The Tao of Natural Breathing by Dennis Lewis

us, for example, simply vent our negative emotions, especially anger, on others, believing that this is good for us. Recent studies suggest, however, that venting our anger causes us to get more angry, not less, and thus increases our health risks. 19 What’s more, such an action simply spreads our negativity to others, adding to their own problems.
    The expression of negative emotions, however, is probably not nearly as prevalent as finding ways to avoid experiencing them. As children, some of us learned how to use fantasy and repression to shut ourselves off from the painful feelings of contradiction that we felt when our parents did not seem to accept us as we were, but rather demanded that we “grow up” according to their image. As adults, many of us have learned how to “swallow” our negative emotions and take refuge in what we consider to be our more positive ones. We have learned how to suppress our negative emotions in order to function in what we believe to be a reasonable way based on our self-image. But we know by the scientific law of conservation of energy that the neurochemical energy of these emotions cannot be destroyed—it can only be transformed. And we also know, if we look carefully, that this energy is often transformed into kinetic or mechanical energy that acts, without our awareness, on the nerves, tissues, structures, and movements of our bodies.
    The repression or suppression of emotions manifests itself not only in our postures and movements, but also in tensions buried deep in our bodies, tensions that consume our energy and undermine our physical and psychological health. By learning how to sense these tensions in ourselves, we will eventually come face-to-face with our mostly unconscious emotions of anger, worry, fear, anxiety, and so on. The goal is not to get rid of these so-called negative emotions—this would be both impossible and undesirable—but rather to find the courage to experience them fully, to open them to the transformative light of impartial awareness. From the Taoist perspective, when we become fully aware of our negative emotions without amplifying them or trying to defend ourselves against them, the neurochemical energy they activate in us can be transformed into the pure energy of vitality. As the Taoists might say, “clouds, rain, and lightening are as necessary to our environment as sunshine and calm. Without a harmonious balance of both kinds of weather, nature would become barren.” It is through our breath, especially through natural breathing, that we can begin to discover this dynamic harmony in ourselves. It is through deep, comfortable, natural breathing that we can begin to activate the parasympathetic nervous system and thus the process of healing—of becoming whole again.

    THE IMPORTANCE OF “EFFORTLESS EFFORT”
    As we’ve seen, the work with breathing starts with sensing the inner atmosphere of our organism—the basic emotional stance we take toward ourselves and the world. When I first began to work seriously with my breath in order to come into more direct touch with myself, however, I quickly saw that most of my “efforts” were based on force, on will power, not on skill and sensitivity, and that instead of working with the laws of natural breathing, I was working against them. In short, I was using my sympathetic nervous system to try to turn on my parasympathetic system. The more I “tried” to breathe naturally, the more tension I created in myself. This was an important discovery for me, because it demonstrated the fundamental way in which I undermined my efforts in almost every area of my life. I had learned about the importance of “effortless effort” from my various teachers—the importance of acting not just from doing but also from being , from a deep inner sensitivity to my situation—but it wasn’t until I started working in depth with the inner sensation of my body that I began to integrate my understanding of the