Awareness Through Movement #201

Gluing The Lungs - with Megan Hopley

A new feature, we now have a 'stamp of approval' for lessons that suit two of our MsS legends :)

This lesson begins with a lecture from Moshe, and it comes earlier than usual because… there’s homework.
(Megan said she might be singing this lecture to us - be prepared!):

“We will do breathing, in a special way. We will define, through awareness, additional portions of breathing that we have not done to date, that we have not covered in the lectures. It is possible to do this in a large group. As I told you, I, myself, since I tried all these exercises and worked with them during the past few months. If you remember, we spoke [about the fact] that during breathing the amount of air that normally comes in and goes out is approximately one-half litre, out of the amount globally possible. The amount possible to take out and take in during breathing, if it is to go to the limit, is approximately four-and-a-half litres. That means to breathe as deeply as possible and then to let all the air out. Approximately a half-litre always remains about seven hundred square centimetres, which are impossible to take out [to expel or exhale]. But, between a half-litre and four-and-a-half litres is a great distance.

And now, how is this related to obesity and thinness — more than to anything else — more than to any diet, more than working? One thing that is difficult to understand is why people don’t pay attention to this while they try to lose weight. They do all kinds of peculiar things. They go to work hard, to exercise, to run, or to swim. It is clear that all these things are lovely, pleasurable in themselves, but think for a moment. That if a person in order to lose approximately one kilogram of fat... has in it a fat of one kilogram of sugar. It means one kilogram of fat has in it approximately twenty thousand large calories to sixteen thousand calories. The mechanical equivalent of a calorie is four hundred and twenty-six net kilograms. That means that a body of one hundred kilograms should lift itself four metres in order to lose one small calorie; and, one large calorie has one thousand small calories. Now, for yourself, imagine that in order to lose one kilogram of fat, to expand one kilogram of fat if it burns well, if the body works well and the efficiency is high .

The highest possible efficiency to attain in a body is twenty-five percent and the human body is one of the more efficient machines. All machines — steam, electricity — have a general efficiency of five percent. It turns out that the amount of work necessary to lose one kilogram of fat is such that no heart can withstand... For example, a regular heart cannot withstand the work necessary to lose one kilogram of fat. Under conditions where there only is simple mechanical work, with no other conditions except simple mechanical work, one needs to exercise for years until the body can arrive at the state where the heart could withstand the work to lose one kilogram of fat. When running a marathon, which means running approximately forty kilometres in two hours, five kilograms are lost, out of which two kilograms are water. Imagine the amount of work that is necessary to do to lose something from the fat.

During the whole day, if you think of everything that happens in the body at each moment, what happens with each breath is as follows. Carbon dioxide goes out. Carbon dioxide comes out of the lungs all the time. In order for the carbon dioxide to come out, oxygen has to come in. Oxygen is burned during work. It connects with materials — the fats and sugars that we eat — in order to produce the matter used in muscular work, in order to produce the heat. Every two atoms of oxygen attach to one atom of carbon and leave the body through the lungs after it has been burned in the body. That we do with the movement of a half-litre of air. That amount of air moving back and forth is sufficient. You see, in order to work hard, it is necessary to breathe hard. It is necessary to take in more oxygen, to burn more carbon, and then lose it. In this way, a kilogram of weight is lost during the great work of a marathon.

In other words, in the final analysis, burning carbon together with oxygen does it. And, if the breathing improves, instead of taking in one-half litre, one takes in approximately three-quarters of a litre of air. This is a small improvement and very easy to attain, and then, the burning in the body becomes much better, deeper, and much more direct. In order [to attain] this, it also is necessary to breathe a bit slower so the air warms up a bit as it enters. As we already mentioned, out of the amount of oxygen that comes into the lungs, we expel back approximately half without using it. When increasing the movement from one-half litre to three-quarters of a litre there also has to be a slowing down [of the breath]. Then, there is more efficient burning and all that. You don’t know how, but fat is burned. You can eat and the body balances itself, by itself. Its demand is different. The burning is much better. The breathing is much better. The feeling is much better.

Those weight losses achieved by diets — the moment you stop, you gain weight back. This is a torture for the whole life. It is torture and a weakening of the body because with most diets, people exaggerate — not eating and then eating twice. It just vacillates the body, for better and then for worse. It weakens the health and that is all.”

[End of lecture]

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After she sings us this lecture, Megan will guide us through a lesson to explore the lungs in a way that is different again to what we have done with our breathing lessons. Moshe thought of so many ways to feel into our lungs…. as we will discover this week.