Breathe To Calm & Heal

woman, closed eyes, standing at a walll of flowers, breathing in . . .

Blessing the Gift of Breath

"What is a blessing? A blessing is a circle of light drawn around a person to protect, heal, and strengthen. Life is a constant flow of emergence. The beauty of blessing is its belief that it can affect what unfolds . . .

 We are confined by limitation and difficulty. When we bless, we are enabled somehow to go beyond our present frontiers and reach into the source. A blessing awakens future wholeness. We use the word 'foreshadow' for the imperfect representation of something that is yet to come. We could say that a blessing forebrightens the way. When a blessing is invoked, a window opens in external time."

 --John O'Donohue, To Bless The Space Between Us

 We hear a lot about mindful breathing and meditation and how good they are for the spirit and for calming down. Some of us have long meditation practices, some of us have on-and-off again meditation practices, some of us are Emergency Meditators.

 No shaming here—whatever works for you! (I have a particular fondness for the Emergency Meditator myself. I so know this form of dedication/half-dedication.)

 We don’t have to be meditators or mindfulness experts to get benefits from calm, mindful breathing. We can just be exactly what we are: animals who breathe.

We can appreciate the breath as a fundamental indicator and bringer of health, brain-body-spirit. Even a minute of calm conscious breathing into the belly—diaphragmatic breathing, so the inhaled oxygen drops deeper into the lungs—is a wonderful little sip of calm in the midst of  a busy day.

 A Buddhist monk taught me a number of wonderful and simple breath techniques when I first learned to meditate in Thailand as a teenager. Curiously, I didn’t write about this in Touch The Dragon, my book about that year as an exchange student. It’s not easy to write about healing practices, especially when you’re a teenager without any serious health problems.

At the time, it just seemed like something my mother would appreciate (and, in fact, she did!). Now that I’m a mother with a teenager, here I am with the wisdom . . . Right on schedule, perhaps.

 The physical benefits of using our breath in a focused way to oxygenate painful or tense tissue or joints is another health wonder.

 When we have certain aches or pains, we can mindfully use the breath to oxygenate those particular areas of the body. We can also use this technique to promote wound healing.

 I often invite clients I’m working with to do some mindful breathing with me in session. Part of my work as a somatic therapist—a therapist who attunes to the physical body— is to watch how people breath and do not breath. Have you ever noticed how you might hold your breath when you’re stressed or anxious?

Our tendency to hold the breath . . . tends to lead to greater physiological stress and mental/emotional anxiety.

So be yourself . . . an animal who breathes, in and out.

As you inhale, call up love, tenderness and kindness towards your entire body-brain-spirit.

As you exhale, think or say aloud, I deserve the gift of my own calm breath. 

Because there’s no doubt about it: our breath is our most fundamental blessing.

Bless the breath.

Below you’ll find that exercise the Buddhist monk taught me last century: a very old way of using the breath to bring some relief to physical and emotional pain.