The shortness of breath?
Everything you need to know about the world is contained in a single breath, it begins and ends so that a new breath may take it's place, it does nothing more than it needs to do, it does exactly what it intends to do and it does it perfectly, it takes no more air than is required and uses every part of it that it can, what it takes it replaces and once it is gone, it asks for nothing in return. It does not require your attention but if you give it your awareness it can consume your interest you for an entire life, it has depth and power that can change the destiny of empires, and yet it is shared by every creature that shows any level of intelligence, that has animation and that survives and thrives. It the common thread that ties our story to the whole of the planet, the world gave us life by an extraordinary set of circumstances that resulted in producing the simple gas of oxygen, nature stirred the pot, waited a billion years and it created an impossibly diverse biosphere, that gave rise to beauty and then the ability to appreciate that quality.
When we breathe, we feel the weight of the interconnection between every living system in our world, we gain a litre in weight and then release it back, changed and ready to be recycled in a circle between us and the trees, our counterparts and friends, we breathe their breaths, as they breathe ours. It is a breath that has been taken a million times in a never ending game of tennis, we pass it back and forth, we take what we need and return it, we past the history of our world in that breathe, we are just stardust playing a pass the parcel with chemical reactions. However that history is only ours to see, the trees live and we think, we are able to pay attention to our awareness, we are able to feel that weight of history and the chains that tie us to all the way back to the big bang, it is all there in our breath.
It contains our life, our living presence and measures how much awareness that we are capable of, it is not a fixed amount, like freewill it is not an automatic right, it has to be earnt and practised. If you barely notice your breath except when you run, you have not practised, you have miss one of the greatest wonders in the world and it was under your nose all the time. Get to know your breath it is your only true companion through every moment of your life and it capable of the greatest solace, it can clear your emotions, control your thoughts, calm you on the worst days of your life. It would be a crying shame if you never gave it the attention that it deserves.
Do you breathe through your mouth or your nose? It does not sound like an important question and yet this simple difference can change your life, when you pay attention you will notice the difference, not in a touchy feely kind of way but in the very real physical sense. Mouth breathing expands the chest and stiffen the rest of your body, it good when you need a lot of air when running, swimming or fighting, but it comes at a cost of being ready for that fight, the tension is real and has to be pay for. Nose breathing on the other hand, rests the body, relaxes it, the diaphragm starts moving, air is pulled deeper and your body lightens, the tension goes and stress is released. Amazingly people can mouth breath for years and not realises it, the permeant stress of life can hold our body in that fight, flight, freeze mode for as long as we need it, and constant stress can keep you as tight as a bow ready to fire.
What is magical about nose breathing is that even in the face of stress, it can keep the body relaxed and peaceful, which frees the mind to deal creatively with the very problems that caused the stress in the first place. In the military this is called leadership detachment, it allows you to step back and see problems objectively, it avoids combat blindness where you can not see the bigger picture, the better move, fight and flight does not allow for deliberate action, tactical withdrawal is not flight, it is fighting and stepping back. It enables you to see what your true enemy is rather than the enemy in front of you, if you are struggling with money, just earning more might not be the solution but neither is spending less, there could be a third path, a more radical one where you change what you want or your circumstances entirely. When you are stuck in fight and flight there can only be two solution to your problem, that limitation means you just have two ways to fails which in turn is stressful and you get even more stuck in your mouth breathing.
That is why your breath needs your awareness, once you start exploring your breathe you find out that it is not just an automatic process that happens, you do not just receive this gift, you have to care for it and manage it's actions. You can absolutely take manual control and turn off the autopilot, it is an option, and your control starts with whether you breathe through your nose or mouth, you can direct it's path, you deliberately pull the breathe all the way down belly and even down to your feet. It has movement and energy that goes everywhere through your body, this is not magic, just energy, please do try to feel the breathe in your toes, it draws and expands in exactly the same way as your diaphragm does, it almost feels like it is filling up, attention and breathe work hand in hand. Where your breath is, you attention is, consciousness oscillates with real power and physical presence, and you can witness it, as it is always there, just by paying attention to the breathe in the diaphragm instead of the sensation in your nose, you can reduce the speed of your thoughts just by taking a breath between each thought, you can notice the start and finish of each thought as you can your breathe.
Each breath can be a great reset, you can start again at the beginning, you can recognise that each in and out breathe has it's own beginning, middle and end, and even the pause between the each in and out breath, the eight sided motion of our lives. It is a motion that can comfort us, bring us peace even in the middle of turmoil, it allows the energy of our body to travel freely, to complete it's journey by being felt and then released which is what happens when you let the energy be exactly as it is, you let things go by letting them be. When you trap energy in motion, when you hold on with your mouth breathing, it is like a bee trapped in a glass, it becomes amplified and more agitated, it sounds angry, but that is undone just by turning the glass and letting the bee be, you free it to do what it wants, to fly around and then leave in it's own good time.
It might be natural to want to control that energy, and you might want to deal with it later in an emergency, but there is no better action than to just observe it, and that is the practise that our breathe offer us. The happiest and healthy relationship to have with your breath is letting it be and seeing what happens, the act of watching allows you to adjust without force, you guide the breath back to the nose, you release the tension in your body to get out of the way of your breath and tension can be everywhere, your forehead, stomach, neck, you let them go by letting them be. Every tension is energy that has been trapped, emotion and body tension are the same thing experienced in different way, but if you release one you automatically release the other.
Just because your breath is short does not mean it does not have extraordinary depth, that is the secret straight in front of your nose, everything you need to know about your body and mind, is contained in that breathe. If you have a healthy breath, free, full bodied and expansive, you are healthy in that moment, if it is short you are blind to a wealth of information, open your eyes to your breath and that is where you will find the balance that your life requires, and the access to having presence with a state of grace, ease and joy that enables elegant, compassionate and skilful action with other and yourself. That is the gift that your breath can give, if you chose to unopen it with your whole awareness and attention, there is a beautiful world to discover.
