I've always said that smoking is the American meditation. (Maybe the European one, too?) Taking a moment for yourself, focusing completely on your breath, noticing all the little sensations in your lungs, skin, and brain -- isn't that what meditation is all about? Yes, you could choose nicer companions than tar and ammonia. But let's not neglect the little health routine that you've learned from smoking.
The pattern is a long, slow inhale through pursed lips, and a long, deep exhale with a relaxed open mouth. That's a breath you'd learn in yoga.
Put it all together and you've got the Cigarette Breath. It's a perfect relaxation trick for anyone (except children under the age of eighteen), and especially for smokers stuck in a meeting/airport/closed-off place. Just pretend you're smoking a cigarette. It helps.
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Good stuff!
(The song "Just Breathe" just started playing on the radio, ha. Need to set it on repeat!)
You might also like the work of Leslie Kaminoff at The Breathing Project -- he's all about patterns of breath. I took a 72-hour anatomy course w/him, and learned a ton.
"Three of the four elements are shared by all creatures, but fire was a gift to humans alone. Smoking cigarettes is as intimate as we can become with fire without immediate excruciation. Every smoker is an embodiment of Prometheus, stealing fire from the gods and bringing it on back home. We smoke to capture the power of the sun, to pacify Hell, to identify with the primordial spark, to feed on the marrow of the volcano. It's not the tobacco we're after but the fire. When we smoke, we are performing a version of the fire dance, a ritual as ancient as lightning."
The ritual of smoking, of preparing and tending our little personal fires, is such a draw... (no pun intended!) The nicotine is only secondary, right?