________________
Mentally see the hairs in the nasal passages that form a filter for the dirt and dust. See the sensitive mucous membrane that lines the nasal cavities and warms and moistens the incoming air, making it acceptable to the lungs. Feel the breath passing over the hairs and the mucous membrane with its nerve connections to the brain, which subtly influences the whole nervous system. Now bring the awareness to the sinus cavity, behind the nose. Inside the sinus cavity there are scroll-like bones and intricate airway passages. Feel the breath flowing through this cavity. What do you smell as you inhale? Intensify this awareness of smell. Travel from the nasal chambers down into the throat. The opening of the throat is above the soft palate at the back of the mouth. The throat leads to the pharynx, which stretches down to the larynx, where the vocal cords are situated. Feel the breath passing up and down the back of the throat, through the vocal cords and trachea or windpipe. Follow the breath down the windpipe into the chest. Just behind the breastbone, in front of the oesophagus, the trachea divides into two tubes called bronchi, one entering the left lung and the other entering the right lung. Each bronchial tube divides itself into several tree-like branches or bronchioles, which again divide into smaller and smaller tubes. Visualize the air flowing down the trachea, dividing at the junction of the bronchi and branching out further into smaller and smaller bronchioles. Clustered around these smallest of tubes are tiny air sacs known as alveoli. Intertwined with the alveoli are minute blood vessels. All this forms a spongy substance, called the lung. Feel the breath reaching these air sacs and being absorbed.
160
