The Law of Natural Healing | 5 - The Breath.

Avicenna's Canon of Medicine, Volume 1 - General Medicine

Today, we are going to embark on a topic that I have been very hesitant to discuss. In part, because the The Breath is one of the most challenging concepts I’ve had to struggle with.

To most people reading this, you may think “the breath is related to the act by which you inspire and expire a volume of gas from your lungs.”

No. That is not the Breath.

To properly understand the substrates from which the Breath arises, you may need to review the material discussed from the first couple of chapters of Volume 1. Namely, understanding the notion of elemental qualities of organic matter and the humors which flow through the human body. Temperament is also pertinent, though less critical to understand for the concept of the Breath.

The Law of Natural Healing | Part 2

In Part 4, we left off in a section from General Physiology (6.6 The Vital Faculty or Drive) which alludes to the notion of the Breath:

The power which the organs receive before they can acquire the capacity for the drives of sensation or movement and for accomplishing the various functions of life is called the vital drive.

…organs and their various tissues are formed of the heavier portions of the humors…

…the breath or vital force is formed of the light and vapory part of the humors of corresponding temperament.

This may seem a bit esoteric at first, but I’ve done my best to ground this in modern understanding and science.

To understand and appreciate the value of the Breath, we will discuss it in the following order:

1. What the Breath is not.

   1. The word used can be quite confusing because it is anchored in a phenomenon we interact with every day. So the best way to understand what the Breath is, is to first remove from your thought process what it is not.

2. The substrates of the Breath in the body, blood, and tissues.

3. What the Breath is and what function it serves.

4. Factors impacting the Breath.

Brief Anecdote

Before we begin discussion of the Breath, or the Breath of life…I want to tell you about the first time I had to pronounce the death of a patient in the hospital.

I was an intern, and my team was on call that night. As members of the Internal Medicine department, we had a very long list of patients we had to watch over during the night hours.

Handoff for this transition period is rigorous, and we would often spend hours getting all the information we needed from everyone who was about to head home for the night.

Sometimes, it isn’t the critically ill you lose. Sometimes, it is those who are at the end of their thread. They tend to go without much noise or hassle. Their body and soul quietly give out.

Mercifully, the first time I had to declare a death was one of those.

We got the page; a patient had died. My senior resident and I had to go test for life and declare the time of death.

I was ready. In theory.

I approached the patient, drew down the blanket, and began my examination. One of the tests we performed was a pupillary light reflex. Shine a light on the eyes, and watch for the pupil to react.

The pupil did not react.

But, that wasn’t the weird part. I have seen fixed pupil’s before in people who were alive.

What really sent a chill down my spine was what I was looking at. Or, rather…what was not looking at me.

I had never seen such hollow eyes before. What is usually a radiant window into the person in front of you…was a dark void.

What moved me the most was not that I was looking at someone who was dead.

I was moved by the fact that there was nothing looking back at me.

I am not entirely sure how to explain it, but you could see that there was nothing there. The soul had gone. There was just a void.

As if a black hole was absorbing all the light from the flashlight.

It was at this point, I knew, there was something else inside us…something that we can catch a glimpse of through the eyes.

What The Breath is NOT.

Throughout human history and across several civilizations, there have been analogous concepts which can both help and hurt our understanding of the Breath.

In both the Bible and the Quran, they speak of the “breath of life.” The Chinese have the concept of Chi (Qi), which is akin to the vital force which animates life.

In Hindu systems of medicine there is the concept of prana, which is but one of 5 “breaths” described in their school. For our purposes, it is probably vyana (the breath that pervade the whole body and moves in various directions) that is closest to the Unani concept of the Breath.

The Breath is not breathing, drawing in air, or respiration.

The Breath is not the soul.

The Breath is not vitality. Vitality is a manifestation of the Breath.

The Breath is not something you can measure. It is not electricity, magnetism, or heat. But, in the course of its actions it can manifest in all of these phenomena.

Substrates of the Breath

Referring back to the content of Part 3 (the Humors), we need to remember the elemental qualities which give rise to the substance of the Breath.

All of nature, humors, and temperaments have four primary qualities by which they can be described.

There are aspects of the blood (for example, as one humor) which are dense and components which are light or fine. The denser, harder and coarser components of the humors give rise to the physical structure of our organs and members.

The lighter components, which are hot and dry (fire) give rise to the Breath.

Just as the humors are intermingled to produce a temperamental form, whereby the members of the body are enabled to receive a physical appearance…

…so the attenuated portions of the humors, being intermingled into a temperamental form, enable the breath to receive the powers of the soul…

To understand this more scientifically, let’s review some basic physics…