Sharing Breath

Treating bodies as more than discursive in social research can feel out of place in academia. As a result, embodiment studies remain on the outside of academic knowledge construction and critical scholarship. However, embodiment scholars suggest that investigations into the profound division created by privileging the mind-intellect over the body-spirit are integral to the project of decolonization. The field of embodiment theorizes bodies as knowledgeable in ways that include but are not solely cognitive. The contributors to this collection suggest developing embodied ways of teaching, learning, and knowing through embodied experiences such as yoga, mindfulness, illness, and trauma. Although the contributors challenge Western educational frameworks from within and beyond academic settings, they also acknowledge and draw attention to the incommensurability between decolonization and aspects of social justice projects in education. By addressing this tension ethically and deliberately, the contributors engage thoughtfully with decolonization and make a substantial, and sometimes unsettling, contribution to critical studies in education.

"Deep Breathing: Harnessing The Power Of Breath" guides you on a transformative journey into the world of breath. Delve into the science, art, and benefits of deep breathing, unlocking the potential for improved well-being and inner harmony. From ancient practices to modern techniques, this book explores the profound impact of breath on your mind, body, and spirit. Discover relaxation methods that melt away stress, energizing breath sequences, and mindfulness techniques that promote emotional healing. Through yoga, meditation, and creative expression, embrace the synergy between breath and personal growth. In challenging times, find solace as you navigate life's complexities using the calming influence of your breath. Let this book be your guide to cultivating a lifelong breath practice, integrating it into your daily routine, and sharing its gifts with others. Awaken to the transformative power of breath and embark on a journey of self-discovery, healing, and positive change.

This open access book studies breath and breathing in literature and culture and provides crucial insights into the history of medicine, health and the emotions, the foundations of beliefs concerning body, spirit and world, the connections between breath and creativity and the phenomenology of breath and breathlessness. Contributions span the classical, medieval, early modern, Romantic, Victorian, modern and contemporary periods, drawing on medical writings, philosophy, theology and the visual arts as well as on literary, historical and cultural studies. The collection illustrates the complex significance and symbolic power of breath and breathlessness across time: breath is written deeply into ideas of nature, spirituality, emotion, creativity and being, and is inextricable from notions of consciousness, spirit, inspiration, voice, feeling, freedom and movement. The volume also demonstrates the long-standing connections between breath and place, politics and aesthetics, illuminating both contrasts and continuities.

This study considers the locus of the breathing body in the film experience and its implications for the study of embodiment in film and sensuous spectatorship.

This book offers an original contribution towards a new theory of intersubjectivity which places ethics of breath, hospitality and non-violence in the forefront. Emphasizing Indian philosophy and religion (Vedas and Upanishads) and related cross-cultural interpretations, it provides new intercultural interpretations of key Western concepts which traditionally were developed and followed in the vein of re-conceptualizations or revitalizations of Greek thought, as in Nietzsche and Heidegger, for example. The significance of the book lies in its establishment of a new platform for thinking philosophically about intersubjectivity, so as to nudge contemporary philosophy towards a more sensitive approach, which is needed in our times. Its originality lies in its innovative approach, which searches for the origin of ethical gestures (represented in respecting the breath/breathing) through the newly introduced concept of “mesocosm” as a space of a ritual, or a new ethical space of intersubjective encounters. The book also introduces the possibility of an original ethics based on breath. Intended for philosophers, feminists and others concerned with intercultural philosophy and comparative religion, the book will appeal to readers interested in contemporary ethical and political theories of peaceful conflict resolution and concepts of hospitality. A Breath of Hospitality will benefit all who seek a more sensitive approach in philosophy, including philosophy of religion, and often-neglected practical and educational layers of our everyday intersubjective relations.

The Holy Spirit is in a way the most mysterious of the three “names” of God. For many it is the “unknown God” (Acts 17:23). How can a “Spirit” be love? How can it be a person? What role can a “Spirit” have in the trinitarian relations? In The Breath of God, Vetö argues that a more exact comprehension of the third divine person can be reached by considering the way it acts in the economy of salvation and how it reveals itself in its scriptural names: Ruah and Pneuma, breath or wind. Just as, in the eternal life of God, the Father and the Son are precisely what their names designate, likewise, the Holy Spirit is the Breath of God. The procession of the Spirit is the “breathing out” of the Father into the Son, the communication of one intimacy into another, and the “breathing” back of the Son into the Father. This leads to reshaping many aspects of trinitarian theology, in particular divine personhood. It is also fruitful for the believer’s life of prayer because it offers a better understanding of the distinct relationship one can have to Father, Son, and Spirit.

Is life so busy and chaotic lately that you’ve had trouble finding a moment to simply catch your breath? The good news is Kirsten Watson knows what you’re going through, and she’s got your back. As a mom of seven kids, wife of a professional athlete and cohost of a popular podcast, Kirsten is often asked by other women, “How do you do it?” They see her with her hands full and wonder, What keeps her going—and smiling—with everything she’s juggling? Kirsten’s answer begins with a simple first step: take a breath. The second step is also simple: lean in and understand that the Word of God gives us the breath we need to handle every situation because when we inhale God’s Word, we exhale peace. In Sis, Take a Breath, Kirsten offers you: encouragement during the chaos that every day seems to bring; practical life hacks for the moments when it’s hard to take a deep breath; truth from Scripture when it’s hard to find the strength to keep going; relatable personal stories to help live and love well in today’s frantic world. Discover a new way to exhale deeply through it all and find hope to make it through. Take a breath, sis. You got this.

In this profoundly innovative book, Ashon T. Crawley engages a wide range of critical paradigms from black studies, queer theory, and sound studies to theology, continental philosophy, and performance studies to theorize the ways in which alternative or “otherwise” modes of existence can serve as disruptions against the marginalization of and violence against minoritarian lifeworlds and possibilities for flourishing. Examining the whooping, shouting, noise-making, and speaking in tongues of Black Pentecostalism—a multi-racial, multi-class, multi-national Christian sect with one strand of its modern genesis in 1906 Los Angeles—Blackpentecostal Breath reveals how these aesthetic practices allow for the emergence of alternative modes of social organization. As Crawley deftly reveals, these choreographic, sonic, and visual practices and the sensual experiences they create are not only important for imagining what Crawley identifies as “otherwise worlds of possibility,” they also yield a general hermeneutics, a methodology for reading culture in an era when such expressions are increasingly under siege.

An exploration of the magic of plants, which exists far deeper than the green and nourishing existence we experience above ground. Through the lenses of animism, folk magic, herbal medicine, plant lore, land connections, and rituals aligned with tides of nature, The Green Arte explores the magic of plants. Hidden below, in dark and mysterious depths, are the roots of these beings, which connect to something primordial, raw, wild and complex; this is the mystery which Josh Williams explores in his second book. Within these pages, Josh introduces readers to the plant spirits, allowing us to work with them, in spiritual ways, to create magic and medicine. The Green Arte will act as a workbook, for the engaged reader - from herbalists and ritualists, to anyone wanting to deepen their relationship with the natural world - to grow their own work in the wonderful and magical bounty that nature and the plants have to offer.

Finding Grace with God: A Phenomenological Reading of the Annunciation engages in an interweaving of phenomenology, mystical theology, and feminist philosophy to unfold a theopoetic interpretation of the narrative of the Annunciation in the Gospel of Luke. It begins with a discussion of the foundational phenomenologies of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger and then moves to the more recent work of several French phenomenologists, including Paul Ricoeur, Jean-Louis Chretien, and Michel Henry. The interpretation is then expanded through the philosophies of Luce Irigaray, Jean-Luc Marion, and Jacques Derrida. Finally, the phenomenologies of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Martin Heidegger provide a means to interpret the Annunciation through theopoetics, as a text that is infused with possibility. Mary, filled with grace, is beckoned by the divine into possibility; responding in grace, she in turn beckons the divine into possibility. Transgressing the limits of language, this possibility slips into apophasis--into a moment of Gelassenheit, a mutual "letting-be" or releasement of Mary and the divine into a mystical union of love, a love that becomes manifest through a gift of life.