Breathing Our Way Into Aliveness

Breath is our ally.

The breath innocently and effortlessly delivers us into the welcoming arms of the present moment. Breathing happens automatically and, oftentimes, we forget to breathe. We may find ourselves holding our breath in moments of fear, when we are concentrating on something, or when we don’t want to feel.

Recently I worked with a client who was in the habit of holding her breath as a way of avoiding feeling what seemed like too much--as if opening to it might annihilate her.

Where we are not breathing, we are not feeling.

We may find ourselves bracing against things we imagine we cannot handle. When we don’t breathe into a particular area of our bodies, we may wind up with large swaths of what I call “vacancies.” Vacancies are places where we deign not to go. We dare not enter these areas because they appear to be fraught with pain and peril much like a haunted forest.

The body is a map of our life experience. It holds our past through muscular memory. When we breathe, we open up pathways for our bodies to release.

Breath is a pathway to aliveness.