EFFORTLESS BREATH
What are the places between the cracks and how may we get curious about what lies there?
The places within us that lay hidden, tucked away in the shadows, between the giving and the receiving, between the seeing and unseeing. The places that understand everything about unconditional love, awareness and presence. The places that experience the world through the eyes of a child, with wonder, awe and amazement.
Perhaps these are the places that we have learned to cover up with a hard protective shell of armour. That we’ve hidden with the stories that we tell ourselves in our heads. Stories of being rejected, ignored, abandoned, un-nurtured, unheard and unseen. We’ve hidden them so deep within ourselves that we no longer know that they are there, like forgotten treasures that have sunk into the mud. That over time have become so baked into our beliefs that we have forgotten what it once was like to experience our true selves.
So the question is how can we peel back these layers and uncover what is there, what we know already to be true. How can we soften the parts of us that need softening and how can we strengthen the parts of us that need strengthening?
How can we unwind the layers of tension so that we may open up the places between the cracks and let the light shine in?
How can we embody a place of self compassion so that we may feel the same wonder and awe that we did as a child?
How can we see the truth of the moment and through that have greater choice and freedom in all that we do?
Deep within the body we have muscular structures that traverse horizontally and whose movements are guided by the universal laws of gravity, earth and space. These structures are dome shaped diaphragms, that are designed to ebb and flow and to move harmoniously within us. They are designed to withstand force but also to be soft, to be able to brace, but also to release. These diaphragms provide the basis for our breath, this spontaneous action of life sustaining movement, the inhale as we arrive into the world and the exhale as we leave it. A beginning and an end within every cycle of breath.
Between the extremes of the voluntary and involuntary breath lies what Donna Farhi calls ‘the essential breath’, an embodied and whole breath that oscillates the body in all directions, that is flexible and effortless. There are no rules about this breath, there is no right or wrong way, merely a way that follows the rhythm of the land and sea.
It is this breath that tethers us into the present moment, that offers us windows into the hidden parts of our psyche and allows us moments of insight and clarity. It is this breath that supports us in all that we do, enabling us to stand up straight but also to fall to the floor, to move through life making moment to moment adjustments in relationship to gravity. It is only in this moment of effortlessness that we can feel truly alive and free to explore all that we do not yet see.
It is an effortless and spontaneous breath.
An effortless breath that knows when it needs more support and knows instinctively how to receive it.
An effortless breath that softens the tension in the body and awakens the heart to love.
An effortless breath that sees the truth of the moment.
An effortless breath that represents choice and freedom.
With this breath, with the delicacy of an archeological dig, we slowly peel away the layers and uncover what is our essential truth.
The breath is the space between and it is where curiosity lies.
“Remember who you are.
Not the shape others have put on you, not the story they handed you, not the lies or needs that were pressed into your psyche.
Not even your own imagined ideas of what you should be.
But the real you, the wild innate you that is breathing under all those should be’s, all those untruths.
Remember the feel of it, the shape of it.
Let it inhabit you, like golden weeds re-wilding the concrete.”