I breathe in the breath of my neighbor. My friends and loved ones. My enemies. My ancestors. My children's children.
We share in the life of each other, of the trees, the animals, of those that were and those yet to be.
We share in each other. We have no choice.
Our breath, like ideas, like thoughts, like the oneness that gives rise to creativity... we share in it all. What we think, what we dream, what we create was breathed in from the atmosphere that every living thing has contributed to by their exhalation.
We take in what the world has released, it becomes nourishing chi for ourselves and we release it again to be transformed as it will.
Recycling and repurposing the breath of life. Feeding on what was always here. And giving back to the all.
I have two small framed 8" x 10" prints in my office, type written in brush-style calligraphy.
One reads:
breathe
breathe
breathe
breathe
breathe
breathe
breathe
breathe
The other:
exhale.......
This is the part we sometimes forget, or have a hard time with. The part that brings a feeling of relaxation, and completion, release and peace. The part that's necessary to make room for the next breath. Without a full exhale, we are still hanging on to toxins which make our bodies more acidic and less resistant to disease.
We also don't make enough room for our next breath full of life-giving oxygen.
We take our first breath at the moment of birth. We release our last breath when we die.
Every breath, in and out, a life cycle completed. Over, and over, and over...
Having played with mindfulness meditation and breathing as a means of experiencing 'present moment awareness', but not really being sure if I've hit it or not ... or really being clear on what present moment awareness even felt like... even while often ignorantly talking about it...
.. I think I'm finally getting a little closer.
Or at least I came upon a visual analogy that kind of describes what the connection is between the breath and the present moment.
This was during a session of 'consciously connected breathing', as outlined in Michael Brown's book, "The Presence Process", a practice which he claims would be the most efficacious route to developing present moment awareness.
My experiences with bringing awareness to my breathing had thus far not had an astounding effect beyond the continual realization that, oh, yes, now I'm breathing in.Oh, and now I'm breathingout.... still separate moments and actions in time. However, I think there was something about the 'connected' aspect of breathing... in which I gently draw the breath in, allow it to fall naturally, and then draw it back in, not allowing for pauses in between, and bringing all of my awareness to the transition... this approach revealed the continuity of the breathing process throughout my life, and as a result, had the immediate effect of me becoming aware of my place along that continuum.
If you are a visual person, as I am, perhaps this will help.
I have always been fascinated by the image of a long, empty road. There's something about standing still on a stretch of asphalt, on which the points on either end are not visible to me from that place, that feels mysterious and compelling. There's the awareness that the road comes from somewhere and connects to somewhere else. And because I know this, I can imagine being connected to any point along that road beyond my vision, in that moment, including the ends, simply by virtue of standing in that one spot. For some reason, I always thought that was pretty cool.
This is the visual I had with the breathing. It is a process that has been with me since birth, and will continue until I die - a fact which was always logical and obvious to my rational mind. But it was the sensation of continuity that had previously eluded me. And so it with the awareness of this constant function.. like a road or a golden thread stretching from one end of my life to another, that brought an immediate awareness of where I was at that moment. And that everything else was just scenery.
Brown says the breathing exercise has the effect of activating our Inner Presence... our timeless knowing that does not concern itself with the dramas that our ego minds do. Yes, I stray off the path, and often get lost in the woods and the quicksand, but I now realize that the path isn't lost to me....only my awareness of it is, and all I have to do is remember to breathe, and the path reappears. It is, at once, the means of travel, and the destination. No matter what's going on... the path through the quagmire that my thoughts insist on taking, I have the ability (hopefully) to stop and go, "oh, there's my breathing" and return to the basics. And in my more 'successful' breathing sessions, I get the feeling that this is all that is really essential. Everything else is just fluff and drama. Sure, some is necessary fluff, but keeping my feet on the path allows me to consciously choose which drama to participate in.
Makes it a whole lot more fun, to be sure.
Like this post? Please, take a breath and consciously:
The other day I had my first experience with Ayurveda, the Indian system of medicine which claims to be the oldest in the world. The practitioner, a lovely woman named Alpa, who is also part of the holistic center that I work from, explained to me that Ayurveda means "knowledge of self", or "knowledge of life". She asked me what I knew to be the essentials for 'living the life', and waited for my responses with a sheet of paper in her hand, marked with numbers 1 through 4.
She listed the things I recited, such as healthy food, exercise, inward reflection... none of which she jotted down in the number one spot. What was I missing?
And why was what should have been the most obvious thing, especially as a bodyworker, eluding me?
I guess it was no surprise -- considering that the issue I brought to her was about support for my Lung meridian (which I intuited my primary challenge to be) -- that I was totally blanking on oxygen. We can go for some time without food, even longer without exercise, and go our entire lives without meditation, but we wouldn't last longer than a few minutes without air. Duh.
Alpa then took me through pulse palpation and a brief marma point massage (similar to acupressure or shiatsu points), accompanied by deep breathing exercises. "Breathe! Breathe! More, more, more! Now let it go..." she kept admonishing me, until I thought I might pass out. I didn't, of course, but I was profoundly aware, upon sitting up, of fully inhabiting my upper body for the first time in a while. It was amazing.
She then revealed to me that, during the shiatsu treatment I had given her a few days ago, she noticed that I hadn't been fully breathing. Me?!? Ahem. Ah, Gina, remember Shiatsu 101? Before all else, breathe.
But this is something we all forget. Sure, we breathe enough to survive, but for many of us, only just so. How much of our aches and pains, mental fuzziness, fatigue, anxieties, lowered immunity, digestive issues, and depression are a result of just not breathing properly?
And I was obviously becoming aware of this in myself. I had been noticing periods of breathlessness, upper body weakness, weird and vague flu symptoms that would come and go as soon as the air got drier, and periods of inexplicable sadness. In shiatsu, the Lungs are responsible for intake of chi (or ki, in Japanese), and for dispersing it downwards and outwards.. therefore governing the ki of the whole body. Fatigue or lack of vitality can be due to a Lung imbalance.
From a psychological perspective, and taken from the book, Shiatsu: Theory and Practice by Carola Beresford-Cooke: "When our Metal energy [Lungs and Large Intestine are associated with Metal] is healthy, we feel that we are individuals in a situation of exchange with the universe. Not only do we feel our own value, but we know instictively that we are connected to everything of value outside our own boundaries... Quality, worth, whatever we most prize, is "in here" in abundance as well as "out there" and we are secure in our ability to connect with it.
If. on the other hand, our Metal is out of balance, no such security exists. Perhaps we reinforce our boundaries in order to clamp down on what little we feel we have and to avoid further loss ... Or we may seek outside our own boundaries for an ideal perfection which we constantly pursue because of our own intrinsic sense of emptiness and a lack of worth."
How many of us does this describe, I wonder? Referring back to this earlier post, and observing our postural tendencies as a whole, I think we can safely assume that re-learning to breathe would be useful lesson for all of us.
Alpa reminds me that breath, prana, is life.
"And what happens when you don't breathe?" she asks me. "You die?" I offer, my face smushed in the cradle of her table. "That's right..."
She has assured me that after practicing these exercises for thirty days, I will notice a difference. I'll be sure to let you know how it goes, and be back to revisit this topic.
Friday, August 7, 2009 at 10:00AM 
