“You will now start to notice how, over the sense, what the really great artists- the people who make us laugh and cry and wonder; the people who fill our world with color and dark stories that can fill us with fear and provoke us to action; the people who fill the world with music that moves us- have actually been doing is creating strong, clear rhythms that our breathing can join in on. They are geniuses at provoking us to breathe in partners that strongly influence our feelings, and so our per acceptation of the world, going back to the very first shamanic performers.

For example, watch a great film, but turn off the sound. Can you instantly see how you start to breathe along with the actors? That is the film’s route to your feelings, by having good actors who communicate in a way that allows the audience to join in on the feel. The actors are no longer actually having the feelings they created for you and captured on film- but you are! They are not creating the emotion right now- you are doing it for them! Their work is inspirational: They breathe, you copy, and the legacy is that which you feel.

Notice that as the film cuts from shot to shot, you are you are also breathing along with that rhythm- and this is creating tension and feeling in your body. This is the artistry of the film editor. He influences and persuades you with the rhythm of the cut, provoking you to think and feel with the film and the stars acting in it in a certain manner and with definite feelings often preplanned by the film’s director. As the radical psychiatrist, expert on the mass psychology of fascism and early architect of Gestalt therapy- which concentrates on the therapeutic experience of the present, Wilhelm Reich recognized and stated ‘Emotional and physical states can be altered by changing the breathing pattern.’

To experience this further, now turn up the sound and see how the music, the score of the film, with its own rhythm, conspires (as the word suggests, con, meaning ‘with,’ and spire, meaning ‘breath’) with all the other artistry in the film. The music binds together the rhythm of the actors and the rhythm of the picture with sound so that there is no doubt as to the feelings that are being promoted to the audience. You conspire along with it all as well, as you respond by having similar feelings within you. The film is not the feeling- it is simply the instruction manual for how you get to it. It is the map to the feeling. It is not the message; the message happens in you. Great filmmaking is nonverbal influence and persuasion at some of its very best.” -From, “Winning Body Language” By: Mark Bowden