1 What is breathwalking a combination of?
A. Meditation and walking.
B. Unconscious breathing and walking.
C. Walking, conscious breathing and meditation.
2 What is breathwalking designed to reduce?
A. Stress.
B. The working day.
C. Weight.
3 Where was breathwalking developed?
A. India.
B. The United Kingdom.
C. The United States.
4 What is Michelle Risa’s job?
A. A breathwalk instructor.
B. A business consultant.
C. A Psychotherapist.
5 When does Yogi Bhajan believe people should do to breathwalk?
A. After work.
B. In their everyday life.
C. When they are in an outdoor space.
6 What does Risa look at in people when teaching them breathwalking?
A. Smoking and eating habits.
B. The person as a whole.
C. Work and home life.
7 What does eastern spiritual philosophy teach?
A. Everything is interconnected.
B. Nothing is everything.
C. The future is promising.
Breathing and walking are two of the most natural things that we do in life. Normally, we don’t spend much time thinking about how exactly we perform these actions. Breathwalking brings together conscious breathing, walking and meditation. Instructors teach how to integrate routines of improved breathing and movement into today’s stressful lives.
Breathwalking comes out of Kundalini yoga. This was taught by the late Yogi Bhajan, who was probably best known for his range of ayurvedic teas. The technique was then developed and popularized by his pupil Gurucharan Singh Khalsa. He was the spiritual leader of the Singh community in the US, in addition to working as a psychotherapist and business consultant. Michelle Risa is a breathwalk instructor based on Park Avenue in Manhattan. She says that breathwalking is perfect for modern city life.
Yogi Bhajan basically said: “Let me give you tools. You don’t need to be a Tibetan in a cave up in the mountains and I don’t want you to leave the city, I don’t want you to leave your job. I want to give you tools that you can use easily every day, whenever you need them, to improve the quality of your life,” which is perfect for us because we basically all say: “I don’t have time! I don’t have time!” You know, and so the beauty of his yoga, as well as breathwalk, I feel, is that: that while you’re walking to work, or walking home from work, there are many ways you can place this in your life without... and overcome the obstacle, the proverbial obstacle of: “I don’t have any time. I’m too busy.”
Michelle says there are five parts to every breathwalk: Awaken, Align, Vitalize, Balance and Integrate. You learn about long breathing, short breathing, segmented breathing and ratio breathing; and how to work with your body’s meridian points – and sounds, too. Michelle says that, in addition to breathwalking on your way to work, you can also do breathing exercises at your desk. In her work as a breathwalk instructor, Michelle also looks at people’s lives: what holds them back at work and at home, at addictions like smoking and at clients’ nutrition. This follows the philosophy of Eastern spiritual teachings: everything is connected with everything. Another ancient idea, that prevention is better than a cure, is now becoming popular with big corporations, too, and so Michelle is taking breathwalking into the boardrooms. It would appear that breathwalking has a promising future ahead of it.
KEY:
1C 2A 3C 4A 5B 6B 7A
