BREATHE AND CONNECT
Breathing is such an automatic act that it does not require any effort or attention on our part, like blinking… And so we go through life, inhaling and exhaling without realizing it.
Our physical body allows us to relate to the environment and the mind facilitates our ability to process the information we receive from it. Very often, mind and body go on different, almost opposite, paths. A stressed mind or a tired body can condition how we face the world.
“Stop and breathe”, a phrase that sounds so familiar to all of us that we do not usually apply it … And it is, through breathing that we get the mind and body to remember that they are only one, that they are connected and united, that a strong body is of little use if the mind is dull, just as a hyper-stimulated mind would be of little use in a tired or injured body.
Just for a moment, while reading this text, take a deep breath and watch your body move as the air enters it, let go of the air and watch yourself empty completely. Do you feel any change at the mental level? Less haste perhaps? More notion of being present?
A few years ago, during a meditation, I proposed to my students that we inhale as if it were the first time we had done it in life, being aware of the significant gesture it represents. At the end of the class, one of the people who was practicing came up to me to tell me how tears had filled her eyes when she thought that it was the first time she had inspired in her life and how this feeling had been a great anchor for her in the present moment.
Sometimes it can seem that the body goes one way, the mind by another, the emotions by a third. By consciously breathing we can understand how these three parts are just three aspects of a single being that is here and now and concentrated on that.