Category: Expanded Breathing Spaces

Life Is Breathing

“Once you can accept the universe as being something expanding into an infinite nothing which is something, wearing stripes with plaid is easy.” ~ Albert Einstein

In a time when we are becoming more and more conscious that everything is connected we are moved ever closer towards the reality of an ever expanding universe.   This is humbling and at the same time wondrous!

One single exhale can extend out into the spaciousness of all that is around you.  The next inhale can allow that vast amount of space to enter into your body and awareness creating a sacred place to rest in and be nourished from.

There is nothing to do….just sensing and opening.  What a miracle the breath is…reminding us that we are ALIVE as well as sensing sacred beings.  Let us not forget this.

Let us LIVE this…

LIFE BREATHING


All around us everything is breathing
Listen carefully 
for you may miss the soft exhale 
of the flower on the vine.


Or the inhale of rich brown soil
 from the earthworm beneath your foot.
Butterfly wings waft the air
 towards you as an offering


While bird songs are heard 
in a series of exhales


As the tree that shelters 
releases a leaf to the ground
Chimes move in the breeze
 creating the sound of the breath 
in notes sung in tune


with the expansion and contraction
 of the Earth – all in union with
 your next inhale….. and exhale

Be present to life breathing around you


mindful of the artful ways that
 breath pulses among the 
minutest of cells and atoms


woven amidst the field of being 
that captures each one of us within the next inhale

All breathing for and with each other


An exchange of intimacy that 
connects us in levels so deep
 that even the whale in the ocean depths
 senses into the next breath


that you will take.

Be still for just a moment

and listen 
to the symphony of breath 
that fills every moment
 with the exquisite pleasure


of being Alive Now. 

Life is breathing.
  Listen….listen

~Gaye Abbott  11/11/2011

(Excepted from Give Us This Day Our Daily Breath, pg 94)

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WESITE:  www.ResonanceWithLife.com

OTHER BLOGS BY GAYE ABBOTT:
www.WildlyFreeWoman.com
www.NaturalWealthJournal.com

Give Us This Day Our Daily Breath Preview, Reviews and purchase links can be found here:
http://resonancewithlife.com/daily-breath-book/

The Best Is Hidden

Here it is 2am in the morning and I am wide awake.  I want to let you know that this is unusual for me.  Most nights I not only fall asleep within minutes, but stay soundly asleep all night.  Could it be a beautiful dinner with fine wine and what I call “bordering on erotic” food preceding turning out the lights?  Or might it be that the hidden is coming to light and is calling me to write, paint, dance or sing it’s song, not willing to let me rest until I pay homage to it’s messages?

Reaching into my book case a brand new and waiting to be read book falls off the shelf into my hands.  I open to the acknowledgements and read the following – “There is a Sufi expression, “the best is hidden”.  …. My teachers are like the jasmine whose flowers only release their fragrant secrets as the day-times brilliant sunlight gives way to the evening’s subtler shifts of light and energy.  The only way to honor them is to breathe them in and experience peace.”  James O’Dea, Cultivating Peace

How many times in a day do we stop and honor the subtler parts of the experiences we are having in the moment?  Even now at this early hour of the morning I feel the delight of fingers moving on the keyboard recording the thoughts that weave their way through me and back out to you. I don’t even know where they will take me or what your experience will be once you have read them. The pure adventure and unknown of it delights me.

Perhaps these hidden moments lay in waiting like the jasmine flowers, or the many teachers that move in and out of our lives – until just the right moment in time when we are the most susceptible to their encouragement to breathe them in –  forever changed within the embrace.

This week choose to be vulnerable, open and aware to what may lay hidden within the next breath.  Be willing to let go and say YES to whatever the experience may be.  Resistance does not live here.  The best of living an open life does….

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Give Us This Day Our Daily Breath Preview, Reviews and purchase links can be found here:
http://resonancewithlife.com/daily-breath-book/

Embrace The Moment – Emaho!

Once again yoga class has given me a gift!  For some the gift might be preparing a delectable meal, painting a picture, running a marathon, writing an inspired sentence, or even having a very connected conversation with someone.  For me today in yoga class it was about EMAHO!  Emaho is a Tibetan invocation for auspiciousness; an expression of joy, wonder and amazement.

How many times during a day do we embrace the moment?  What an amazing practice this can be.  When it comes to the breath we can either use the breath to stay in the moment of an experience….or we can allow the breath to BE the experience.  There is a distinction here.  In the former we are using the breath as a focus to quiet the mind…or watch it as the case may be.  In the latter our moment IS the breath – how it moves in the body, what is expanding and releasing, ….the actual joy and wonder we feel when we are breathing fully and enjoying every single second of the body of the breath.

Let’s take this a step further.  Instead of focusing on how we are breathing, how about focusing on the very miracle that we are simply breathing and ALIVE!  Our attention often goes to the details of what is wrong in our lives, our bodies…or our relationships.  What if we tipped that on its head so to speak and consciously decided to be thrilled to be right here, right now no matter what is going on!

Experiment this week to see if simply loving the fact that you are breathing changes how you perceive the moments of your life.  Might the food that makes its way to your taste buds delight you with its textures, colors, form and abundance.  Might the simple act of walking have an entirely different impact on your consciousness.  Or sudden immersion in a conversation totally giving the person that is speaking your undivided attention. 

Hold your hands in the air and allow your body to sway, undulate, jump, twist, be at rest to notes that mold their way into music that moves you.

It is not so much about HOW your are doing things in your life…but that you are being within those moments with as much of your attention as you can possibly pour into them.  Distractions are a plenty in this over stimulus life of ours.  Can the fact that you are reading this now as a breathing alive person turn you on in a way that, up until now, you have avoided?

As we age we may want to grab onto the moments and hold them to us – like a held breath.  Or sometimes the moments are pushed away because of some aversion deep within that is resting in judgement and the past.  Would you like to practice something different?

Mantra for the week:  I am thrilled to be breathing right here, right now!

That is all we have.  EMAHO!  Exapand it into everything – the light and the dark, the joy and the pain…. in your one wild and precious life!  NOW, put your hands up in the air and…..

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WEBSITE:  www.ResonanceWithLife.com

OTHER BLOGS BY GAYE ABBOTT:
www.WildlyFreeWoman.com
www.NaturalWealthJournal.com

Give Us This Day Our Daily Breath Preview and Reviews can be found here:
http://resonancewithlife.com/daily-breath-book/

Breathing Change Into The Moment

Millions of people all over the world know the song “A Change Is Gonna Come” first recorded by Sam Cooke in 1963.  This song speaks to so many things – among them the hope for freedom of a people “enslaved” for so very long, the inevitable change that occurs in daily life, the connection and bond between people that can help to create change, as well as the intentions that lead to change.

This is a deeply soulful song, and when breathed into quickly becomes alive and vibrant.  By it’s very nature hopelessness, judgement and misunderstanding can be transformed into possibility, clarity and compassion within a few breath moments.  This is what happened for me this past week when I found within me judgement and misunderstanding.  These places within ourselves are particularly difficult to face, especially if we see ourselves as compassionate and aware most of the time.  But trust me…they are there.

A few months ago now I had an experience within the contact improv and free movement dance community that made me avoid a certain person and make a number of judgements about him that it turns out were not accurate nor compassionate by any means.  In the name of supposedly “protecting” myself an assumption was made.  These assumptions were based on projection and not on the truth of this particular person.  It was through another that I learned about some disabilities that could have kept this man from ever even trying to move and dance….but instead he was there and “dancing” seeking joy, pleasure,  and freedom just as all of us on the floor that night.

In the moment that I learned the truth about this person compassion and understanding came flying in.  In those breaths that held the clarity a deep change arrived within me.  I, like anyone else does from time to time, fell into the error of making judgements based on assumptions.  I was completely wrong about what I had judged.  Within a few breath moments everything changed and compassion came roaring in.

Wake up call?  By all means yes!  Our mind may create stories that are based on ours or others opinions, past experiences, or judgements, but where is the real truth?  The real truth lies in the moments of breath that it takes to be willing to open awareness , to suspend judgement, and to really listen and observe from a place of openness and expanded heart.

We all walk this life together even though we may seem to be separated by race, gender, religion, or nationality.  Many changes are sweeping our world and our planet at this time.  Shall we take the opportunity to suspend judgement and wait for the breath to inform us of the” change that is gonna come” within us.  That is where it begins and ends…

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WEBSITE:  www.ResonanceWithLife.com

OTHER  BLOGS BY GAYE ABBOTT:
www.WildlyFreeWoman.com
www.NaturalWealthJournal.com

Give Us This Day Our Daily Breath Preview and Reviews can be found here:
http://resonancewithlife.com/daily-breath-book/

A Silence That Is A Fountain of Action and Joy

“There is in all things an inexhaustible sweetness and purity, a silence that is a fountain of action and joy.  It rises up in wordless gentleness and flows out from unseen roots of all created being.”  Thomas Merton

Sometimes I ask myself the question, “What am I doing with this one wild and precious life?”  My mind rushes into the past and conjures up what I have done…pretty extraordinary, and ordinary, all at the same time…or it rushes into the future – into those precious few days that I have left of this lifetime.  And then, like the wild child that it is, mind comes to a complete halt stubbornly refusing to budge….and then realizes that this is the place that it was seeking all along and plops down to rest in the stillness of the moment.

The silence where all is born, the creative well of possibility which delivers the clarity that reveals the next action to be taken.   And at the same time complete and absolute peace, well being, and yes – joy.  There is a saying “if not now, when?”  Over and over we rush headlong into our days forgetting that all around us there is a continuous fountain flowing from unseen roots feeding us from source

There are many roots we can choose from in order to drink from this fountain.  The breath is one of these.  Opportunities to connect in intimacy abound. G. I. Gurdjieff in “Views From the Real World” says:

“Our mind is like a cabby who sits in a pub and drives passengers to different places in his dreams. Trying to work with the mind alone will lead nowhere. The power of changing oneself lies not in the mind but in the body and feelings.”

What if, as in my yoga class today, you chose to root yourself in the breath, the souls of the feet,  the openness of your heart, or any single point of focus and allow the sediment of your day to drift down to the bottom of your being and clear the way for the experience of now.  No pretense.  No defenses.  Simply sharing internal worlds from an open heart and willingness to connect intimately with yourself, others, nature….. the world.

How would your life be then?

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Gratitude to Keith Kachtick of Dharma Yoga, Austin, TX for once again an extraordinary class!

GAYE’s WEBSITE:  www.ResonanceWithLife.com

OTHER BLOGS BY GAYE ABBOTT:
www.WildlyFreeWoman.com
www.NaturalWealthJournal.com

Give Us This Day Our Daily Breath Preview and Reviews can be found here:
http://resonancewithlife.com/daily-breath-book/