Breath like death is inevitable.
Throughout history across geography, many of our greatest teachers and deepest thinkers have noted their fundamental importance. At the same time, most of us usually neglect them!
In fact, they are closely related.
How you breathe is how you die.
Our inhale is how we take in and hold on to life. Is it rough with hesitation, or smooth with depth? Our exhale is how we give out and let go of life. Is it tense with resistance, or light with grace?
How does something so simple as breath have such significance? Because everything affects it. And it affects everything.
If thinking is wind and breathing is water, every thought ripples upon each breath. Some create small waves lasting seconds. Others create large waves lasting decades.
Conversely, speeding breaths can stir thoughts and slowing breaths can calm thoughts.
Similarly, breath carries emotion, which is energy. Hence, poor breathing may cause blocked emotion and low energy. Can we learn to breathe better for healthier emotion and more energy?
Moreover, breath is literally our voice.
It therefore affects our communication and thus our relationships: intrapersonal (with yourself), interpersonal (with others), transpersonal (with spirit). That is why speaking, singing, chanting, humming are such profound psychosocial practices.
There are thousands of techniques to play with breath! However, these lay in two main categories: we can direct breath or it can direct us.
One approach is changing the breath to effect results, such as decreasing blood pressure, relieving anxiety, reducing pain. Another approach is allowing, even trusting, the natural breath to change us.
The former is specific and goal-oriented. The latter is general and whole-oriented. Both ways are valid and useful by context.
None of the above is actionable without awareness.
Becoming intimate with breath — how it comes and goes, what it gives and takes, when it ebbs and flows, where it rises and falls, why it stops and starts — is essential to fully know, love, heal, realize oneself and others.
Outer circumstance is never in our complete control, whereas we can always chance to choose our inner state breath by breath. May we breathe our best, while we still can!
If you’re interested in enhancing your self-care skills, including safe and reliable methods to apply breath for wellness, join my monthly live online sessions (Daology: Spiritual Self-Care Cultivation Sessions) on second Sundays 9:00-10:30am. To gather for an upcoming in-person session, see Note 2 below. Meanwhile, please:
Notes:
Please enjoy viewing the causal “car talk” above I did for a group (Hestia Magic) to receive mythopoetic inspiration for Seasonal and Emotional Alchemy.
Join a special training event in person with me on August 16, 3-4:30pm at 1471 Solano Ave, Albany, CA 94706. We will practice personal embodiment and interpersonal engagement skills drawn from martial, medical, mystical wisdom traditions. Transform stress, build confidence, move energy, feel safe, have fun! Email info@daocenter.com for details and to register.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.