Healing with Nature: Why we Focus on Breath, Light & Sound in The Being Method
“All of the functions of your body have to be in harmony with Mother Nature. Most disease and chronic illness is because we are chronically out of sync with Mother Nature. Most of us are not living life according to the patterns of light and darkness in nature. Most of us are living according to ideas or beliefs that we have. Beliefs have nothing to do with life. Ideas are continually changing. What happens in Mother Nature is pretty consistent day-to-day.”
— Jacob Liberman
Breath, light and sound are three core healing principles that form the focus of The Being Method course. So much importance is placed upon them because they are magical healing portals with a big return of investment. These are things which are available to us all, free of charge. We just need to be consistent to reap the rewards, which can be life changing.
Often, these simple healing practices are forgotten in the face of modern medicine, which offers us a pill for every ill. We love modern medicine, but there is so much we can gain from nature too. We ARE nature. And our bodies are designed to move in harmony with the frequencies of the natural world, which works with our own biology to foster longterm health and longevity.
Let’s go a little deeper…
BREATH
“Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts. Whenever your mind becomes scattered, use your breath as the means to take hold of your mind again.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh
Breath is life itself. It keeps us alive and kicking and serves as a mirror to our ever changing emotional landscape. When we are excited, our breath might speed up. If we are depressed, it can slow down. Breathing becomes shallow when we are frightened or anxious, and deepens with relaxation, pleasure and sleep. Our breath brings oxygen to our cells, supporting all our metabolic and physiological processes. When we breathe, we communicate with our environment, taking in the energy around us, gently attuning to and becoming one with the atmosphere we exist in.
We breathe with our whole bodies, and the quality of our breath affects our physical and mental health on every level. The lungs are just one piece of the puzzle here. Proper breathing involves the muscles of the head, neck, thorax and abdomen, as well as our pelvis, nose and mouth, and tension in any of these areas can affect our ability to breath freely. All work in choreographed synchronicity to facilitate every breath we take, allowing for energetic waves of oxygen to move through the entire body.
How we breath is important too. With well-paced nasal breathing, we can improve our mental clarity and robustness, and lift our spirits. In contrast, shallow mouth breathing can cause a cascade of issues that can become detrimental if practiced long-term. Our breath affects every aspect of our wellbeing from our digestion and lymph function to the ability of our brains to properly detox. It affects our sleep, our skin health, energy levels, and so much more.
We can take things even further with breathwork, where we are able to intentionally switch from sympathetic to parasympathetic breathing to create altered states that ultimately, can change our mood and our brain waves, and even disrupt any ingrained unhealthy habits. We can use breathwork for so many things beyond relaxation. It’s potent medicine for mind, body and spirit.
LIGHT
“I began to realize the relationship between light and life, and specifically within the human system. It's not just plants that take in light and ''digest it'' for nourishment through photosynthesis. This thing we call light, I saw, has the same relationship with all life as with plants. It is our own, formless source.”
— Jacob Liberman
The sun is the source of life on Earth. And in the same way that it controls the rhythms of the natural world, it also controls the rhythms within us, its influence reaching far beyond serving as a timekeeper for our internal body clocks.
When infrared light touches our skin, it is absorbed by the photoreceptors in our cells, kickstarting various metabolic processes. Light from the sun boosts the function of our mitochondria too. Mitochondria are the powerhouses of the cell: tiny organelles that create energy (ATP) from the air we breathe (oxygen) and the food we eat (fats and carbs). Natural light actually increases the number of mitochondria in each cell, which helps us in so many ways: giving us more energy, speeding the healing process and slowing signs of disease and ageing.
Beyond mitochondria, light brings more oxygen and nutrients to our cells by increasing the formation of new capillaries that replace damaged ones. It promotes the production of collagen (for improved tissue repair), and supports lymph function. Light relieves pain, increases phagocytosis (the process of cleaning up dead, zombie cells) and keeps our circadian rhythms in sync, thereby helping us sleep better, stabilizing our energy levels, regulating our gut microbiome, and our nervous and endocrine systems, and even altering the expression of our genes.
Light really is integral to our health and wellbeing!
SOUND
“A person does not hear sound only through the ears; he hears sound through every pore of the body. It permeates the entire being, and according to its particular influence, either slows or quickens the rhythm of the blood circulation; it either awakens or soothes the nervous system.”
― Hazrat Inayat Khan
Sound waves vibrate all around us all the time. Some we can hear, others are completely inaudible to the human ear. Our thoughts exist as a form of (neurological) sound too, producing specific vibrations according to their inherent emotional energy. In this way, they can actually change our physiology for better or worse. We have all felt our bodies tense up or become extra sweaty when thinking about something we are dreading, or a memory that makes us feel nervous or stressed. These kinds of high-intensity thoughts switch on the sympathetic nervous system, putting us into a state of fight or flight, so we are ready for action. This is not necessarily a bad state to be in, but we certainly don’t want to be in it all the time. This is why it’s so important to pay careful attention to your thoughts, so that they don’t become overly automatic. When this happens, we can become lost in repetitive, negative loops which keep us locked in unhealthy patterns of behavior, or in toxic relationships - both with ourselves and with others.
We all know that we process sound with our ears, but studies have demonstrated that we also receive sound through our skin, which has mechanoreceptors that pick up vibrations in the air. Our cells also receive sound, each one equipped with tiny ciliary hairs, which attune to different vibrations, including our thoughts. Researchers have found that our perception of certain sounds relies, in part, on being able to feel these sounds.
Just like meditation and breathwork, sound can even alter our brainwaves. We can put this into practice simply by listening to different types of sound frequencies - delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma. Because we are neuro-diverse beings, these frequencies will not have the same effect on everyone, and there isn’t one way for everyone to manifest a certain wave frequency. However, there are things we can do to induce states of calm and relaxation - listening to certain types of music, for example, or spending time in nature. One of the reasons time spent in nature is so healing is because all our cells, which are vibrating at their own unique frequencies, enter into resonance with our environment and the sounds within it. Birdsong, the sound of flowing or rushing water, or the leaves of trees rustling in the wind, all help to put us into a parasympathetic state, which soothes our nerves and helps our bodies function more efficiently. Just like breath and light, the effects of sound are far reaching.
To learn more about breath, light and sound, sign up to The Being Portal here, or dive even deeper with The Being Method certification course here.
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Beccy Candice Clarke is a writer, editor and holistic health coach. She endeavours to expand her knowledge of physical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing with continuous and dedicated study; aiming to break down, into a more straightforward approach, the multilayered, and often conflicting tenants of health as presented by the modern wellness industry, the Western medical system and the more intuitive, holistic philosophies of the East. Hers is an integrative, individualised approach that seeks to make health simple, fun and accessible to all.
Through her website, earthconnection.co.uk, she celebrates the great healing potential of nature, seeking to create a space for the exchange of ideas, resources & practices that will spark a greater understanding of what it is to live with reverence for our Earth.