Breath as your teacher

Let everything that breathes praise God.

                                                             -Psalms 150:6

The flowers are breathing. Nature is breathing all around us. On a recent trip to India, I walked out of a grocery shop and was stopped in my tracks by a purple lotus flower growing in a small pond. In the middle of noisy, dirty, crowded India, this flower was becoming itself, growing into its beauty. It was like an offering to my eye. My own breathing slowed down, deepening so that I could absorb the beauty of the flower, its modest perfection. At that moment I became still, my breath was so open and free it was as if my body dissolved until I was invisible, one with everything. I take notice of moments like these because breathing used to be quite painful for me.

When I began yoga, I was diagnosed with severe anxiety and was on medication. My biggest torment was my breathing. It was so often painful, fast, and shallow. Every breath left me feeling incomplete, as if I was thirsty for water, but my thirst was never quenched. The more I tried to take a deep breath, the more panicked I would become and the more my body would close, so the breath couldn’t unfold.

My therapist suggested I try breathing exercises. But I couldn’t sit still, my thoughts would spin and I would become more anxious. The first yoga class I took was power yoga, a very physical form of hatha yoga. It forced me to gulp down more air than I had been getting in a long time. The vigorous movement distracted me from mind chatter that was self-defeating. I lay there fifteen minutes after class ended, my body still collapsed on the ground in savasana. I didn’t want to move. I felt paralyzed by a goodness that spread through my whole body; I was filled and overflowing with gratitude. I realized how much anger, disappointment and resentment had been living in my body for so long.

I continued to take classes, and the happiness and healing kept growing. I cried and cried in those early months. I didn’t care who saw me cry in class. My mat was my sanctuary, where I came to pray. Every time I overcame my resistance and anxiety and made it to class was like a prayer, an intention to move towards a more fulfilling life: I would listen to my breath. It was like following a thread that connected me to all that was greater than I.  My breath was as vast as the ocean. It washed into me filling me with brightness and life, and washed out of me back to where it came from. I did not feel alone like I had when my breath had been tight and painful. I felt a part of everything, and everything was caring for me, healing me, transforming me. I felt God as a living force of goodness inside and outside me, not as something far away and absent. The religion I grew up with had so many rules and ideas about God. Here I was experiencing God free of ideas, as my personal reality. The sensations I felt in my body lit my heart on fire with devotion for life itself in all forms and especially in me. I felt a happiness I had not even hoped was possible, just by breathing.

Bread of Life

Breath tells us we are not alone. There is some goodness, some great intelligence nourishing us and keeping us alive. Breath is the bread of life, we can go without food and water for extended periods, but without breath we are starved of life. It is intimate contact with the outside world, constantly entering and leaving our bodies. It is a deep practice to contemplate your relationship to breath. What is life force? Where does it come from? What is it that sustains your life as surely as the sun shines in the sky and the flowers bloom without effort? We all breathe, but do we breath consciously? Do we breath in a way that we understand what is giving us life, and the quality of that life?

Realize that Life is always present, omnipresent. Maybe you have heard the phrase, “Let the breath breathe you.” But what does this mean? It means that without effort, without strain, the in-breath enters our bodies and enlivens us. This is deep. How often do we trust Life to provide for us? And here it is, demonstrated to us with the greatest simplicity in our breath. Without that in-breath, our mind wouldn’t even be able to begin giving us worries! Why strain when God’s grace and intelligence is sustaining us every moment?

Exercise

Lay down on your back in savasana with your eyes closed. Place one hand on your heart and one hand on your belly. Relax your face and body.

With each in breath say to your self, “I accept life as it comes to me”

With each out breath say to your self, “I let go”

Continue naming the in and out breaths for 5-10 minutes. When you have finished, lay quietly. Observe the sensations in your body, mind and heart. Listen for intuitive thoughts and feelings. Contemplate how Life supports you and sustains you. Life is playful. It contains the full spectrum of experience and emotion. Life wants to have its way with you, to move you and move through you. Dissolve yourself into the feeling of being breathed into creation. Let breath be your constant teacher, reflecting your emotions and drawing you closer to the depths of your heart.