It was a struggle to leave...I think I was afraid. I think I didn’t want to be inconvenienced. I didn’t want to leave all the beings I love. I think I was worried about who and what I will become if I stop being who I am currently.
Sometimes in this life, you just have to inhale deeply and begin. Even when you are unsure, even when you are afraid, even when it feels safer to hold your breath or just take very shallow breaths that barely nourish life. It is then, usually, when you should inhale deeply, so the fresh air gets all the way down to your toes!
I have found that breathing, or rather how I am not breathing, is a function of my presence in this life. I mean, I always breathe. That is silly. But there is a vital difference between breathing the breaths that just sustain life, and the ones that make you really feel alive. You know the difference.
Whenever I need or want to ground myself, I find all the peace I need right there in the breath. The deeper I breathe, the more present and here I feel.
The first thing I did yesterday when I got outside the airport, was take a huge inhale. Immediately it brought me 8000 miles from home. I could discern the moisture in the air that isn’t present at home or on airplanes. I could feel the inherent qualitative differences in air from home and this new Australian air. I could feel my lungs expand and, in so doing, I could feel my feet plant more foundationally in the life I was living in that moment.
It is amazing that something I do all day, every day just becomes some sort of background function. Like the refrigerator running at home, you don’t have any idea how much sound it makes until the power goes out and you can no longer hear the hum. That is what breathing feels like when I forget to breathe deeply. When life gets a little too lifey and I just subsist off the shallow life sustaining breath and fail to drop into the more full and rich life that is present when I inhale deeply.
It is 4:22 am on Saturday. I am awake writing, drinking coffee and breathing deeply. Every single breath I can feel. I am acutely aware of it entering and leaving my body. I see the pop and sizzle of current of living coursing through me with each inhalation. I can feel the minute transaction of living with every breath I take.
Why do I so often miss this at home? Why is busy such a thief of full throttle living? How much do I miss in my everyday life because I become so remote from this most basic form of living. Something I wholly take for granted...we all do, until and unless our breath restricted or curtailed.
I am going to try to remember how much life I feel when I inhale deeply. When I expand my lungs and allow the life force to enter me fully and completely. I am going to also try to remember to look down and see where my feet are. Such an orienting practice. I am here, right now, breathing in and out, inhaling deeply, living. I am LIVING! How can something so foundational be ignored and missed so fucking much? How is that possible?
Busy is the thief that robs us while we are awake, living, distracting us with things that are unimportant, masquerading as vital. Inhaling deeply gives busy the middle finger and acts as a barrier to all the things in this life that pull me away from my joy and presence in actually living life.
Inhaling deeply while gazing at my feet, firmly planted wherever they might be is the best practice I know for dropping into the moment you are in...
Again...still.
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