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/

Breath Technique or Practice Breath Awareness?

In January of this year, with full joy, I launched a book on the breath entitled, Give Us This Day Our Daily Breath: Weekly Breathing Spaces to Delight, Rest and Reflect In“.  It was a birth that had been in gestation for quite a long while…and the actual delivery left me filled with grace and a joyful satisfaction that I had courageously said YES to what I am passionate about without holding back.

For me, it was an action of awareness.  Awareness that I had something to share with the world that every single person could benefit from.  This action of awareness has taken me into the joys of writing and sharing with essentially abandon to the process of creation.  Mining the depths of something that continually fascinates and feeds me – the breath – and expanding that passion to other areas of interest is a “practice of awareness in the moment”.

Just today I received an e-mail from a dear friend which moved me to write this post.  Below is an excerpted part of what she wrote to me and a portion of my response.

“I don’t know if I told you but I carried your book in my bag for a long time.  I would read it at work or in the evenings when I was home and had more time to savor the delightful passages.  My issue is that I get started on a breathing/meditation program but the enthusiasm only lasts for a couple of weeks or months;  then I taper off and before long I have stopped my practice. “ R.B.

“I have a bias R.  To me any “breathing exercise” or “technique” is really only beneficial if it creates a state of being consciously aware of a full embodied breath from moment to moment.  There are many breath techniques that can be immensely beneficial, however are they sustainable and do they shift our awareness to be present in our daily moments of living?

I have learned to simply take 5 minute (or less) “breath breaks” scattered throughout the day to check in. Scanning the body brings awareness to any tension in the body, holding of the breath, or shallow breathing….. without judgement.  Taking a few fully engaged breaths expanding and releasing all of the primary breathing muscles – diaphragm, intercostal (between the ribs) and abdominal, reminds me of being present NOW no matter what is happening,  and allows me to feel alive not just in my mind! The body loves this attention!!

This breath practice of awareness has now become a “habit” in my tool bag that I carry with me everywhere.  I say, if the breath allows us to be more present in the moment to what is happening, and deepens our participation and awareness in that moment, then it has done it’s job (more than merely keeping us alive that is..:-) What a great tool to enliven our life moments!” G. A.

FOR BREATH IS LIFE, AND IF YOU BREATHE WELL YOU WILL LIVE LONG ON EARTH  –  Sanskrit Proverb

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

Website:  www.ResonanceWithLife.com

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

Exhale and Relax…..

Here we are in the last month of summer and Fall is looming ever more closely.  Here in Austin it remains in the 100’s and will stay quite warm through most of September.  Summer for many often means taking time off for rest, recreation and travel, but there is a frenetic quality to this warmest season of the year that leaves a lot of people “burnt out” and over stimulated.

Being able to relax your body at will is a life skill that adds not only to in the moment joy, richness and satisfaction, but also to overall health, well being and longevity.  What if there was a tool that you had at your disposal every single moment to inhabit a calmer place even in the midst of stress and life challenges?

Rick Hanson Ph.D. author of Buddha’s Brain (which is an excellent book by the way!) gives some ways in which to activate the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) – rest and digest – that calms down the fight-or-flight sympathetic nervous system in his book Just One Thing(27-28). Three out of five tips listed are all about the breath!

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*”Do several long exhalations, since the PNS handles exhaling.  For example, inhale for a count of 3, and exhale for a count of 6.”

*”For a minute or more, breathe in such a way that your inhalation and exhalation are equally long; count mentally up to 5 for each inhalation and each exhalation.  This creates small but smooth changes in the interval between heartbeats – since the heart speeds up slightly with inhalation and slows down slowly with exhalation which is associated with relaxation and well being. (Kristal-Boneh, et al 1995)”

*”Relax your diaphragm – the muscle underneath your lungs that helps suck air into them – by putting your hand on your stomach, just below your ribcage, and then trying to breathe in a way that pushes your hand half an inch or so away from your backbone. (This is especially helpful if you are feeling anxious).”

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As you attempt to fit in a few more summer activities and find them more stressful than enjoyable remember that your exhale will stimulate the rest and relaxation response in your body and mind.  It doesn’t take long to simply take a few conscious breaths with an intention of lengthening the exhale and relaxing the diaphragm.

You might be surprised at how easy it is to simply exhale and relax….

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/

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…..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJ69Iu_cVuM

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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/