When I was asked to write my book, The Breathwork Companion, during the pandemic, I sat down to get clear on what I wanted the book to focus on and my core message. While going through all my notes and ideas, this poem popped out of my pen before I knew what I was thinking. To me, those moments of flow are like dancing to music that I’m feeling so fully, I don’t really know how my body is moving. It just feels right.
Breath Is
Even when we hold against it because we are afraid
of where it will take us,
to our feelings-
our deep discomfort,
our anxieties,
our fears,
how we have always known ourselves…
flawed, ugly, abnormal,
to our depth,
our out-of-the-box-ness,
our freedom –
It waits,
this nourishing formless movement of life
this nothingness
this everything
right here,
always,
for us to turn back to
so it can carry us to remembering,
what we forgot-
the wisdom,
the truth
of what we can trust.
This may sound abstract for a physiological function such as breathing, so allow me to unpack this a bit. I will speak here from a more felt-sense perspective rather than a bio-physiology perspective. It is, however, all connected.
A point I make all the time is, breath is life. How we breathe is reflective of how we are relating to life in the present moment. Tight, holding in, holding on, pushing through, open and easy, safe, unsafe. These ways of being/ breathing influence the state of our nervous system.
Have you ever held your breath so you wouldn’t cry, or pee before you got to a toilet? Our body knows somehow when we stop holding our breath we will let go, feel feelings we are holding against, for understandable reasons. To feel safe, to not feel fear or emotional pain and discomfort. Isn’t that amazing that your body has that intelligence?!
As a kid, I didn’t know that my panic and fear was held in place with shallow and tight breathing. I didn’t know that the reason I couldn’t finish a sentence when I had to read out loud in school was because I was holding my exhale in and therefore didn’t have enough air to carry the words out. I somehow knew if I stopped “holding against” my breath (energy) that I would have to feel something I didn’t want to feel or do the wrong thing and be criticized, then rejected. It wasn’t until I had my first experience of conscious breathing that I discovered the freedom of feeling an inner aliveness on purpose without having to play a sport or take a dance class to “be me”.
I talk of breath in terms of relationship here… “where it will take us”,” it waits”, “so it can carry us”. Like a friend who you turn to for support, comfort or to feel aliveness with. Likewise we can turn to our breath as a supportive resource. We just have to learn how to communicate with it, for example, slow and lengthen to calm or speed up to energize. It responds beautifully and in this way it’s always here for you. What “we forget” is the body’s wisdom knows how to naturally soothe and comfort us – a wise friend. This is the “remembering” I mention. That remembering goes even deeper to access our heart and spiritual connection that we were born with, that lives within us and is our birthright to live ‘from’.
Breath is literally the energy of life itself and our most intimate relationship with life. It’s amazing to me that we have this inner intelligence that can lead us to internal feeling of safety, “of what we can trust”.
It is your birthright to experience yourself beyond how you have thought yourself to be due to learned limited beliefs…fearful, “flawed, ugly, abnormal”… You weren’t born with your limiting beliefs, but you were born with an inner intelligence/ wisdom/knowing of what is true. You know it when you land in yourself. You feel peace beyond thoughts.
The experience of breathing can only be found in the present moment. Just looking for the feeling of breath moving in your body can bring you into the present moment and into your body, out of your mental stress. Breath is not only an in and out flow of air from the lungs or the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide, it is the river of energy that flows through us and can carry our awareness to what is present within us to have the freedom to be seen, felt or released. This is what makes breathwork so mystical and magical to me. Once we have a positive association with conscious breathing, it can be used as an inner support and resource for the rest of our lives. It is air- ‘formless’(“nothingness”) in this form of our body, animating every cell with life energy – “everything”. It is “nourishing” us with oxygen and can be a way to soothe our nervous system, wake up memory in the body, access emotions and expand our consciousness. The conscious connected breathing process that I teach in my monthly community classes and in my individual sessions is the most potent way to experience these things. When we breathe in this circular way with ease, we access the wisdom of our life energy that knows what to do and the breath knows where to go. Through this, we feel our inner connection with life itself, Source Nature. We receive what we need as we open the flow of breath. It opens, it reveals, it nourishes all the parts of ourselves – the quality of being human, the virtue of being kind and compassionate – our humanity.
“Remembering” that we can “trust” this, we expand our capacity to be able to hold ourselves and all our feelings/thoughts with understanding and love.
I would say, that’s a good life!
~ My Community Breathe classes give gentle steps to enter into a conscious relationship with the breath. We start with heightening awareness, explore calming and energizing practices, open the body and breathing muscles with movement and experience a Conscious Connected Breathwork process to help unwind tension patterns in the body/mind. They are typically held on the 3rd Saturday of every month.