifting from ketone synthesis from muscle cell components to using the glucose from the watermelon to supply the body's energy.

I use breath techniques to build a foundation for intuitive sensitivity. The fast has given me time to practice what I preach. I use a model that recognizes three types of breathing: chest (anxiety inducing), abdominal (relaxing and soothing) and diaphragmatic (encourages attention).

When we're born, we breath diaphragmatically like my granddaughter. That doesn't last long because of social conditioning to flatten our stomach and keep the chest out. That's the Hollywood beauty image and a stress inducing way to live. The physical ideal for nurturing "intuitive awareness" appears to be a basic diaphragmatic breath completed with the abdominal movement to ensure a full deep breath.

The abdominal breathing is easy when I'm lying down. For example it really helps in relaxing to fall asleep. I can also shift to a combination of diaphragmatic and abdominal to help keep myself alert while watching TV. But when I walk around there's an immediate tendency to shift to chest breathing as my abdomen muscles tighten up.

So I've been trying to make sure that I'm breathing diaphragmatically rather than with the chest when I walk - at least as often as I can remember. Here's where the chattering scattered mind comes in to constantly draw me away from the present moment with ruminations about the past or anticipations about the future. So I quickly forget what I want to be doing.

The chest breathing pattern means that I'm standing in front of a class in a relative "fight or flight" mode rather than being more open to the flow of the intuitive moment as I lead the class and interact with the students. As with any natural talent, considerable discipline is needed to evoke and develop a latent ability. That's been most obvious to me this last week as I've watched the golf and tennis players. Cultivating intuitive awareness seems to require the same level of commitment as that of top athletes.