Have
you ever found yourself spellbound watching a hawk soar effortless high above?
Or caught yourself mesmerized by a fish hovering in one spot for no apparent
reason? Or been fully entertained by a gull’s
feather drifting on the water with billowy clouds reflecting beneath it?
How
easy it is to fully surrender in nature. No need for answers, no need for
questions, just expansive possibilities twinkling around everywhere.
“Thank
you. I love you. Bless you:” just twinkling around.
What
a rich summer this has been: the visitors, the entertainment, the culinary
delights. It’s all been so exquisitely juicy, much like our bumper crop of
cherry tomatoes this year.
Follow
your bliss.
Follow
your path.
Follow
your breath.
Not
only do the trees purify the air around us, so too do our peaceful bodies. Acting as a filter system for negativity, our
slow, relaxed nervous system imprints on inhaled circulating breath to restore it
to a balanced state then exhales it back into our environment. Dr. Masaru Emoto showed that human
consciousness has an effect on the molecular structure of water. Is it possible
that space out there is not the final frontier, but space in our breath is?
Hmm.
What
if a clean breathing movement took hold like the clean water and clean eating
movements did? What if the local market
not only had fresh food and artisanal crafts for sale but also offered a place
to breathe in joy together? Maybe sing? Maybe dance?
Maybe play? Together.
And
what about in school cafeterias? Would
kids who intentionally breathed together and understood their influence on the
web of life in this intimate way, be as likely to bully one another?
In
the West we take our breath for granted.
We are born; we have it. We die;
we don’t have it. But as Eastern philosophies take hold here, we’re slowly
becoming more mindful of what we’re doing to ourselves. The slower and deeper our breath, the fuller
our connection to life around us. The
faster and shallower our breath, the more we feel isolated and unhealthy.
Yoga,
Tai Chi and Chi Kung teach many types of breathing techniques that can warm us
up and cools us down, help us concentrate and help us focus our strength on
attackers. Masters even know how to feed themselves with breath alone.
Do
you want to know how? Look to the
trees. Not only do they feed off the nutrients they take in through their root
system, they also reach out with their limbs to draw in light and life through their
leaves. Our breath does the same for us: we can draw in light and life and be
fully alive, fully at home in our own skin, quite simply by utilizing our
breath. The charisma we see in movie
stars can be ours too when we choose to energize from two sources instead of
just one. If we can synch up with
nature’s rhythm, surrender to its subtleties, we can hook in to this dynamic
energy and be lifted to a whole new realm of possibilities.
Changing
our breathing pattern takes awareness and effort. There are meditations, movements,
and repeated phrases that can help the process along. I’ve studied many over
the past thirty years and to sum it up: connect with earth energy (see the feather
technique in the previous column: http://thegiftofthewhitetrail.blogspot.ca/2016/06/stones-feathers.html)
and then follow your breath: two beats into your belly and down, and four beats
back to your spine and down- two beats into your belly and down, and four beats
back to your spine and down, relaxing a little more each time.
Soon
enough, “Thank you, I love you, Bless you,” will be twinkling around everywhere
and everyone. Who knows, perhaps the Haliburton Highlands will become known as
the home of the Clean Breathing Movement.
People will come. They’ll come to the Haliburton Highlands for
reasons they can’t fathom. They’ll
arrive as innocent as children, longing for the past. Of course, we won’t mind
if they look around. It’s only $20 per
person. They’ll pass over the money
without even thinking about it; for it is money they have and peace they
lack. And it’ll be as if they dipped
themselves in magic waters.*
Wow,
expansive possibilities are twinkling everywhere!
*Paraphrased from the movie Field of
Dreams based on the novel Shoeless
by Canadian author W. P. Kinsella
