Last week, we devoted ourselves to reflecting upon and inquiring into the relationship between our bodies and our experience of presence. This week, we will explore an exercise that invites you into a deepening experience of presence within your magnificent body. Not embodiment as a contemplation, but embodiment as a way of being that begins within the breath itself.
I call this exercise ‘The story of the Breath’. It is not an exercise where you are merely focused on “noticing the breath”—a common witness-observer practice in the meditative world. It is more of an experiential breath exercise, one where you are encouraged to become conscious of your breath, to connect with it as it endeavours to take up more space inside of you, to listen to it as it tells you the stories it keeps. Many of us have never paid any conscious attention to our breath—we just breathe the way we breathe—and as a result, we often have no idea how far or how deeply the breath can travel within the body itself. We also have no idea how brilliantly the breath can track and excavate memories and emotions that are needing to be felt and expressed. Or how effectively the breath can remind us of the stories that we carry and the secrets that we keep. So lets devote some time to becoming aware of ourselves as a breathing organism, and to exploring how much space our breath can take inside of us. How much space, and also how much feeling and memory arise when our breath is more expanded inside of us. Through an enrealed perspective, the more thoroughly our breath travels within us, the more access we will have to reality. Or, put another way, the more fully we breathe, the more fully we are here. And the more connected we are to our story, the more glorious our opportunities for healing and awakening to all that we are, and all that this life is.