Breathology Wellness

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What's So Important About Breathing

.....controlling our breath is the easiest change we can make
for the greatest impact on our spirit, mind and body. 
Better breathing will slow down the stress response
which will further turn on the bodies best cellular "uptake" best health. 
This video tells you many of the benefits of efficient, deep breathing...Breathe......

Read Ayo's Trauma Story

 In Optimum Life Breathology training, we start off at the foundation, the basics.   "Relearn How to Breathe' is Sekou Ayo's signature work created in 1998. 
She asks the question often, "what if you found the perfect, natural solution, that's always available, easily accessible 24/7, critically impactful and is Free to use wouldn't you want to know more about it?"
She did and the knowledge of "deep breathing" changed her life, and she has been blessed to share this awareness to millions of others. 

 "Relearn How to Breathetm"
A Signature Training of Sekou Ayo Handy-Kendi

Of course, you say, you already know how to breathe.
You would not be alive, if you were not breathing - Right? 
Like Snoop says, "if you're Breathing you're achieving". 

Yet, research has suggested that 9 of 10 American do not breathe efficiently and effectively and this puts our health at great risks.  
And many ARE NOT achieving due to poor breathing because their energy levels are low, they are imbalanced, and unfocused with brain fog.

Sekou  Ayo has developed a system of checking your own breath pattern and retraining oneself to breathe an effective "belly" breath for daily, optimum living. 

On average we breathe 20,000 or more times daily.
Don't You Want to Optimize Every Single Breath You Can?

USE THE TOOL OF BETTER BREATHING AS SOLUTIONS TO EVERYDAY ISSUES.
We guarantee that you will BREATHE BETTER - LIVE BETTER - DO BETTER. 

P.E.W. WELLNESS
ARTICLE OF THE MONTH

My DAILY AFFIRMATIVE PRAYER OF GRATITUDE
FROM AGAPE MINISTERIES

It is in the high vibration of gratitude that I speak this word of recognition of the one power and presence that is God, the one true source; the creative force of this universe.  How grateful I am to know that I am wholly one with IT; known and loved by IT.  I do know that there is a unified field of awareness that everybody and everything is joined together in a collective field of all things possible, consciousness.

It is from this place that I declare this prayer of realization in faith believing that it is given to me to speak my word; to name and claim and to know that it is done.  I do know that everything is working together for my good and for the good of those I hold in prayer.  This absolutely includes the manifestation and demonstration of all God qualities; abundance, peace, right action, right thinking, health and wholesness.  All that God created me to be expresses in me, through me, as me and around and about me.

I am thankful to know that everything is working together for the highest good of all concerned.  How great God is!  How thankful I am.

I release this word into the living, loving, lawful nature of the universe knowing that I have set something powerful in motion and everything is working together for my highest and greatest good.

It is done!  It is so!  And so it is!  Amen!

AYO'S ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE NOTE;  I give thanks for this ministry and this prayer.  I have been blessed to follow these spiritual teaching from Dr. Michael Bernard Beckwith, Founder and Spiritual Director, Agape International spiritual Center.    Call 310-348-1270 for Prayer Hotline.

Why People of Color Must Harness Holidays in Their Own Way for Their Own Health and Peace 
By Ayo Handy-Kendi, founder of Black Love Day, Feb. 13, founder, Optimum Life Breathology, founder/CEO, PositivEnergyWorks

This image is my family, taken from the DVD front cover of "How a Family Celebrates Kwanzaa".  Can you imagine this picture was taken when my grandson Rashid was about 2 and he is now 21.  My how time travels.  Well times are still stressful around holidays, so P.E.W. in collaboration with AAHA (African American Holiday Association) felt it was time to re-issue this DVD, which as shown to thousands on DCTV and in Kwanzaa programs in the D.M.V.  After 52 years of Kwanzaa and with the level of family stress, don't you think you want to know more about Kwanzaa?  Please check out the video's on our Product page.

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Since 1989, I have been blessed to offer holiday stress/wellness management and holiday cultural competency through workshops, lectures, storytelling and consultations at schools, workplaces and community-based organizations, at sliding fees through my organization, the African American Holiday Association (AAHA) or through my business, PositivEnergyWorks.  At Thanksgiving last year, I facilitated a workshop to support breathing and stress management but when I asked my Latin American audience about their holiday stress, I got no affirmative responses.  These folks were not participating in a Washington, D. C. style, thanksgiving, as many didn’t speak English and the interpreter indicated that most were recent arrivals to the area.  
 
Once again, I learned that during this time of the year, we must look at cultural sensitivity in the diverse ways in which people celebrate, and cultural competency particularly at the workplace and in the schools, acknowledging that the diverse way that we celebrate enables us to learn more about others, have greater appreciation for culture, and encourages us to have patience, compassion and more awareness of our similar interests – our “unity in diversity” -- which offers us real peace on earth and less stress, by allowing others their grace to be themselves.   The U.S.A. is not all Christian nor of European descent, yet most of the year-end holidays (and actually almost all of the U.S.A.’s major holidays) have their roots in Christianity, and/or European pagan rituals. 
 
Time to step out of the box.  I was reminded of my many years of attempting to help the world community understand this reality, as a way of bringing us all to peace and sanity during days in the U.S.A. that we call “holidays”. 
 
There is a direct link between emotional health, cultural sensitivity and holidays.  At this workshop, I was further reminded of the importance of harnessing holidays for people of color in particular, who are already marginalized dealing with critical issues of immigration rights;  access to health, housing, jobs and good nourishment.  Impoverished and working class folk are already living with more sickness and dying sooner than other communities showing disproportionate issues of Obesity,  High Blood Pressure (HBP), Cancer, Stroke, Diabetes, Heart Attacks, Breast Cancer, HIV-AIDS, as well as over-whelmed with public health challenges, such  as Black/Brown on Black/Brown homicide, domestic violence, unemployment, underemployment and racism.  As I researched, I found that during every holiday, many of these challenges spiked and I saw the common factors that contributed to “people of color” issues of just living, let alone their living during holidays. 
 
Due to this awareness in 1980, I introduced the concept of “holiday stress syndrome” I defined holiday stress syndrome as “seasonal periods of out of balanced behavior, gross consumerism, people pleasing, over-indulgence and cultural/spiritual mis-identification.  This simply means that people go a little crazy during holidays- over stressing, over spending to please oneself or others, over partaking and not self-caring as much in the whirl-wind of parties, gatherings and shopping. Sometimes people actually lose touch with their own cultural and spiritual self-acceptance and identification, i.e, a black person celebrating St Patricks day. 
 
Since ‘89’, more research has documented how stressful holidays are and how stress increases during every holiday because of this holiday stress syndrome.  Today’s statistics show an even more alarming spike in holiday social and public health concerns, such as depression, suicide, relationship violence, work-place absenteeism, over-eating, over drinking, and substance abuse during holiday seasonal periods. 
 
Our middle-class family gatherings for Christmas were complete with the traditional foods, gift-giving and gatherings of distant cousins and relatives coming to our house.  These earlier recollections of holidays were that of my large family coming together to laugh, dance, eat sugar cookies and stay up really late.  I also remember watching my Dad falling asleep after taking his “little taste” at the dinner table and later he would re-awaken much nastier and out of sorts.  Such earlier roots of happy holiday gatherings, were recreated in my own family gatherings, once I started celebrating the African American holiday, Kwanzaa in 1971 with my husband and later our children.
 
It became apparent to me, that in our African American communities’ love for social gatherings, picnics, family reunions, church suppers, etc, it was a cultural re-creation of our African roots.  Africans, historically, have been ceremonial people who have used communal gatherings as a time for spiritual edification, rituals and socializing.  In the African context, such gatherings signified unity of the tribe and the family, and in this unity, it was considered an expression of love. 
 
Today, as a displaced people, whose culture was disrupted, we still hold the cellular memory of our African concepts, evidenced by the outpouring of social gatherings, and special occasions that abound in our community, especially in the summer and how much love evolved rapidly for Kwanzaa, Black Love Day and other cultural holidays. 
 
African Americans and other people of color, must embrace our special occasions to better reconnect with our family for self-care and to empower our communities to take hold of our own health, cultural and spiritual needs so that we can continue to celebrate ourselves.  As we celebrate ourselves, we must not only survive and persevere, as we have proven in the past as the original civilization that we can, but that we must thrive in these modern, stressful times, as a healthy, whole people, armed with the knowledge that we can make choices to live with quality lives, with good health, as our greatest wealth all year round.
 
SO HOW CAN PEOPLE OF COLOR MAKE HOLIDAYS STRESS-LESS?
 

1. Be true to yourself – define yourself, your beliefs, your culture and if it different than the society you live in, don’t shrink, but live your life and be yourself – celebrate your differences, don’t assimilate. If you decide to celebrate in the traditions of this country, still feel good about mixing in your own traditions; Be proud of your traditions and rituals; decorate your home to reflect them; and challenge the “holiday committees” at the job or at school, to display the many symbols of holiday celebrations from around the world. 

 

1. Also, “stand up” for truth and justice by researching the historical roots of holidays, which have created oppression of Native and Indigenous cultures, as well as others, and make every effort to be real and authentic about these truths by not exploiting the myths, falsehoods, and stereo-types;

 

1. If you do decide to “go all out” this year, still don’t “over-do it” based on “outer-directed’ motivations and commercialism.  Create a budget for spending and gift-giving; be organized in your shopping, work and hanging out balance;  Make a list of things to purchase, that are priority to you  and no one else;

 

1. Don’t try to change a habit during the holidays, a major stressor destined for failure.  Just relax and try to change a habit, after these high-energy days are over;

 

1.  Watch what you drink and eat. Many sugar-laden foods eaten during holidays will spike your blood pressure as well as strain your nerves.  Remember that alcohol has high sugar content, while drinking at the “desert” table; 

 

1. If you are not so merry as the commercials and Christmas movies encourage us to be, it’s also a wonderful time to turn off the t.v. and listen to music, turn on your own movies, get outside, make things to give away, volunteer to help someone less fortunate or just be still.  There is peace and power in acceptance of one’s true feelings.

 

1. If you are feeling really despondent, grief stricken, or very depressed and have not found a way to shake off such feelings, please, don’t struggle alone, but reach out for help to hotlines, ministers, friends and relatives.  Contact P.E.W., as we are trained as good listeners and have knowledge of stress management and cultural competency.

 

1. Don’t attempt to cope with your empty feelings by self-medicating, repressing and avoiding.  Emotions are real and really come back, so consider addressing them now when they come up.  Write down feelings in a journal or on paper.  Stop and reflect …breathe, shake off any negative thoughts that come up, take another deep breath and another.  See the negative thoughts as if they are in a bubble.  Breathe that bubble right out of you into the air and beyond.  Thoughts are energy that can be transformed when we deal with them and not suppress them.  We have to “get to them to get through” them. 

 

1. Last, recognize that every uncomfortable moment of any day or any holiday, will pass.  Do your best to lighten up and make every moment of your life an opportunity to celebrate yourself. 

 

1. Have a happy holiday and do it as Frank Sinatra would say, “my way”, which translates “your way”. 

 

This video demonstrates the health of my Mom, Mrs. Doris A.M. Thomas, at age 85.  A breast cancer survivor who also survived over 47 radiation/chemotherapy treatments and a re-occurrence of Cancer in her hips, she decided to take the alternative natural route, at the insistence of her daughter me, Ayo.  She did Yoga and later Breathology to increase oxygenation into her cells, and other oxygenation principles, like more alkaline fruits, vegetables, and prepared them to stay healthy, by eating more uncooked choices.  she became vegan, drank alkaline water, and moved.....tap dance, aerobics, tai chi, modern dance, walking, stretching....This video is a demonstration of what clean thoughts, and wholistic living can do, as my Mom was the hit of my first Breath conference. 

Presented by PositivEnergyWorks LLC   Video by John P Davies 3

THE IMPORTANCE OF OPTIMUM BREATHING

With all that is going on in the world today, one of the most critical tools that we can learn is better BREATHING to be better at all that we do.

Of course, we say, we all breathe, but 9 out of 10 people breathe inefficiently.   An effective breath enhances the quality of life as it evolves the Spirit, Mind and Body.  Effective, Deep breathing,  is the most easiest thing that we can learn to make the critical difference in ways that most have never thought of:

1.  Intensifies our conscious connection with the Almighty, the highest source of      Hope, Joy, Peace, Inner Strength and Power

2.  Ability to get more oxygen into our bodies from an under-oxygenated environment  Oxygen is the source of life.

3.  Increases the capacity of every function in our physical bodies;

4.  Clears the stress hormones that fog our minds, breaks down our immune system, ages us, adds weight and is at the root of ill-health;

5.  Increase of energy, peak performance and stamina in a world that demands a lot from us

6.   Ability to better filter polluted air;

7.  Survival technique to combat shock, trauma, fear by calming our nervous system

8.  Provides us with the first food of the cells, that we must have to sustain life.  We can live without water for 21 or more days; without food for 48 or more days; but without breathing that brings in the vital oxygen meal, we live not much longer than 6- 8 minute

9.  Breathing 20,000 times a day in a more efficient way, aides us in not getting sick thus supporting preventive wellness,

And much, much MORE.  Oxygen is Life.  There is “power in the Breath” to increase our Oxygen to create more “PositivEnergy” in our life. 

Relearn How to Breathe for Better, Life, Health, Work and Longevity tm
Get “The Power of the Breath” Book,
by Ayo Handy-Kendi, founder, Optimum Life Breathology, CB.

Breathing and Stress

WHY FOCUS ON BREATHING? 
Of course we’re all breathing, right?  Unfortunately, volumes of medical research documents that 90% of all Americans are not breathing efficiently and therefore putting their health at great risk. 

Studies on shallow breathing  have documented that it is the first place, not the last, that one should look at when fatigue, disease, stress or other evidence of disordered energy, or trauma, presents itself. (Dr. Andrew Weil, noted wholistic physician)

HOW OXYGEN REACHES THE BLOODSTREAM

Breath comes from the same section of the Brain as our Emotions (The Limbric).
The function of Breath is to bring air in and out of our bodies.

When we breathe with the mouth closed, the NASAL passages filter air as it passes the throat (the Pharynx).  Air is bought into the nostrils and expelled through the nostrils. 

Air passes the Larynx (the upper end of the windpipe) and passes the TRACHEA (windpipe).   is the main airway to the lungs  Air passes down the trachea and fills the lungs and is forced out through the trachea. 

The Trachea divides into the BRONCHI, which stems into each lung.  There is a right and left lung.   

As air is inhaled - drawn into the LUNGS,  air sacs called ALVEOLI transfers OXYGEN into the bloodstream converting it into energy.  As we exhale we remove CARBON DIOXIDE  (gas not needed).

The Alveoli air sacs are encased in tiny blood vessels.  With each breath, oxygen is absorbed into the BLOOD, enabling the production of energy that is the vital fuel of every body  function.   Carbon dioxide, the waste product, is picked up by the blood, and carried back to the lungs where it is expelled during exhalation.

The DIAGPHRAGM is the Muscle attached to the ceiling of the BELLY and to the floor of the lungs.  It is used for Belly Breathing  (called  Abdominal, Belly or  Diaphragm Breathing)
When we push the Belly out on the inhale, we expand the Diaphragm downward, expanding the lungs.  When we exhale, the Diaphragm relaxes and moves up, forcing the lungs to expel the waste (TOXINS).

On a regular basis, a simple change  of breathing deep within the body, from the Diaphragm instead of shallow from the Chest  - optimizes each breath that we take. 
 
According to the authoritative book, “The Science of Breath”, we breathe an average, 20,000 times a day.  This means we have 20,000 times a day to increase our life, through our breath, thereby creating more energy to optimize every function about life.

OUR BREATH IS THE EASIEST THING WE CAN CHANGE FOR THE GREATEST IMPACT ON SPIRIT, MIND & BODY.   PositivEnergyWorks helps people master better breathing and teaches them how to apply breathing techniques to impact their Spirit, Minds and Bodies.  There is Power in the Breath to increase our

POSITIVENERGY™.  
So, Relearn How to Breathe for Better Life, Health, Work & Longevity.