Tag: full breathing

Change Is Possibility


Gazing at the water drops on this leaf there is a sense of capturing an exquisite moment.  Yet our experience tells us that in the next moment this will change as everything is always in motion.  Riding the inevitable movement of change is what this life of ours is all about.  What do we do with change – resist it, or choose to see and be open to possibility.

This past week during a class I was teaching on the breath at our local University here in Austin, Texas there was a moment that asked for a different awareness.  Participants were paired up to practice opening breathing spaces with each other by simply laying hands on shoulders, backs and sides of body.  At the end of the exercise the giver was to give a gentle shoulder massage and simply be present in the moment.  Coming over to one pairing I saw and felt the possibility for a shift and believed that it was there to emerge.

Placing my hands lightly on the person’s mid-back and fingertips mid-chest I simply encouraged the breath to release.  In that moment the person who was receiving was filled with breath as if she was being breathed.  She became taller and expanded her breathing spaces to such an extent that it felt like a miracle to her.  The amazed expression on her face was enough to validate that within change there is always possibility for yet something else to evolve if we are open.

The person responsible for the photo above, Dewitt Jones, says that we “won’t see it until we believe it”.   That can be said for feeling it as well….a sixth sense if you will that something else is about to emerge that is even more extraordinary than what is presenting in the moment.  Do we have the patience and the trust to simply wait and be directed from a deeper place than our minds.  Do we have the wisdom to look at what is right with our lives, our relationships, our breath, our world.

It is always right there within the framework of change…   Please take time to watch this 22 minute video by Dewitt Jones on celebrating what is right with the world and staying open to change.  As we enter into the holiday season it may offer an entirely different perspective to live and be grateful from.

http://www.celebratewhatsright.com/film

***********************************************

WEBSITE:  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/

Barefoot Breathing

“Many of us are blind to the ways that the earth supports us. We seldom even feel our feet on the ground. Take your shoes and socks off, massage your feet, pull your toes apart, play with them. Then simply stand with bare feet on the earth. Sense the earth’s energy rising up through your feet. Let the earth help energize you. And let it breathe you.”—Dennis Lewis

Over a week ago now I took a mid-week journey to a place in nature outside of Austin that I had never been to before.  Pedernales State Park turned out to be an amazing sanctuary for me and reminded me of the sacredness of our connection with the Earth and the natural elements.  Dennis Lewis in his quote above is right on when he says that we seldom even feel our feet on the ground….essentially our connection with the earth.

Stepping barefoot from rock to rock in the shallow part of the river the destination of a large flat rock was reached.  For over an hour, lying face up to the sun with feet dangling onto smooth rocks beneath the running rivers surface, I breathed in the sound of running river water overlaying the deep quiet of nature without man made sounds.  My feet, heart and soul found peace….found home.

Having grown up in San Diego with it’s wonderful beaches I naturally was a barefoot girl and morphed into a barefoot woman that actually hates for her feet to be confined in closed shoes.  Thank goodness for the warm weather of Austin where I can wear the simplest of footwear most of the time!  What has the seldom felt barefoot against the earth done to our natural connection with nature and even the way in which we breathe?

Our senses diminish, we forget how to breathe from our very toes, and our feet forget how joyful it is to be fancy free to explore what we are walking upon or touching.

The many acupuncture and pressure points in the feet are a key to our health.  If they are hardly ever stimulated by remembering the feel of earth, rock, sand, meadow or even the bark of a tree then we forget….we forget how intimately connected we are.  Without this connection and stimulation we forget who we are, and we forget how to breathe from the roots of our being.

This week try the practice that Dennis speaks of above in the quote.  Pay attention to your feet with love and patient attention.  Stand barefoot upon the earth surface of your choice, close your eyes, and allow the earth to breathe you!

WEBSITE:  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 Two Breaths – Foundation of Being

“This reflection comes from a conversation with a gifted photographer I met. His story helped confirm for me that we live a life in every breath. In truth, each heart-breath is an atom of life-force being born one more time. We as human beings have the incredible burden of sensitivity, but the incomparable reward of being awakened over and over again.

At a gathering in San Francisco, I met Marco, a careful and patient photographer from Santa Clara. When asked what surprised him during the last year, his voice began to quiver. He’d witnessed two breaths that had changed his life. His daughter’s first breath. Then his mother’s last breath. As his daughter inhaled the world, it seemed to awaken her soul on Earth. As his mother exhaled her years, it seemed to free her soul of the world. These two breaths jarred Marco to live more openly and honestly. He took these two breaths into his own daily breathing and quickly saw their common presence in everyone’s breathing. Is it possible that with each inhalation, we take in the world and awaken our soul? And with each exhalation, do we free ourselves of the world, which inevitably entangles us? Is this how we fill up and empty a hundred times a day, always seeking the gift of the two breaths? Perhaps this is the work of being.”

—excerpt from Seven Thousand Ways to Listen by Mark Nepo

****************************************

WEBSITE:  www.ResonanceWithLife.com

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

BOOKS BY GAYE ABBOTT:

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

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)

********************************

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/

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