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Lesson 11 The Centers, Human Types, The Vegetative Center

When a person’s emotional state changes, this changes many things inside the person including his breathing. An emotionally aroused person’s heart begins to beat faster and his breathing becomes higher in his chest; his voice comes in uneven gasps, and may also become higher pitched. Just as specific internal states are related to certain bodily postures, they are also linked to definite ways of breathing. Knowing this, a person can modify his negative emotional states by adopting correct postures and changing the way he breathes. Of course, these modifications do not occur instantly. When you change your breathing or posture, the corresponding change in your internal emotional state will occur only after a delay of a few minutes. Let us explain this further. When I am in a bad emotional state, I will have confused thinking, use incorrect posture, and breathe inefficiently. If I now stand up and walk using correct posture, the negative emotional state will still continue through inertia for some time. However, if I keep my correct posture, I will find that a few minutes later my emotional state will in fact begin to improve. My emotions will also improve in the same way if I correctly control my breathing. But, before changing my breathing, I must first observe how I normally breathe, and only then learn to modify it. We will now present a descriptive model of the various types of human responses. This description makes it easier to understand how adopting correct postures and mastering a correct breathing system makes one’s intellectual, emotional, and motor activities function with greater balance and equilibrium. Being able to improve one’s internal state in these ways is a valuable tool and it deserves some explanation. In our general scheme we say human activities are regulated by several localized nervous and glandular functions we call centers. We distinguish four distinct centers of response: a) the Intellectual Center regulates the elaboration of thought processes, relates different stimuli, relates data, and regulates learning; b) the Emotional Center regulates feelings and emotions as responses to internal and external phenomena; c) the Motor Center regulates the physical mobility of an individual and all bodily movements; and d) the Vegetative Center regulates the internal activities of the body such as digestion, metabolism, etc. These four centers function at different speeds. The intellectual center is the slowest, and the vegetative center is the fastest. It is important to note that in general a vegetative change will modify the functioning of all the other centers; they will react to the vegetative change, but at slower speeds. We also note that motor center activity can change the activities of the emotional and intellectual centers. When we speak of the favorable effects of correcting body postures, we are referring to this fact-by changing the operation of the motor center, one modifies the responses of the emotional and intellectual centers. Similarly, when one changes to correct breathing, one is changing the vegetative center so it will improve the activity of the other centers. It is possible to formulate a human typology based on these four centers. We will not develop this here except to note that every person tends to respond more through one center than the others; therefore, we speak of intellectual, emotional, motor, or vegetative (instinctive) human types. We will exercise all the centers in this course. We will begin with the vegetative center and then proceed step by step to mobilize the motor, emotional, and intellectual centers. Each person will learn which centers they control the least; they must then exercise these centers the most persistently in order to balance themselves.

Exercise Series 3: The Vegetative Center and Complete Breathing Sit in a chair using correct posture. Close your eyes and relax your muscles as completely as you can. Exhale completely, without forcing anything. Then, extend your stomach, stick it way out, and begin to inhale air. Try to have the sensation that you are “filling your stomach” with air. When your stomach is “full,” hold your breath a few moments, and then exhale. This is called “lower breathing.” Once you have mastered this, again inhale, filling your stomach with air, but next “pull in” your stomach. This will give you the sensation of the air rising to your chest (this sensation can be reinforced by expanding your chest and pushing your shoulders back). Hold the air in your chest for a few moments and then exhale. This second phase is called “middle breathing.” Begin the third phase by filling your stomach with air up into your chest in “middle breathing,” and finally, move the air to the upper part of your chest, towards your throat. Reinforce this final upward movement by lowering your shoulders and extending your neck slightly. This is called “upper breathing.” Now go through the whole breathing cycle-lower, middle, and upper inhaling only once. Exhale at the end of the exercise. To summarize complete breathing, you sit with correct posture, close your eyes, relax your muscles, and follow this sequence: exhale completely, expand your stomach so air enters the lower part of your lungs, raise the air to the center of your chest, move it to the upper part of your chest, and finally exhale. At first, you will find you do the different parts of this exercise in a disconnected or jerky way. But as you repeat it several times, you will develop a harmonious rhythm. You smoothly and continuously inhale and exhale using all three levels of your lungs so that by the end of the technique your lungs have been fully exercised. Make sure your complete breathing gradually becomes more gentle until you completely eliminate all effort in it. IMPORTANT: Practice complete breathing several times. Take notes on any difficulties and resolve to practice this exercise two or three times a day. Based on your experience you can use this way of breathing both as a daily exercise, and also at special moments when you wish to balance your mental and physical states.