Have you ever stopped just to feel the waves of your breath?
How the inhale recharges your blood, your bones - and fills you with light.
And how the exhale allows every tiny worry and tightness to disappear.
How this flow relaxes and resets ourselves for the next set of breaths..
And how we use this simple act to steady our nerves.
How we use this simple practice to be so much more for our deepest soul.
How we use this simple necessity to sustain life in our body.
How we can feel the simplicity of it’s happening, the breath, yet not really tune into how important those moments of breath are.
Well, these moments of breath are us.
We are not, without them.
I recently took on a new adventure and have been spending time diving down into another world - the under water world - a place where I cannot take in breath.
It has influenced me to really tune into breathing like I haven’t been able to before.
The need to slowly breathe, calming the body, and allowing myself to absorb as much oxygen as possible before the dive down.
Then to swim, or float, in as much stillness possible, to not use up too much of that air in energy exertion.
My body works for me.
My breath keeps my body working for me.
In tuning into breath at any moment, we find that stillness.
Our bodies commit fully to the breath, and the breath commits fully to the body.
Binding the two, they work as one, as an inflow and an outflow of life.
And this pattern, this never-ending trend of inflow and outflow is where we simply are. There is nothing else to complicate how this mechanism allows us to be.
It allows us to be and breath and live and jump and swim.
It allows us to decide what next turn we want to take - right or left.
It allows us to understand if we’re mad at our kids or if we’re just tired.
It allows us to hold a job, one that one day will be given to someone else.
It allows us to have a heart for the people we love.
It allows.
It allows life.
It is a gentle reminder of the things that surround us that are always happening; and how most of the time they go unnoticed.
The most foundational aspects of our lives are always happening with us.
And sometimes when we tune into them, we are brought back home to the body.
We are brought back home to gratitude and to love.
To sit in awe at how we can operate with such complexity, yet simplicity - with all of the moving parts that need to be operating, operating.
Operating for us, with us, and within us.
Divng down into a world where you have to rely on your last breath, now that’s a space that I can find pure appreciation for.