Abstract Booming Western interest in mindfulness and meditation has significantly mainstreamed breath and breathing practices, where focussed breathing is taken to be conducive to novel psychological states. Thanks to the regulation of breathing patterns, patterns in our thinking are not just affected but revealed, together with their entanglement with respiration (in a variety of looping...
Abstract In the absence of information about the role of breathing as part of the contemplative exercises of medieval English mystics, this essay investigates instead modern-day breathing practices as advocated by teachers of brass instruments and modern-day spiritual movements. Arnold Jacobs and Michel Ricquier offer information about breathing techniques for the use of brass musicians that...