Noguchi Cafe

The Noguchi Cafe was the perfect place to end my time at the museum then, and to learn more about cellular breathing now.

Nervous system imagery is helpful in bringing our past experience into focus with our desired activity or goal. However, for new personally-derived information to be experienced, we need to let go of our past knowing and enter fresh into not knowing. To transition from nervous system consciousness to cellular consciousness, we shift from an old perspective to a new one. We let go of what we already know -no matter how brilliant, useful, supportive, or challenging it has been.

In this state of open mindedness, we can perceive and initiate original experience in the present moment from the cells themselves. Once brought into existence, it is important for our experience to be recorded, not only in the tissues, but in the nervous system as well, so that it can be organized within the context of our whole history and integrated into our life...

...Cellular breathing...is the first organic pattern of living cells -the exchange of gasses through the ebb and flow of fluids passing through membranes. It is initially established within the earth's oceans and continues within each of our cells immersed in the internal sea of our bodies. Through cellular breathing, we experience life force.

Cellular breathing relates to one celled animals, such as the amoeba. It underlies all breathing, movement, and activity. Where it is not taking place in the body, the cells are inactive; where there is difficulty, the cells are struggling; and where it is occurring freely, the cells are vital and healthy.

Cells resonate in relation to each other. As more cells within us become aware of themselves and are responsive, there is a fuller resonance between them, and we experience inner balance and self knowing. Cellular breathing focuses on the cellular fluid passing in and out of the boundaries of the cells. We are simply present. There is no going, no coming. All is place; we are home, living in this moment.

-Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen

Learning how to shift from nervous system breathing to cellular breathing has been helping me through some of my hardest times, in stressful situations with patients when I don't know what to do, and when I can't fall asleep.

How do you breathe from your cells? You have to start by imagining it. For so long, I thought imagination meant making something up that is not real. More and more I'm discovering that imagination means tuning into something so it can become real.