A few night’s ago, I was laying in bed trying to relax into sleep. My thoughts were slowly meandering through the events of the day, and I found myself startled as I recalled a moment while commuting home at dusk on my bike. I had a close call with a car that didn’t see me. I noticed that this memory had a loud presence in my mind and my body began to experience more tension. Tension that had already been there was starting to feel worse and I began labelling it as not good. Suddenly I was thinking about all of the ways that close-call could have ended poorly. My thoughts then quickly shifted into replaying a memory from three years ago when I stood on my 18th floor apartment balcony watching a chaotic and bloody scene on the road after a cyclist was killed by a driver.
I tried to think about something else, anything else, but I kept getting pulled back into that memory and my body felt tight and uncomfortable. Now I was imagining how that cyclist could have been me or someone I know and love. As I came to the realization that my system was activated and I couldn’t steer my thoughts else where, I turned towards my breath instead.
It was tight, shallow, and didn’t have much of a rhythm or space to move. I brought my hands to my belly and heart and focused more and more on my bodily sensations as I encouraged my inhale to be slow, low, soft, yet full, a gentle pause with full lungs, and a long exhale with an audible sigh. With two breaths I already felt a shift happening. My body began to soften, my breath began moving with more ease, and the grip of my attention completely released from where it had been previously stuck. I began to melt into sleep with a smile on my face.
Breath Literacy
Your nervous system is the master controller of your body and mind, and your breath is the gateway to unlocking its power and potential. The pace, quality, perspective and narrative in our mind is a byproduct of the nervous system state we are in. This gives us tremendous possibility and power as we turn inwards to befriend our nervous system. Imagine for a moment that your life experience is akin to adventuring down a wild and wondrous river. When you have an intimate relationship and understanding of your breath, you have the ores, the awareness, and the skills to navigate swiftly through the river of life. Breath literacy leads to the ability to stay centered, to meet the rapids and come back to calm as soon as you’re through, to enjoy the lazy river moments with ease and bliss, to amp up your speed at will, and to surrender to the journey with pleasure.
As we turn the lights on in our inner system, we can observe and appreciate the ways our breath rhythm may have adapted over time to keep our body in balance even during the tumultuous waves of this journey. This wise system requires the occasional intervention as we can get locked in patterns that in the long term are actually detrimental.
If this sparks curiosity and desire to learn more, reach out. I would love to connect.
xo
*Cover photo by Studio Lumen