Of Medicine & Metaphor – BREATHING IN THE YUCATAN

Janzu

I ended my summer this year with my fourth trip to Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula. This time I took my family and was set on just relaxing before my daughter was off to college. However, on several occasions while planning the details of this trip I came across serendipitous prompts to look into Janzu therapy while there. This was a therapy I had never heard of before.

Curious, I looked it up. A google search on Janzu yielded this definition:

Janzu therapy is a water-based massage and energy healing technique that utilizes the therapeutic properties of water to promote relaxation, reduce stress, and enhance mental and physical well-being. Also known as “rebirth therapy,” Janzu is based on the idea of reconnecting with the water element as our origin.

The state of Quintano Roo in Mexico is renowned for promoting all types of “wellness” therapies touting ancient Mayan origins, particularly in Tulum. This was one of those novel offerings. When I further researched the origins of this Janzu therapy, every website I consulted vaguely alluded to its originating in India (one source said “but in the 1990s – not ‘ancient’”) before being fully developed by a Mexican called Juan Villatoro. 

I read further that Villatoro was inspired by “shamanic regression techniques” and has promoted Janzu around the world from a base in Mexico. While a prominent Janzu therapy school sits in France and the therapy seems to be available in many unique tourist destinations around the world, Mexico has definitely become a hub for its propagation.

As I looked more into it, I came across these fabulous pictures and videos of people gliding and swirling in water with the aid of their therapists. Another site promoting this therapy said:

JANZU, A DANCE WITH THE WATER ELEMENT

The purpose of a session is to calm you down and relax your body thanks to the lifting effect of water or Archimedes force, combined with the fluidity of the movements initiated by the practitioner. It looks like a dance, where the patient lets himself be cradled like a baby floating on the surface. The movements are gentle, intuitively guided by water and in harmony with your breathing. It is through a set of movements that the body deeply relaxes, realigns and re-harmonizes by itself. There is no manipulation, just a “flow”.

Dance and water … Enough said … I had to try this!

So, I set off to find the ideal therapist and location to experience Janzu.

It is no wonder that Janzu therapy has taken off in the Yucatan. Janzu is “meant to be practiced in warm water, typically in a pool or natural setting,” states a prominent therapist’s site. The Yucatan peninsula, with its bracing Caribbean waters, is also home to an estimated 6,000-plus natural water sinkholes called cenotes (aka xenotes). These are natural geological formations “where porous rock like limestone collapses due to rain and exposes underlying groundwater and rivers.” The water is usually crystalline and varies in temperature depending on the type of formation.

On a previous trip I had visited a couple of these sinkholes. The cenotes range in size and structure, variations that are said to reflect their age. The more cavernous underground sites are apparently the youngest. In contrast, other larger, more open-air formations, which are reminiscent of lagoons, are the most ancient. The cenotes also vary widely in depth, with many so deep as to attract seasoned professional divers. Yet all of them have a magical aura and are reputedly very central to the Mayan culture in the area. 

While many wellness sites promoted this therapy at high-end hotel pools, I was determined to experience my first Janzu as raw in nature as possible. I researched options and came across a therapist who offered this as her specialty in the town of Bacalar. The therapist, Ellie, described her services simply, with no promise of exhilarating transformations. Her bio stated that she’s “on a mission to blend the therapeutic benefits of water with the ancient wisdom of yoga” and aims “to facilitate an experience that extends beyond the physical, fostering mental clarity and stress relief.” 

Most appealing to me, she had scouted a unique area in a public cenote with a private entrance that was part of a beautiful lagoon in the area. It seemed like the perfect combination of natural waters with the right temperature and depth. The town of Bacalar was a 2.5-hour drive towards Belize from Tulum, where we were staying, but that didn’t deter me. I contacted her from New York and we settled on a date to meet. 

Ellie is an Iranian-born yoga instructor who found her way to Mexico after extensive travels and has made the Yucatan her home. She says her first experience with Janzu was so impactful that she chose to study it and has now dedicated herself to providing Janzu to as many people as possible.

She has an extremely gentle nature about her that makes her a beautiful medium for this therapy. When I met her, I instantly felt that her calm aura combined with her fascination for the practice would make this a unique experience. You can tell she is in awe of Janzu. She says she makes a point of not sharing too much about what to expect, because everyone’s experience is unique, and part of the therapy is to decipher it on your own. 

I love water and was not fearful, but I was aware that there would be moments of submersion and was curious about how that would occur. What I was not expecting was how long those submersion periods would be. I had read on one site that the submersions were never more than three seconds, but that was not the case for me. I experienced some amazingly long periods where Ellie gently dragged me along underwater or led me in submerged dance-like movements. Yet these were exhilarating and surprisingly not frightening at all. Ellie later shared that she is trained to feel how long someone can tolerate the submersion. It is part of her experience and training.

I had not expected these long drags but found them to be comfortable. Once, though, I did panic when I was going under the water. That was at the beginning, before I instinctively fell into a rhythm with my breathing. Contrary to what one might think, the key was not to inhale and hold your breath before plunging, but rather plunging with the exhale and observing that you could stay longer under water on the down breath.

Soon enough, I found myself anticipating and longing for the long underwater plunges. The muffled sounds in the water were calming. I was aware of light streaming through the water, but I don’t think my eyes were open. In fact, I know I closed my eyes most of the time, yet I definitely perceived more of what was around me, with the complete ease of watching my mind wander. 

What fascinated me the most was how long I could go without breathing under water. I realized that I could tolerate longer periods without actively breathing and could feel even calmer – quite the opposite of what most of us would expect. 

BREATH MEDICINE

This was not totally unexpected to me, though, because I have researched the power of breath for years and have increasingly incorporated pranayama¹ breathwork in my daily cultivation practices. I have simply been blown away by what the ancients knew for ages.

Several books of the Chinese Tao dating back to around 400 BCE are devoted exclusively to breath, and the yogic sciences have an entire branch focused entirely on breathing practices. How to regulate it, slow it down, hold it, swallow it, transmute it, distribute it throughout the body, accompany it with sound and movement – a panoply of practices.

I’ve perused many treatises on Yogic pranayama practices and am fascinated by what was thoroughly understood about how our breath – as the principal life exchange – literally determines the quality of our life. Breathing, for many ancient cultures around the world, has always been powerful spiritual medicine. 

Just this past year, I have added 40 minutes of pranayama breathwork before meditation to my morning practices. The physical and mental health benefits have been astonishing.

Many physical ailments that I had stubbornly attributed to misalignments in my yoga practice and even to the perennial “menopause” complaints simply resolved with just two months of adding this daily practice. Plus, I noticed so many other benefits. Digestive issues resolved; cravings went away. Surprisingly, I even achieved greater strength and flexibility with my regular asana yoga practice. It is as if I come back leaner and stronger.

The strength is in the breath.

BREATH – The Dynamic Metabolic Modulator

James Nestor, in his bestselling book Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, highlights how in many instances we have ignored the ancient wisdom to our peril.

Nestor claims that an estimated 90% of us are breathing incorrectly and sets out to scientifically prove that this lack of attention to our breathing is at the root of most of our ailments. He explores the science to not only challenge our conventional modern understandings but also to uncover the mysteries of these ancient breathing practices.

One of the reasons we assume better control over our health through conscious breathing is that the breath is our direct access to our autonomic nervous system (ANS). (I’ve written about this in a previous blog post.) Conscious or not, our breath is what modulates most of the metabolic activity that goes on at every moment in our bodies.

The ANS is our equilibrium system that governs the unconscious but elaborate web of triggers and responses that our bodies use to adapt to our environment. It controls unconscious bodily functions, such as heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory health, digestion, and sexual arousal (just to name a few). It also works in tandem with our hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal hormonal axis to coordinate our bodies’ response to stress.²

Whether stress is internally generated (by our minds and emotions) or externally triggered (by food, environmental factors, etc.), the sensitivity, flexibility, and responsiveness of this stress-response system determine our health and vitality. When the system’s elasticity and resilience are overly stressed, our bodies start to signal that it is time to pay attention by exhibiting pain and dis-“ease.” 

“What the bodily form depends on is breath (chi) and what breath relies upon is form… When the breath is perfect, the form is perfect (too).”

– Chinese adage from 700 AD

Harnessing the Transformative Power of the Breath

Ancient breathing practices emphasize a wide range of paces, rhythms, and intensity built to challenge the metabolic reactions in the body. This reveals that the ancient people who came up with them understood much more than we realize.

Nestor’s explorations of certain breathing practices are just the tip of the iceberg of the ancient wisdom. For one, when it comes to “healing,” the focus is often on the exhale and the transitions in between. Why is that?

Nestor stumbles on one of the more powerful findings, which took him by surprise. Simply exercising and learning to grow the diaphragm’s ability to expand lung capacity misses the point.

To understand, we first need to look at a little background in terms of the current state of common knowledge around breathing.

We are taught in basic biochemistry the essentials of our body’s exchange of oxygen (O2) and carbon dioxide (CO2) gas. We breathe in oxygen, which attaches to hemoglobin in our red blood cells, which in turn travel to distribute this oxygen to every tissue in our bodies.

As oxygen offloads, the “waste product” of our metabolism – carbon dioxide – hops onto the red blood cells and makes its journey back to our lungs. There, we exhale the CO2. The process continues through every inhale and exhale. 

Current evidence suggests that oxygen produces 16 times more energy in our bodies than carbon dioxide. Indeed, athletic trainers focus on the importance of maintaining aerobic breathing, in which oxygen is optimally supplied to the tissues.³

CO2 Not As “Toxic” as we think

However, the picture is more complicated than that. It’s not just about maximizing oxygen and removing the toxic carbon dioxide from the body. We have 100 times more carbon dioxide in our bodies than oxygen and most of us actually need even more carbon dioxide.

Additionally, it seems that too much oxygen in your body can also harm you. Nestor reports that his scientific reading indicates that big, heavy breaths taken quickly or deeply without the proper counterbalancing exhale can be harmful. That’s because they disturb the optimal oxygen vs. carbon dioxide balance in our bodies.

Contrary to what we may intuit, often we actually need to preserve more carbon dioxide with each breath. What scientists have discovered is that “inhaling smaller amounts of air and having more carbon dioxide in our bloodstream actually increases oxygen in our tissues and organs.”⁴ In other words, doing less to get more. But how can that be? 

As it happens, carbon dioxide is not simply a “toxic by-product” but the most vital, and ubiquitous, parahormone in our body. In fact, it is instrumental in helping oxygen bind to hemoglobin in our blood. After a review of several scientific studies, Nestor explains:

He further uncovers:

Slow Breathing

It’s a classic case of more is not better. More important is how effective our inhale-exhale transitions are. That is at the crux of optimizing all the equilibrium systems in our bodies and why it is the focus of most ancient spiritual practices. 

For instance, we intuitively recognize that slow-paced breathing relaxes the body and calms the mind. But what is actually going on? 

It turns out that it is slow breathing with longer exhales that has such a beneficial effect. Numerous studies and experiments have revealed that with slow breathing, carbon dioxide levels rise, but all vitals improve (like heart rate and systolic blood pressure), as do oxygen levels. Nestor writes:

Apparently, this efficiency in metabolism is just as effective when we’re still as when we’re exercising.⁸ That is the calming effect of slow breathing and why many ancient practices foster and emphasize slow breathing to draw out the full efficiency of this metabolic process.⁹

Wisdom of Spiritual Practices around Breath

My pranayama practice is 40 minutes and is a microscopic sampling of the vast cannon of ancient practices transmitted over thousands of years by many spiritual teachers. It entails not only slow breathing with longer exhales, but also deliberate fast breathing rhythms with “hypoventilation,” alternate nostril breathing techniques to “balance the mind,” and many more practices that will take our scientific method many more years to decipher.

Indeed, Nestor’s book further explores other breathing techniques (promoted by people like Wim Hoff) that enable practitioners to maintain peak metabolic performance in the coldest of temperatures. These demonstrate that methods of consciously and deliberately altering breathing patterns to challenge our body systems are a way of building our resilience and promoting faster healing. 

Nestor reports and witnesses the effects of such drastic breathing practices, but still lacks the necessary evidence to prove all the mechanics.

Thus, he leaves many mysteries to be solved.

Les Mystères

While growing up in Haiti, I remember vividly the first time I heard an elder say “yon mistè (mystère) se yon verité nan l’invizib.”

Translation: “A mystery is simply a truth that is invisible.”

It’s a very common understanding in Haiti.

Over time I’ve pondered and grown to understand that the major difference between ancient wisdom and modern science is the comfort with “mistè” (les mystères).

Ancient wisdom practices are not wise because they are “ancient,” but because they have withstood the test of time. The wisdom that we are now “discovering” stems from the fact that these ancient philosophies and practices come out of cultures that have been very comfortable with “l’invizib.”

And their manner of knowing comes from a deep study and appreciation for nature – our inner “nature” as well as the nature around us. What they saw in one they observed in the other.

Thomas Cowan, in his book Cancer and the New Biology of Water writes:

We “discover” the wisdom as we fumble to seek better ways to “see” the invisible. However, in the last few hundred years, as our technological advancement permitted us to see more, we became focused on the material form at the expense of l’invizib, the spirit.

Particularly in biology and medicine, we are overly obsessed with proving things at the molecular level, that of the building blocks of matter. In contrast, we often don’t give enough weight to the dynamics of the whole, and the spirit that animates.

When it comes to understanding ourselves and our healing process, most ancient traditions fully comprehended that the body is but spirit crystallized or embodied in form.

I practice an ancient medicine that continues to be “discovered.” Yet Chinese Medicine comfortably sits between Western Medicine and esoteric shamanism: The one has delved deeply into the understanding of form and function, while the other has deeply explored l’invizib. Chinese medicine is the coming together of both; it bridges the two comfortably.

Medicine and Metaphor

As Chinese medicine practitioner Peter Shea expounds on in his book Alchemy of the Extraordinary, the discipline:

Essentially, I have come to realize that almost everything we experience in the material world can be a metaphor to understand the invisible spirit that animates the form.

Our breath is what tethers us to the spirit world. We come into the world and our first breath jumpstarts the “life” process. Our last breath – spirit leaving matter. 

We cannot “see” the breath, but we can measure and see its effects. We are able to measure the impact various breathing techniques have on metabolic markers, for example. Slow breathing equals lower blood pressure, and so on. But we can also witness the impact breathing practices have on our emotions.

Likewise, anyone who has attended a well-conducted breathwork session can also bear witness to the fact that many different emotions are often unleashed. Toxic carbon dioxide not only makes our bodies responsive to oxygen, but pent-up CO2 can also unleash a variety of emotions that stem from a myriad of individual life experiences. 

Cosmic Breath – Between Heaven and Earth

The world we experience is composed of two basic dimensions: the material and the greater immaterial world. We are the intermediary between the two.

A teacher of mine used to impress on us that our breath is a string that tethers us to the cosmos. That is why so many traditions have equated the breath with spirit. Our breath is our yin/yang exchange with the cosmos, and every breath mirrors natural universal cycles.

For instance, with each breath we reflect the perennial seasonal cycles. Inspiration with its outward expansion is like Spring, the literal expansion of our rib cage to its full expression. The full expression, the top of the inhale, mirrors Summer. This is followed by the exhalation and release of the stale breath, in the Fall stage, a time of letting go what is no longer useful. Finally comes the stillness at the end of the exhale – the Winter phase that’s crucial to rebirth and to restarting the cycle.

The entire seasonal cycle is reflected in one breath. That is the O2-CO2 exchange explained in pure metaphor.

Indeed, metaphor is the language of those who are comfortable with l’Invizib – with meditating on the logic of the universe to intuit how we are to engage with life and spirit.

When we seek to understand the patterns of the cosmos and of nature, we can better understand our nature. Cellular biologist Bruce Lipton maps parallels between cellular respiration and our own in his classic book The Biology of Belief. He insists that if you understand the cell, you understand us, the cosmos and vice-versa. 

Indeed, the ancients did just that to understand human nature. They telescoped out and in reverse. They also appreciated that when we are in resonance with cosmic and natural patterns we are in coherence. When we are not in coherence, we become ill. 

Most illnesses have their inceptions in the immaterial dimension. As a result, that is also where the treatment is. That is why Chinese Medicine focuses, not on naming disease, but identifying patterns of disruption. That is how we access that dimension of the “unseen,” l’Invizib. And this enables us to treat both physical and mental/emotional disruption.

Metabolic function is measurable, but the myriad of life experiences? Modern psychology has only begun to categorize these, let alone truly unravel them. How do we even start to categorize the totality of human experience?

Our linear logical reasoning can help us to dissect and categorize, but we are always measuring “effects.” Our more creative right-brain thinking enables us to expand further beyond just measuring effects, to also detect patterns common to the whole of humanity and the universe. This can then help us discover the root causes of the effects we are witnessing.

The root cause is always in the “invisible.” And this is where Chinese Medicine shines. Its actual practice is the bridge between those two kinds of thinking, as we apply the metaphor and pattern understanding to the body and then directly measure its effects.

That is the value of Yin Yang Theory and the Five Phases that is the basis of East Asian philosophy, metaphysics, medicine, martial arts, and every aspect of culture in between.  It is likewise the bedrock of all traditional Eastern medical thinking that animates disciplines from astrology to physiology and psychology. 

Interestingly, many “ancient” cultures around the world – from Ancient African civilizations to Vedic/yogic philosophy to Native American shamanism – share similar basic esoteric, metaphysical understandings. All recognize four elemental components of life plus a fifth animating force that imbues the dynamic interactions between them (5 Element Theory).

The early 20^th-century psychologist Carl Jung appreciated the value of myth and metaphor and sourced from many ancient teachings to develop his understanding of psychology and emotions.

The Breath and Our Emotions

In fact, our emotions can be seen as an aspect of breath. Emotions are energy in motion (“e-motion”). And that energy in motion tends to affect our breath first. That is where an emotion can initially be detected, like the heavy breathing of anger or slow breathing of calm, and it resonates through the body. That is why most physical ailments have an emotional root. Another way to view chronic illness is to understand that we are often stuck in a breathing pattern or sequence that is incoherent. Emotional illness is not in your brain – it is in your body.

That is why somatic (body) therapies can have such a profound effect in unravelling our emotional hold patterns. By consciously altering the pattern held in the physical body, we reverse-engineer the energetic-emotional pattern.

Back to Janzu

And so I appreciated the metaphoric alignment of the Janzu therapy, which seeks to align the exhale with submersion in water – the natural element metaphorically associated across cultures with introspection, intuition, the subconscious, fear, stillness, death¹² and rebirth.

The longer you can be comfortable with the stillness at the end of the exhale, the more you reconnect with the element of water and connect with what it is there to teach us.

I have read a few other people’s accounts of their experience with Janzu and listened to Ellie recount many instances where some cried profusely during and/or after their sessions. In most cases this is described as a cathartic experience.

It’s like the individuals experienced a “letting go” of holding patterns of their energies in motion – part of the healing process, as our bodies seek to realign with our inner nature and the patterns of the cosmos.

I have never come across an anxiety patient who does not have trouble lengthening their exhale. And most of us are not conscious of how shallow our breathing is as we go about our days. Just becoming conscious of this and retraining our unconscious habits can go a very long way to helping us get better control over our various ailments – mental, emotional and physical.

Becoming comfortable with the stillness is the foundation of mental and physical health. Only in the stillness can the light of fire be properly reflected … the perennial water-fire exchange. But we’ll delve into that topic more in a future post, hopefully…

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1. Pranayama (Sanskrit: प्राणायाम, “Prāṇāyāma”) is the yogic practice of focusing on breath. In yoga, breath is associated with prana, thus, pranayama is a means to elevate the prana-shakti or life energies. Pranayama is described in Hindu texts such as the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Later in Hatha yoga texts, it meant the complete suspension of breathing. The pranayama practices in modern yoga as exercise are unlike those of the Hatha yoga tradition. ↩︎
2. The ANS consists of two components:
   The Sympathetic Nervous System which prepares the body for “fight or flight” stress responses marked by increasing heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration.
   The Parasympathetic Nervous System which promotes relaxation and reduces bodily functions, such as slowing heart rate and decreasing blood pressure. ↩︎
3. Athletes avoid pushing into the anaerobic zone, in which the body is deprived of oxygen and must rely on a back-up system that uses glucose instead. Their understanding is that this back-up system is inefficient and toxic, leading to a build-up of toxic byproducts like lactic acid. The excess of carbon dioxide in our bodies without oxygen can be debilitating, with symptoms like nausea, muscle weakness, excess sweating, etc. Athletes understand that this happens when people exercise over their threshold. Nestor, James. Breath (p. 25). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. ↩︎
4. Nestor, James. Breath (p. 73). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. ↩︎
5. Nestor, James. Breath (pp. 75-76). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. ↩︎
6. Nestor further explains: “For a healthy body, over breathing or inhaling pure oxygen would have no benefit, no effect on oxygen delivery to our tissues and organs, and could actually create a state of oxygen deficiency, leading to relative suffocation. In other words, the pure oxygen a quarterback might huff between plays, or that a jet-lagged traveler might shell out 50 dollars for at an airport ‘oxygen bar,’ are of no benefit. Inhaling the gas might increase blood oxygen levels one or two percent, but that oxygen will never make it into our hungry cells. We’ll simply breathe it back out.” Nestor, James. Breath (p. 77). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. ↩︎
7. Id. Pg. 81 ↩︎
8. What was interesting to learn was the role that carbon dioxide plays in weight loss. Carbon dioxide carries more weight than oxygen. Thus we exhale more weight than we inhale. “The way the body loses weight isn’t through profusely sweating or “burning it off.” We lose weight through exhaled breath. For every ten pounds of fat lost in our bodies, eight and a half pounds of it comes out through the lungs. Most of it is carbon dioxide mixed with a bit of water vapor. The rest is sweated or urinated out. The lungs are the weight-regulating system of the body. Id. Pg. 74 ↩︎
9. More on this in one of my previous blog post – “The Drummer’s Lair.” ↩︎
10. Cowan, Thomas. Cancer and the New Biology of Water (p. 43). Chelsea Green Publishing. Kindle Edition. ↩︎
11. Shea, Peter. Alchemy of the Extraordinary: A Journey into the Heart of the Meridian Matrix (pg.25). ↩︎
12. On a tangent, there is an excellent passage written by Rupert Sheldrake, in his book, Science and Spirituality, that posits that the process of baptism by water that we find in certain spiritual traditions may have found its inception with the desire to recreate “near-death” experiences. It is well worth the read. Sheldrake, Rupert, Science and Spiritual Practices: Tranformative Experiences and their Effects on our Bodies, Brains, and Health, pg. 141 ↩︎

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