PHILOSOPHICAL BREATHWORK AND THE QUESTION OF RESPIRATORY

DWELLING

In my workshop, we will be exploring philosophy of breathing. In my view, all questions of

philosophy and of our being-in-the-world need to be rethought, re-examined and re-experienced
within the phenomenological, experiential and carnal atmospheres of breathing. I call my
philosophical method Philosophical Breathwork. In Philosophical Breathwork, we work with the
breath in a philosophico-experiential manner. It is a method which combines theory and praxis of
breathing. It is a method of cultivation of breathing. In this philosophico-respiratory method, the
experience of breathing guides and cultivates our path of thinking. Our ordinary ways of thinking
are rooted in the dichotomies like self-other, subject-object, visible-invisible, mind-body,
consciousness-world, inner-outer, material-spiritual, familiar-strange, domestic-foreign and private-
public. If we begin to listen carefully in an experiential manner the breath, we may learn to
understand that these so called dichotomies are not at all opposing each other, but they belong
together perhaps in a similar manner as inhalation and exhalation do as phases of respiration. The
breath can, in my opinion, teach us an absolutely new way of thinking.

Novalis wrote: “Philosophy is really homesickness, an urge to be at home everywhere.” In his

lecture course The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude, Martin
Heidegger takes these words of Novalis as his motto. In his thinking, Heidegger often speaks of
dwelling as the essence of being-in-the-world, the experience of homelessness and of homeland. In
my workshop, we will also take these words of Novalis as words of inspiration, but our approach is
different to Heidegger as we will re-contextualize Novalis with the help of the method of
Philosophical Breathwork. This means that we will read the words of Novalis within the
phenomenological and experiential atmospheres of breathing. We will, for example, ponder: if the
breath transcends the dichotomies like inner-outer, familiar-strange and domestic-foreign, then how
to understand the notion of home? What could be the respiratory meaning of one’s “urge to be at
home everywhere”? As we think the question of being at home within the atmosphere of breathing
we will invite other thinkers to help us in our journey. These thinkers will be Gaston Bachelard, St.
Paul, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Martin Heidegger. The question of home and house plays an
important role in Bachelard’s poetically and elementally oriented phenomenology of imagination.
We will be, for example, interested to investigate Bachelard’s discussions concerning William
Goyen’s “House of Breath” and Louis Guillaume’s “House of Wind”. If we would learn to dwell in
these respiratory and aerial houses could we, then, perhaps learn to “be at home everywhere”? And
if so, then what would all of that mean in relation to our entire being-in-the-world (on the
theoretical, practical, social, perceptual, spiritual, religious, etc. levels)? We will also invite St.
Paul’s idea about the body as a temple of the Holy Pneuma (Spirit, Wind, Breath, Air) into our
discussion. Could it be that the home or the house is our body as the temple of the Holy Pneuma?
Whose temple is it: ours or the Holy Pneuma’s? Who’s the host and who’s the guest of this temple
or house? Who invites whom? What kind of hospitality are we dealing here with? In order to
understand better the question of the body we will also invite into the discussion Merleau-Ponty
with his phenomenological notion of the lived body as well as his lesser-known notion of the
“respiratory body”. As Heidegger often calls “dwelling” the essence of our being-in-the-world, then
what kind of form of dwelling would be our respiratory body’s being-in-the-world and how could
this kind of respiratory and carnal dwelling be homesickness, an urge to be at home everywhere?
Perhaps we will also visit the thoughts of the Stoics who connected cosmopolitanism with the life
of Pneuma. Would the Stoic form of pneumatic cosmopolitanism be an answer to Novalis in
respiratory terms?

In summary: in my workshop, we will be cultivating in theory and in praxis (including breathing

practices and breathing meditations) the questions concerning dwelling, embodiment, familiar-
strange(r), hospitality, intimacy, elementality, communion, community, etc. within the
phenomenological atmosphere of breathing. This workshop is an adventurous introduction to the
possibilities of Philosophical Breathwork.