SURFACING FOR AIR
HOW MANY OF US grip our sphincter, tense our abdomens, brace ourselves against the world as we walk around all day?
Compelled to keep our bellies from spilling over our waistbands, tucking our tails under to maintain some sense of protection during this awkward stage between birth and death. Seriously, how many of us?
Show of hands please?
My hand's up. I just caught myself doing it while I was typing. Perhaps you don't even realize your body is tensing up, armoring against what's going on in your world, and, more likely, your inner life. Repeatedly contracting these muscles restricts your breathing, blood flow, and your digestion. Limits the amount of oxygen, hormones, and neurochemicals that your entire body needs to function and flourish. Please wrap your fingers around your own throat and press in; until you're uncomfortable and have trouble breathing, it's like that.
Are you familiar with your sphincter? Contract it right now, as you read this. Breathe in as you slowly pull your sphincter muscle in and up into your body - like you're in an elevator and trying hard not to fart. Contract a bit higher... further still. Inhale more deeply as you pull up just a little more. Now release.
It's likely you'll feel a tingling cascade of energy. Perhaps your eyes even brightened a little.
"Jerking ourselves off in the privacy of our own bodies!" Dr. Gil Hedley exclaimed as he directed all 54 of us in the Integral Anatomy Dissection Lab to slowly open our anuses, contract and relax them in unison, by gently raising each contraction higher and higher as you just did. We're pleasuring ourselves from deep inside, while we move our molecules. This conscious contraction and release stimulates and massages our muscles, fascia, fat, nerves, erectile tissue, veins, and arteries in our pleasure rich pelvic region. In turn, stimulates our whole body; and it feels really good.
HAVE YOU TOUCHED YOUR MESENTERY TODAY?
Beyond our own ass, we have over 50 different sphincter muscles throughout our body, some voluntary, like the one you contracted a moment ago, others on autopilot. There's the sphincter of Oddi, controlling digestive juices from the liver, pancreas, and gall bladder, into the duodenum.
Your mesentery is made of two sheets of whisper thin, resilient tissue called peritoneum, sort of like a hammock, and connects parts of your small intestine to the back wall of the abdominal cavity. Touch your belly, and you touch your mesentery. Between each sheet of this supple fabric are blood vessels, lymph vessels, and nerves so your small intestine can move freely. Controlling blood flow are microscopic precapillary sphincters, cuffs of smooth muscle around each capillary acting as valves to regulate your blood flowing in and out of your stomach, intestines, uterus, aorta, even the artery to your right testicle.
There's a pupillary sphincter, which encircles the pupil of the iris - in your eye. You may have laid eyes on the sphincters in whales and dolphins that power their blowholes as they surface for air, releasing carbon dioxide, clearing and filling their lungs before diving down again. A sensational experience of awe and wonder - deeply resonating.
When you surface for air roughly 21,000 times a day, revel in the magnificence of your own breath.
Inhale fully, and fill your lungs with wonder. Exhale audibly with a resonating... awe.
(Excerpt from my new book, Sensual Intelligence: An Introduction to Your Body's Language, available everywhere books and audio books are sold 
