Give Us This Day Our Daily Breath Preview, Reviews and purchase links can be found here:http://gayeabbott.com/books/
How you breathe is the way in which you live your life. If this statement is true, then how would you like to breathe? Shallow and restricted or full bodied and naturally?
Use a focus each week for the entire year to promote the vibrant aliveness that is your natural birth right!
“Are you breathing just a little and calling it life?” Mary Oliver
“If you try to comprehend air before breathing it, you will die.” Mark Nepo in The Book of Awakening
Following this quote by Mark Nepo is a very brief story about a Hindu sage centuries ago. “One day in the morning of their morning prayers, the sage suddenly rose and ushered his students away from the monastery. He rushed about them and shooed them like little ducks back into life, proclaiming, “The day is to be experienced, not understood!”
Every activity in life is an act of making divine and sacred love. What could be more sensual than simply breathing?! …and as Mary Oliver questions how fully are you really breathing/living!!
We arise in love with every inhale we take as we receive into our bodies the lover of breath. Without conscious awareness we open ourselves to receive this gift and then complete the circle as we exhale back out giving to other life forms around us. The trees and plants embrace our carbon dioxide and give back to us the oxygen that we crave. Interconnected.
Sensuality is completely enjoying and fully appreciating what the senses give to us in any given moment. If breath was your lover it would be so much more enjoyable to allow it to be all that it is meant to be so that it could make love to you. Not a technique or an understanding of breaths anatomy and physiology, but pure unadulterated pleasure and acceptance in feeling the breath move in and out.
You can hear breath moving in and out, but cannot see breath. I sometimes wonder if we could see breath what it would look like – the pure energy of love itself? No one knows exactly what causes the heart to beat or how that first air breath is ignited when we are born into this world. All we know is that at first it feels something foreign to our being having come from a watery world…and then we experience the kiss of breath and are never the same again.
Our bodies undulate – open and then surrender – with each breath we take if we have welcomed the fullness of breath into our being. Our voice can be heard by others and our songs can tenderly touch the parts of us that are yearning to dance. This is not something that we try to comprehend. We are simply and sensuously breathing.
Deeply within our blueprint lies the part of us that accepts simply being breathed…a metaphor for life lived in alignment with the creative force that resides within. One can know this place in any moment….slippery dolphin touch teaching you to embody the movement and sensuality of breath, dark earth and evergreen smells as reminders of where you have come from, wind sounds wrapping themselves around like the finest of silky garments, tastes of air across palate, slithering past the fine hairs that line your nasal passages, lying with another and joining breath as if weaving a fine art piece, lustily laughing a series of exhales which then welcomes the in breath with open arms.
How could you ever go back to taking breath for granted? It enlivens, paints, sculpts, expands, awakens and enhances your life with every inhale and exhale, cherishing you as no other can.
Will you cherish breath and experience the sensuality of life? Re-member…..you innately know how!
With life’s “hits” we often become static, fixed and rigid, wrongly thinking that these states will protect us from whatever is “out to get us” in our day to day living.
Instead we can be knocked over quite easily and incur even greater trauma when in these non-fluid states.
The amount of water in the human body ranges from 50-75%. The average adult human body is 50-65% water, averaging around 57-60%. The percentage of water in infants is much higher, typically around 75-78% water, dropping to 65% by one year of age.
To add to that according to H.H. Mitchell, Journal of Biological Chemistry 158, the brain and heart are composed of 73% water, and the lungs are about 83% water. The skin contains 64% water, and even the bones are watery: 31%
We can’t ignore the fact that water makes up more of who we are than other elements and considering that we came from a watery home while inside of our mother it seems curious why we outright deny that we are in fact fluid and liquid in nature.
There is nothing more directly noticeable than the breath when we are not in a fluid state in our bodies, thoughts, emotions and how we express in the world. Our breath is hung up in the upper most part of our chests, and secondary breathing muscles (in neck, shoulders and upper chest) compete to see who can become the most contracted in their efforts to breathe us.
When we are breathing effortlessly from our primary breathing muscles (diaphragm, intercostals between the ribs, and abdomen)- or being breathed as I like to say – our bodies feel supple, fluid and flexible and our expression in the world comes from a deeply relaxed place of trust and confidence. Imagine a wave of breath washing through you. There is no way to be fixed, contracted or rigid in that!
If you really want to feel liquid and fluid I would suggest swimming with dolphins in the wild. This was a peak life experience I was privileged to have several years ago. One can’t help but feel the sensuous nature of being free, playful and lovingly liquid as when swimming with these amazing creatures. For moments in time you feel that you could breathe under water too! Perhaps we all did at some time in our ancient past!
A FEW TIPS FOR EASEFUL FLUID BREATHING:
* Be aware when the breath becomes shallow and you feel tension in your neck, face, upper chest and shoulders. Take a breath break!
* Breathe with your primary breathing muscles: diaphragm, intercostals between the ribs, and abdominal muscles. (by the way holding tight in your abdominal muscles or wearing unforgiving tight clothing constricts the breath unnecessarily)
* Imagine a wave of breath moving through you and washing all of the tension away.
* Smile and laugh often and watch the fluidity come back into your being!
* Dance with abandon and move from all parts of your body. Celebrate the body you have been given!
* Join with another and breathe together. Watch as your breath eases and lets go as your rhythm comes into synchronization with theirs. Surrender is the name of the game.
* Imagine yourself safely in a water environment floating and being completely held and supported.
* Bring attention to your second chakra (right below the naval) and place your hands there with great love as you consciously breathe for a few minutes. Watch your abdomen soften with the attention.
*Commune with the Earth and frequent Nature often!
* Go swim with dolphins!
There is a way of breathing
That is a shame and a suffocation.
And there is another kind of breath,
A love breath,
Which opens you infinitely.
—Rumi
Ubuntu does indeed feel like a Unity word! Take a moment to feel it as your mouth creates the sounds that bring the word to life. It is flowing, connected and literally feels like a way of life. My body wants to dance with this word. Dancing to the sound of drums – the beat of our hearts – uniting us in every breath moment. Taking it all in INHALE!
Nelson Mandela states that Ubuntu asks the question: “Will you do something to engage the community around you to improve?” As our global community becomes smaller and smaller in the sense of communication and interrelatedness this indeed is the question of our day.
What action can you take today in your own community – within you own being – that will most certainly affect others beyond your geographical location merely by the respect, human kindness, caring, trust, unselfishness, love, and sharing that you are actively demonstrating?
Meeting each other in Ubuntu we may find that the most embodied response is Namaste. Two hands at our hearts to acknowledge all that we are, bowing to all that another is, whether that other be human, animal, plant or a vision that brings us closer together as a global community.
This gesture resonates with Ubuntu on a very deep and profound level. It recognizes that the life force, the divinity, the Self or the God in me is the same in all.
It also reminds us of the deep interconnectedness between all life forms. What is done to another all can feel. What is said by one can be heard by all. What one creates sparks creation by others. What stillness is felt in one becomes the sacred in another. And it goes on….EXHALE….
The breath pause between Ubuntu and Namaste is called collaboration. A deep collective determination to co-create and realize a shared goal, vision or significant change in current systems or structures.
We are at the crossroads in a time when we must take action to shift our consciousness from one of separation, judgement, misdirected power, war and blame to one of connectedness, sharing, co-creation, peace, understanding and love.
Already so many across the planet are breathing in from the place of Ubuntu and breathing out Namaste. Will you be one of them? INHALE/Ubuntu….PAUSE IN COLLABORATION….EXHALE/Namaste
A few years ago a story of the consciousness of interconnection unfolded right before my eyes. This happened from a place of non-separation, or in other words a real sense of oneness between people and nature. It is a simple story really – one of three men and a tree.
Two of the men were leaders within their Balinese community. One man had cut down a tree without permission from his community village. You see in Bali one must obtain the permission of the entire village before cutting down a tree. The sense of interconnectedness with nature and among themselves pervades the Balinese culture.
These two leaders were discussing – with tears flowing down their faces – what kind of consequences the man who had cut down the tree must face. He had apparently done this before, most likely for carving art pieces to sell, so the discussion was a serious one. I never found out what they did decide, but I did get to sit with one of the leaders and share meditation and mutual discussion about cultures translated through his brother. I thanked him for this beautiful living example of deep awareness on how each interconnected being or life form intimately affects another.
How is it that we forget that we are not separate from anything or anyone when our breath tells us that we are constantly intimately connected. We share the very air we breathe with all living things. My dear friend and lifelong mentor, Richard Miller, Ph.D of iRest (grounded and concrete tools to come back home to a place of non-separation and well being) spoke eloquently on non-separation at the Summer of Peace through The Shift Network recently. He emphasized that the ultimate healing for all humans lies first in our sense of separation from ourselves and secondly the “other”, or the world outside of ourselves.
In a recent class I was privileged to facilitate – Decrease Anxiety, Indulge Inner Peace – I remember saying that I believe the core of anxiety comes from when we go away from or leave behind our deep purpose in life, which comes from our wholeness. This results in feeling a sense of separation. This very sense of separation activates anxiety.
Our strong innate imprinting to belong and to survive as we grow up into adults often times takes us away from the very sense of already belonging/deep interconnection that is a gift we are given at birth. This leave taking from our feeling of harmony with ourselves and life itself brings us to “war” within and without.
Deep abiding inner peace and equanimity brings us home to the state of non-separation, or as Richard says “non-dual” state of being. What better tool to resonate with than the breath to remind us over and over and over that we are an integral part of the whole and never separate. Inhale connected to exhale sharing with an abundant circle of life in the moment. When we resonate this peaceful place those around us will attune to the same state.
Be the change you wish to see in the world….come back home.
Give Us This Day Our Daily Breath Preview, Reviews and purchase links can be found here: http://gayeabbott.com/books/
BREATHING SPACES 