On the surface, the people are eerily similar to Americans – fashion seems to be important, everyone appears to be pursuing their own version of "making it," and they're all glued to their smart phones.
For some reason, this fact makes me literally laugh out loud. I can't help but see all of my friends in the strangers I pass by: "Oh look, that's Joe having a deep conversation with his friend." "Hey, there's my Mom buying groceries." "Aw, look at my 7 year old nephew running around making a scene."
The only difference, of course, is that everyone looks and speaks completely foreign to me, which makes it all the more comical. It's like I've been teleported to a parallel reality where everyone I know has switched bodies and now speaks in melodic, fast-paced, unintelligible syllables!
I'm staying in a traditional "minka" – complete with tatami mat flooring, delicate sliding doors, and wooden verandas – with 11 other Kung Fu students. Our training starts tomorrow.
Will send pictures and stories from the dojo next week. Until then, I hope you enjoy this week's {Body} • {Mind} • {Soul} Newsletter and have a beautiful Sunday, - Ethan ॐ
P.S. In the coming weeks, I'm going to be making a few changes to the format of the {Body} • {Mind} • {Soul} Newsletter. I'm hoping these changes will help stabilize my admittedly-wobbly business model:
I'm adding a 10-minute weekly meditation for the {Mind} section.
I'm adding a weekly journal prompt to the {Soul} section.
I'm placing those two behind a $7/month subscriber paywall.
I'm expanding the 'Practice' section of {Body} to be more robust, and putting it behind the paywall, too.
Ethan Hill Owner, Yoga with Ethan
Breathing with the ribcage.
While your diaphragm technically pulls in the most amount of air, it’s not your only breathing muscle.
You also have “intercostal muscles”.
Inter = in-between. Costals = ribs. Intercostals = the muscles in-between your ribs.
You have two sets of intercostal muscles: the internal intercostal muscles and the external intercostal muscles. The former is on the inside, the latter is on the outside. See below.
When your external intercostal muscles do their job (i.e. when they contract), they lift and spread your entire ribcage. When your internal intercostal muscles do their job, you will forcefully exhale (think sneezing or coughing).
A great way to visualize how your intercostal muscles work is by imagining an accordion. There is nothing on the inside of the accordion that pushes out, right? Rather, an external force manually spreads the accordion, and (as a byproduct) pulls air into the instrument.
The same principal applies to you: there is nothing on the inside of your lungs pushing outwards to create your inhale. Instead, the surrounding muscles in your torso activate to do the work.
Practice
Try three breaths with me to understand that idea better. Do one breath while by placing your hand on your sternum and taking a huge breath. Feel how the entire chest plate moves forwards and towards your chin.
And then take a second breath by placing your hands on the sides of your ribcage. This should feel like a tug-of-war — a slight movement left and right.†
And now a third one while directing your hands to the backside of your ribcage, which can also expand outwards.
† Breathing with your ribcage also causes your heart to expand. This has an interesting effect: when you inhale, your heart will speed up (bigger heart = more blood = faster pumping), and when you exhale, your heart will slow down (smaller heart = less blood = slower pumping). When you understand the mechanism, you can use it to manually adjust your own blood pressure higher or lower.
When you watch a film with actors, you’re not watching an actual recording. You’re watching a number of individual frames speeding by so fast that the images blend into a seamless video.
Same with the screen you’re reading these words on. It appears to be one continuous visual, when, in reality, it’s merely a series of blinking pixels, flashing in and out so fast that your eyes cannot make out any individual frame.
And same with the building you’re in. It’s not really a singular “thing”. It’s made up of different sized-frames — wood beams, metal panels, plastic PVC pipes, panes of glass — that, when assembled correctly, convince you that the structure exists as a unified whole.
These observations are also true for your subjective experience.
The sound of the A/C is not one continuous hum, but rather billions of minuscule air pressure fluctuations occurring one after the other.†
The odor wafting from a fresh cookie is not one smell; it’s a series of individual molecules your neuroreceptors are rapidly processing and averaging out.
Thinking “my car needs an oil change” is not one thought, but trillions of conceptual building blocks arranged to appear as one thought.
This frame-by-frame reality exists beneath all perception, yet we rarely notice it. In the context of getting present (the spiritual antidote to all of your problems) it’s all about upping the “frame rate” of your experience.
In other words, becoming present with your breath is all about noticing more and more of its building blocks — subtler and subtler sensations that compose each inhale and exhale. Or being with feelings of sadness means seeing the emotion as a series of distinct emotional frames, and learning not to react to them as they arise in experience.
To practice:
Start in a comfortable, seated meditation posture.
Narrow down attention to your nostrils.
Watch it very closely for 15 seconds. Don’t move your aim.
Begin upping your frame-rate. Start by noticing just one thing about your breath every five seconds: maybe the sensation of air rustling your nostril hairs, the temperature as it moves in and out, the pleasant or unpleasant feelings it generates elsewhere in the body. Then, gradually, try to notice one thing about your breath every one second. Then try to notice two things about your breath every second. Then ten things about your breath every second. So on and so forth until you are entirely present with every atom of your experience — everything that arises is known and let go of.
† This is strictly from a time-based perspective. If you’ll remember from the last few weeks: when you enter higher levels of consciousness, the sound of the A/C unit morphs back into a happening, much like the bubbles endlessly roiling on top of boiling water.
Love is like a river that flows past dense rocks. The water is unburdened by needing to alter its path. It simply moves as it must, around and through whatever stands before it. Eventually, whether tomorrow or in a million years, the water will have its way — the rock will be worn smooth, the passage cleared.
Love is like the rays of the sun, which shine upon all, regardless of their being "good" or "bad," "acceptable" or "unacceptable." The light falls equally on the saint and the sinner, asking nothing in return.
Do you see now? Where there is love, there is no effort, simply because love requires no force. Its nature is to expand and encompass. It does not dim itself in the face of resistance or denial. It waits with infinite patience until that which is under its gaze opens itself to love once again.