Tag: Mindfulness

The Miracle of Life Breathing

The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the earth in the present moment;  

to appreciate the peace and beauty that are available now.

–– Thich Nhat Hanh


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/2011

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WEBSITE:  www.IgniteWealthNow.com  (Natural Wealth)

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We invite you to go to our website and listen to Richard Cawte’s Sanctuary Creation at: SANCTUARY CREATION

Here is my review:

“Over the many years that I have spent in the study and practice of meditation and imagery I have never come across something with so much depth and potential for deepening and relaxing the mind and body.  

In Sanctuary Creation Richard Cawte’s gentle voice and beautifully detailed imagery take you down into a sensual world of nature where color, breath, and beauty activate all of the senses and drop you into a depth of being from which you can discover what it is like to fully embody your life’s moments.  

What greater tool for daily life than something like this that can be activated and created within you at any time!”   

~ Gaye Abbott, Registered Yoga Teacher

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

 


Give Us This Day Our Daily Breath

ANNOUNCEMENT!!  I invite you to go to the Natural Wealth website to see a Sneak Preview of my upcoming book: Give Us This Day Our Daily Breath expected out in e-book and soft cover by 12/1/11!!  Got to right hand column and click on Be Breathed – Our Daily Breath.

Would love your feedback as the book is not quite finished yet…and your comments would be most welcome!  Also check out the video that took me so many takes….and laugh along with me.

REMEMBER –  Laughter is a series of exhales expressed with uninhibited joy!

Thank you for taking the time to take a peak at the Sneak!

 

 

Gaye Abbott           Give Us This Day Our Daily Breath

Breathing and Balance

Recently I was taken by the insight that being in balance is not a state to cling to.  We all know that when we are “out of balance” in our lives that it can affect many things in our body, mind and emotions.  However, I question whether that is because we are “attached” to being “in balance”?  The better question might be, do we have something to learn in the territory of imbalance?

We are told by culture, our parents, and our ever-present egos that we must “maintain” and not be taken over by feeling or emotion, get angry, be sick or out of sorts, be different, or go too far from mid-line.  The fact of the matter is that we will always go in and out of balance.  It is part of being alive as a human being, just as natural as our inhale and exhales from moment to moment.

An opportunity to explore within a yoga class the concept of moving from balance to imbalance for an entire 90 minutes brought for me great awareness on how the control of ego gets in the way of a full breath.  The breath was the barometer that informed me whether I was attached or not, which translates to whether my ego was invested in being in balance or not.

It was transparently simple!  Every time my ego became involved in maintaining “balance” – in this case within yoga poses – the results were predictable.  Struggle, effort, and breath holding or significantly diminished breath.

The most surprising result of attachment to whether I was in balance or out of balance – and we were given multiple attempts for both experiences – was that when I completely let go of what state I was in I felt more grounded and rooted and my breath was full.  In other words, balance became innately easy and falling out of balance had no ego centered judgement attached to it.  In fact falling out of balance was fun and became just another “dance step” in life.

What happened with the breath?  Every single time I was attached to a certain outcome my breath diminished, was held, or stopped all together.  With surrender to whatever was happening in the moment it all became a part of living life and savoring whatever experience unfolded itself as free of self judgement as possible.  In fact, my balance improved within letting go of the resistance to falling out of balance!

We often are so busy living life ahead of ourselves.  A diminished, held or shallow breath will clue you in to this very pattern.  Even something as simple as leaning forward when you stand or walk affects the quality of your breath.  Watch and learn!

Be willing to learn from the places of imbalance in your life and remember these 3 things:  (Courtesy of Keith Kachtick, Dharma Yoga, Austin, Texas)

*Release attachment to being in balance.
*Surrender to gravity
*Root down into the Earth as if your breath was digging deeply down into the ground

From this place – no matter what happens in your life – you will find that the breath remains full and rooted to your Source.  A state of being to return to over and over again.  Allow yourself to play with the imbalance and marry it to balance.  What a delightful dance that is!

WEBSITE:

www.IgniteWealthNow.com

OTHER BLOGS BY GAYE ABBOTT:

www.NaturalWealthJournal.com
www.WildlyFreeWoman.com

STOP! Unplug…..Focus One Point and Breathe

Yes.  I am going to invite you to go on a “media fast” this week.  That means smart phones, internet, television, newspapers, ……   Choose one day, or take the entire week.  It is up to you.

The reason for this is to open into possibilities that are obscured by the sheer volume of stimulus that captures our attention every single moment of every single day.

What would it be like to have space to notice what is going on in the world around you….not what you are being told is going on.

Take as an example my experience in doing this for the past 3 days in which I let go of my resistance to writing the first draft of a book on the breath that I have been sitting on for the past year.  I knew clearly that there were ideas and  creative paths that would not be open to me if I was returning e-mails, talking to people on the phone, and going out to make social connections.  Television and newspapers have not been part of my daily life for many years now, so that part was easy.

So I stopped.  I created a space for writing and just being with what unfolded itself before and within me.  So much more space appeared….and time slowed down.  The creative muse inside woke up and started an ongoing celebration resulting in an out pouring of ideas that resulted in 12,000 words written in 3 days.

During this three days I took a walk around the local lake here in Austin, Texas in the sultry 90 degree heat.  Not plugged into anything while I walked I was free to observe nature, people, dogs and the morning.

Half way through my walk I took a seat on a bench placed high above the lake on a pedestrian bridge.  My back was to another rail bridge that I had noticed before.  On it is painted in colors:  Focus One Point…and Breathe.  Graffiti art of the sacred kind.

With that reminder I did just that, and instead of being distracted by my minds constant barrage of chatter I was quieted as I gazed at the Lamar Street bridge directly in front of me, constructed with gracefully curved cement supports.  Sunlight helped to mirror these supports in the water creating an art piece of beautiful duplication.  What was above the water was also below.

It appeared to be another world in the water that was reverse from the one in air.  As I continued gazing a cloud obscured the reflection for a few moments and the magical world beneath the water was in shadow, disappearing before my eyes.  Once the light came out from behind the cloud this under water world was revealed once again.  It was there all along.

How many worlds, or possibilities are in the shadows, but still really there for us to shed light on and actively explore? Sitting with this I gazed down at the sidewalk just to my left and on it was written in colored chalk, “God bless you  friend” with a heart drawn at the end.

Walking back along the path I greeted an Austin resident who had brought his wheelbarrow down to the lake in order to transport water to the drought affected trees that grace this path.  Thanking him for what he was doing out of the kindness of his heart we exchanged a smile.  I am certain the trees felt the love directed at them.

Finally, climbing into my car and reaching to peel the juicy orange that awaited my return a man approached with a one gallon gas container.  He asked if I could spare some money to complete what he had in his pocket to purchase one gallon of gas.

Reaching into my wallet I took out my last dollar bill and grabbed some quarters and handed them to him commenting to please excuse the quarters as they had a bit of dark chocolate melted onto them.  We exchanged a smile and I was told once again “Thank you and God bless!”’’

Now, my question is would I have experienced all of this if I had earplugs in listening to music or whatever, allowed my mind to set an agenda of a certain time I needed to be back home to begin writing again, had my eyes down on the path focused on how many miles I needed to go today in order to get a good workout, or was even busy thinking about what my next chapter in this book was going to be?

My point is – unplug.  Unplug from the distractions that put your life on hold while you are caught up with everyone else’s opinion, judgements and agendas – or your own for that matter.  Not forever mind you.  Just for periods of time to be reminded of the extraordinary life you have before you in this moment.  Relax into the spaciousness,  beauty, and unseen worlds that appear from out of the shadows.  Focus one point….and breathe.

OTHER BLOGS BY GAYE ABBOTT:

www.WildlyFreeWoman.com
www.NaturalWealthJournal.com

Rumi, Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddha and Me

Being in a breathing body is a gift.  A gift which we often overlook as the mind takes control and leaves us scattering our life moments like seed on infertile ground, never really staying with one to cultivate, nourish and add to the soil so that the moment may flourish and grow in our love and attention.

Rumi says, “With life as short as a half-taken breath, don’t plant anything but love.”

Oh, how easy this is to forget.  The years seem to speed by with breaths half taken, skipped all together, or compromised by life choices.  Wouldn’t it be easier to just remember that our breath marks the moments of our life… beginning outside of the womb space  as we take our first inhale, and ending with our last out breath as we transition.

To remember that our full breathing is a measure of the love that we give to ourselves with each and every inhale, pause, and exhale. To remember that as we breathe fully there is more of us to plant the love that Rumi speaks of.

Thich Nhat Hanh says, “Life is available only in the present moment. If you abandon the present moment you cannot live the moments of your daily life deeply.”

Like the seed above that falls on infertile ground , our abandoned moments left behind for something “more important” not only fail to grow, thrive and transform, but have never been felt.    Our breath provides an anchor to these very moments that are often cast aside like trash without a backwards glance, losing forever the opportunity to investigate what treasure and possibility may reside there.  Our lives are only made up of moments.  We forget. Our breath reminds us.

Buddha says, “The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.”

Now we come right down to it.  As we breathe in and out we have the opportunity to pay attention in the moment with passion and to embody that moment.  Our emotions may be all over the place, bodies may fall ill from time to time, or we may be right smack in the middle of what we perceive as a tremendous challenge.  Are we in the moment….or are we trying to figure out how to get out of it based on past or future?

Use the breath as a guide, a tool, a muse if you will.  Know that each inhale and each exhale mark a moment of your life, using attention to recapture the moments and the breath to remind you that yes indeed you do have a body that is constantly sending you wise messages.  Listen…

Breathing in, I know that I can do anything.  Breathing out, I release all doubts and fears.  ME

OTHER BLOGS BY GAYE ABBOTT:

www.NaturalWealthJournal.com
www.WildlyFreeWoman.com