SHAMBHALA PUBLICATIONS, INC.
For Immediate Release
Contact: Julie Saidenberg
617-424-0030 x 241 jsaidenberg@shambhala.com
NEW BOOK SHOWS HOW CONSCIOUS BREATHING CAN RELIEVE STRESS AND PROMOTE WELL BEING
Free Your Breath, Free Your Life
How Conscious Breathing Can
Relieve Stress, Increase Vitality, and
Help You Live More Fully
by Dennis Lewis
The way we breathe shapes every aspect of our lives, claims Dennis Lewis in his new book Free Your Breath, Free Your Life (Shambhala Publications, May 2004). Unfortunately, “Few of us in today’s stress-filled world breathe in a free, natural, and harmonious way,” says Lewis. “Our mostly fast, constricted breathing undermines our physical, emotional, and spiritual health,” and “reduces our capacity to sense, feel, think, and act in clear, sensitive, and effective ways.”
To help remedy this situation, Lewis shows how breathing exercises really work. He does so by exploring the seven basic self-directed approaches to working with your breath: conscious breathing, controlled breathing, focused breathing, movement-supported breathing, position-supported breathing, touch-supported breathing, and sound-supported breathing. Within each of these approaches he offers a wealth of breathing practices and insights to help you open up the constrictions in your breathing, breathe with your whole body, and live with more presence and vitality in your everyday life. His emphasis throughout is on helping you to learn how to exhale more fully, to let go of everything that impedes the movements of your breath.
According to Lewis, we in the Western world don’t pay much attention to the way we breathe, but the world’s great spiritual traditions all have practices of breath awareness. Lewis maintains that “the breath of life” is what truly connects the different dimensions of ourselves–body, mind, and spirit–and that through conscious breathing we can help transform not just our health but also the very way we live. Lewis explores in depth both the physical and spiritual aspects of how we breathe, and discusses the many ways that our self-image (including the clothes we wear, the way we exercise, and our sense of self-importance) shapes our breathing and our lives.
Many books on breathing have appeared in recent years, but Free Your Breath, Free Your Life is one of the rare few that does not take a one-size-fits-all approach. Lewis explores the basic principles of healthy, whole-body breathing in clear, simple language, with numerous illustrations, and offers a variety of safe exercises and practices for experiencing these principles firsthand. And just as important, Lewis shows how you can apply these principles in relation to your own specific physical, emotional, and spiritual needs, so that you can live a freer, fuller, more conscious life.
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Dennis Lewis, a former businessman and long-time student of Taoism, Advaita, and the Gurdjieff Work, teaches natural breathing, meditation, and qigong in the San Francisco Bay Area and nationally. He has studied Taoist meditation, tai chi, and qigong with masters Dr. Wang Shan Long, Mantak Chia, and Bruce Kumar Frantzis. He is also the author of The Tao of Natural Breathing and the coeditor, with Jacob Needleman, of Sacred Tradition and Present Need and On the Way to Self Knowledge. He lives in San Francisco.
Free Your Breath, Free Your Life
By Dennis Lewis
May 2004
$13.95 paperback ● 208 Pages
ISBN: 1-59030-133-1
Shambhala Publications
Telephone: (617) 424-0030, ext. 241
Fax: (617) 236-1563
Email: jsaidenberg@shambhala.com