Five Elements, Six Conditions: A Taoist Approach to Emotional Healing, Psychology, and Internal Alchemy
by Gilles Marin
"It is our breath that pumps oxygen in our chest and it is the cellular breath that makes sure that the product of breath, the spark of life, is evenly distributed to every cell and tissue in our bodies ... [O]ur breath carries our Chi, that spark of life that carries the energy and information of life at all levels in our body and allows us to feel inner movement."
"Our breath is the inner bridge that connects all levels of awareness within us. Not to feel a certain place in our body requires not breathing there. We stop breathing there so we stop feeling it. It numbs, and becomes able to hold any amount of tension without our feeling it. This is the reason we can go through our whole life with unnoticed muscular contractions in our shoulders, for example, or in our back ... that we would not be able to tolerate if we were actually made to feel them."