Breath, and the Wisdom of the Body

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If I had a timeline labeled “From Then Til Now” set out in front of me, I imagine from that perspective I’d see one of the most significant turns in my life was the year I lived with Jasmine.  An incredibly important thing happened that year, which I realize is credit to her.

It was a decade and a half ago and I had a sciatic injury that pained me to the point of anger.  Because I was finishing up my undergrad, I sat a lot–both in class and writing papers for my creative writing degree.  The muscle in my leg would lock and squeeze the nerve until I couldn’t breathe.  One afternoon, literal tears of powerlessness running down my face, Jaz invited me to meet her at a friend’s downtown.

Inside the apartment was the exotic smell of an incense new and foreign to me.  I noted scarves draped eloquently around the small living room.  There were yoga mats on the floor, three of them, dark blue.   Jaz’s friend proceeded to lead us through an hour and a half of sweet stretches, with a tenderness that tweaked and rounded my heart in a way that I had never before known.  What I remember the most is the secure, gentle feeling I had still laying on her floor, under a blanket when it was done, listening to the crackling sounds of her friend stir-frying veggies for us.  I was certain I was on a cloud, and had discovered heaven.

Jazmine it turned out was studying under this women, and from that point forward I became eager to receive whatever she learned.  I was 23, and had something like three or four years of a shoddy morning practice.  Meaning, on and off there had been periodic starts of trying to fit quiet time in to my schedule in the morning.   That year, because of Jazmine and yoga, during my morning practice I learned to breathe.

“Breath,” said Dr. Paula Reeves in Women’s Intuition:  Unlocking the Wisdom of the Body, “is one of the body’s purest expressions.  Since earliest time, Pneuma, the wind of Spirit or Soul that breathes the universe into life, has been recognized and revered.  Breath brings vitality, enlivenment, and ensoulment into matter.”

I don’t mean to say that there is a right way to breathe.  Only that I learned the deeply healing and restorative powers that reign right inside of me:  all of which can start for me by breathing.  We know from the study of somatic psychology that the body holds not only the physical, but the emotional and mental experiences as well.  Like any system, in fact, the body is its own ecosystem, absorbing and regulating every single second of sensation that we consciously and unconsciously experience day to day.  Breathing, and gradually learning to pay attention to the thoughts and associations that breath opens you into, is one of the easiest ways to empower yourself.   Anyone can become more conscious of life by starting with her own, by starting with her breath.

“Conscious breathing awakens the unconscious body.  Without consciousness your body remains as trapped and formless as a lump of clay before the potter’s touch.  Breath touches matter and awakens all the hidden potentialities.”

I believe learning to start with my breath was the turning point on my own path to deeper self-connection and understanding.  When I am conscious with my breath, I am in ownership of my self, my own life–ultimately the only place where I will ever have true power. It’s as simple as that, and something you can’t do wrong because your breath will just go on doing it for you, anyway.  Which to me makes it a gentle practice, something to return to with softness and ease, with a touch of wonder and gratitude even: such a simple, life-affirming thing, breath.

Thanks, Jaz.