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Abstract: For the sake of a respiratory philosophy, it makes sense to look to the East, since many Eastern traditions such as Sufism include breathwork in their so-matic practices. In my paper, I aim to show how Rumi – a 13th century Muslim theologian and Sufi – used breath or nafas in his Persian poetry to outline how breathing is an originary phenomenon. My paper will take a few samples of his poetry to demonstrate how breath connotes a newness through the “gift” of life that it endows upon us, and how the creative, endowing, and primal nature of breath is linked to an openness to the Divine other and to others. Furthermore, for Rumi, every passing breath ushers in a new existence, annihilating its older form and thus creating an ontological sense in the reader of both the finiteness of existence through what has passed and the infinite possibilities it holds when the newness arrives. Bridging the finite and infinite through breath enables us to develop a respiratory ontology that aims to conceive of dualities through an inter-related perspective. This, I wish to argue, is the true promise of Rumi’s poetry for a philosophy of breathing
Keywords: Rumi, Sufism, breathwork, Irigaray, Merleau-Ponty, embodied philosophy
Published in DiRROS: 14.05.2024; Views: 425; Downloads: 259
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Abstract: Intention is one of the catchwords of 20th-century Western philosophy. Positively or negatively, it takes a central role in numerous traditions, from phenomenology to analytic philosophy, and in none of them has it anything to do with air or breath. According to its widely accepted lineage, the concept of intention can be traced back to Medieval Scholastic philosophy, specifically to Augustine’s utilisation of this term. It is in Augustine’s intentio animi (the intention of the soul) – most critics argue – that intention first meant directing one’s attention towards something or a voluntary design or plan. In this paper, such a genealogy will not be proved wrong but rather complicated by taking seriously the (anti-)pneumatological context in which Augustine developed his concept of intention and, at the same time, those unheeded studies of his works that claim the origins of his use of intentio to lie in the Ancient Stoic concept of τόνος (tonos, tension or tone). A new study will show that intentio is what allows Augustine every time to prove the spirit to be immaterial, namely to not be a form of material air or breath. By transforming intentio into attentio (attention) first and voluntas (will) later, Augustine makes possible the realm of the immaterial spirit. Furthermore, however, this article also shows that his arguments seem to take for granted and reject an earlier, materialist pneumatological conception of intention, whose traces can be found in some of the works of the Roman Stoic Seneca, as well as in now-lost 4th century CE Christian heretical theories of the Holy Spirit.
Keywords: Augustine, intention, intentio, attention, will, pneuma, spirit, breath, air, pneumatology, Stoicism, Neo-Platonism, Holy Spirit, Holy Ghost
Published in DiRROS: 14.05.2024; Views: 428; Downloads: 317
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Abstract: This essay is a study of the element of air and the process of breathing in light of the medieval book of Zohar and related aspects of the broader Jewish tradition. Mapping air onto the divine body comprised of the sefirot, or the emanations of God, I reconsider the connection between breath and spirit, while also focusing on the sensuous and atmospheric aspects of aerial and pneumatic phenomena: wind, scents, the rising expansion of hot air and the falling condensation of the cold. Breathing is examined throughout the entire respiratory system, from the lungs to the nostrils, with respect to both the sefirotic divine body and the breath of life, animating the creaturely realm. Throughout the study, I pay particular at-tention to the paradoxical mode in which air remains an indeterminate, literally groundless element and, at the same time, is at the heart of theo-anatomy, of life, and of sustaining a fragile world
Keywords: air, breath, mysticism, emanations, spirit
Published in DiRROS: 14.05.2024; Views: 365; Downloads: 261
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Abstract: The concept of muscle quality encompasses both microand macroscopic aspects of muscle architecture and composition and has gained increasing attention with inclusion in the definition of sarcopenia, indicating the significance of muscle quality in evaluating muscle function and strength among older individuals. Muscle quality consists of two main components: neuromuscular and morphological and is often defined as the ratio between the two. The aim of this review is to present currently used methods for assessment of muscle quality with an emphasis on neuromuscular component in older adults. The most used methods for assessing morphological component are imaging techniques, such as magnetic resonance imaging, computed tomography, dualenergy X-ray absorptiometry and non-imaging bioimpedance analysis. In the neuromuscular component upper and lower body strength are assessed with different methods such as hand grip strength, isokinetic lower limb strength and isometric lower limb strength. Currently, there are three proposed muscle quality assessment methods for field or population studies: muscle quality index, ultrasound sarcopenia index and bioimpedancederived phase angle. Despite the exploration of muscle quality through various assessment methods, a consensus on the most appropriate and universally applicable approach has yet to be established.
Keywords: ageing, skeletal muscle, ultrasound sarcopenia index, muscle quality index, phase angle
Published in DiRROS: 13.05.2024; Views: 420; Downloads: 200
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Abstract: Dream research is entering a new era of accelerating insights and discoveries, thanks to the rise of powerful digital analysis tools that are enabling important advances in the empirical study of dreams. This paper illustrates the use of these tools, drawing on the resources of the Sleep and Dream Database, a free online archive of information about sleep and dreaming. These tools include statistical analyses of survey responses, systematic word searches of large collections of dream reports, and a well-grounded set of baseline frequencies to help with comparative measurement. The goal of this paper is to provide readers with an initial orienta-tion to the new world of dream discovery that has opened up because of tools like these. Several basic empirical findings are presented regarding clearly observable patterns of perception, emotion, and social interaction in dreaming. The paper will close with reflections on the emerging interplay of dreaming and technology.
Keywords: dreams, word searching, content analysis, continuity hypothesis
Published in DiRROS: 13.05.2024; Views: 404; Downloads: 235
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