A Year To Breathe

This year I am going to learn how to breathe. Sure, I’ve technically been breathing for close to fifty years now and I’m fairly competent at it. It’s kept me alive this long…thank you autonomic nervous system…but only just. Kind of like surviving on the bare essentials in the desert, then discovering an oasis. Or like being in a foreign country without the language, customs and culture. Then taking a year to learn it, immersing myself in it, and exploring the land and people anew. I want to explore myself and the world anew. I want to learn the language of breath.

That’s where this year of learning to breathe begins. It started in Melbourne and is currently in stage Bali. Soon to be elsewhere, and then, who knows where.

I needed to intentionally create space. My way of doing this was to uproot and dismantle. Destroy and abandon. Set the explosives and light the fuse. I am sure there are far less drastic ways, but not for this seeker. I am no foreigner to this kind of life-shifting maneuver, yet this one has been more monumental. More consciously intentional.

***

Ritual is the alchemist of intention. Rituals and ceremonies seem to facilitate the transformation of intention into life. They bring them alive just like Frankenstein was set into motion by a jolt of electricity. They reify the intention through movement and action, dancing the intention into something greater than just movement and action. They assist to actively bring that which dwells in the subconscious, and sometimes the unconscious, into activity. 

When Hindus make an offering, or a Christian performs the sign of the cross, or hands together and namasteing, the lighting of incense, walking a labyrinth, using fire to transform the written word of regret or desire, these rituals seem to be doing something more than meets the eye. Or perhaps it’s complementary. I suspect they have the power to transform, like alchemy, when performed with conscious intention.

I wonder whether we humans are at essence Homo Ritualus as much as Economus or Erectus even? I wonder if there is something inherent in us that we need ritual to validate our power? Not unlike the placebo effect. The placebo effect has in fact been observed to still work even when the recipients of studies knew it was a placebo! Maybe ritual is the gatekeeper of intention.

***

It took me some months of contemplation (and admittedly, self-administered mental torture) before making the decision. However, once I made the decision…surrendered to the force…a wave of ecstatic promise seemed to form over and around me. Not quite defined, but a shimmer, gradually solidifying.

And so I left a great job, gave up my apartment, sold and gave away all but a few boxes of belongings, and bought a ticket to Bali. A ritual of conscious intention. The destination could have been anywhere. Bali is but a spiritual vehicle. It felt like the right place for now.

My plan: to go to the island for a few months. Not exactly sure what it would look like when I got there, other than spaciousness, quiet, relative emptiness. I just wanted to meditate, practice yoga, exercise, eat more healthily, suspend all my video and social media activity…and just listen. Oh, and doing the bare minimum workload providing online therapy. That was my mission.

The seed of this adventure was planted six months prior at a men’s retreat I attended. Actually, the soil of the seed’s planting was a significant part of it’s coming to light too: relationship grief, which is connected to other older grief, me acting out old stories, my family of origin trauma showing up unexpectedly and through current dynamics, my parent’s intergenerationally transmitted trauma re-awakening, the Big Bang and it’s flow on effects…and on it goes. It is all connected.

So in an attempt to keep it relatively current, I’m at this men’s retreat where ritual, space and silence were key elements. On the retreat’s penultimate day, we continued to fast form the previous night until the day’s end, and journeyed into the forest to find some space, each of us on our own. We were to mark out a circle of three meters diameter which we were asked to sit in for five hours without leaving it. Without any reading material, without any food, just water, writing material if we wished and our intentions. We were asked to just listen for what emerged in the stillness and silence.

I have discovered that in stillness and silence, my truths become clear and present. This ritual was an important one and at the right time for me. I was reminded of this discovery of stillness and silence and got to experience it again, as if for the first time. One of the messages I received was that I needed more of this. More space, silence, stillness and emptiness. To better listen to myself, my core self. To better hear my soul, the divine, or whatever it is that permeates all and everything, and especially me. To better guide the next stage of my life.

It’s not the guru in the cave on a mountain type of thing. It’s something I have experienced and am experiencing. Out of necessity perhaps. When I sit in relative silence and stillness for a while, truth or meaning or clarity flows into my consciousness. The messages that I need for the moment are clear. And then I get to choose. I don’t know how it works, but I have direct experience that it does. A divine law of the universe, perhaps.

“Silence is the language of God”, said 13th century Sufi mystic and poet, Rumi, “all else is a poor translation”.

I haven’t been that great, of late, in doing this kind of practice. Too busy, bogged in the mire of distractions, competing interests and reactive to old stories that keep me trapped. I was unable or unwilling to make the space. Working more than I know I’d like to, lots of things, ideas, ideals and noise. And then distractions and little addictions sneakily creep in — my disordered system’s attempt to numb itself. My life was too cluttered, too full of stuff. Like a hoarder’s home, I couldn’t find my solid ground. I needed a reset. And so, I lit a Molotov cocktail and threw it. No, Marie Kondo would not do!

This wasn’t all that was going on. I had created suffering in my life. I was once again caught up in reactivity and unhealthy patterns of behaviour. And so, like being caught in a rip in the surf, I initially fought it, attempting to swim against it. I needed instead to surrender to my rip and go with its flow to, paradoxically, get out of it.

***

I have been introduced many times to the language of breath over the past twenty or so years. I have the very basics. I can say hello, thank you and where are you from. It gets me by, but only just. I have flirted with more in depth breath work through meditation, yoga, reading, courses, study, friends’ experiences and one or two breathing workshops. And I do bring it into my work on a limited basis as a counselling therapist. But I never fully committed and embraced it in my life. Maybe I was not desperate enough to go to the next level. And not quite empty enough. Not empty in the negative connotation of the word, but empty in the spiritual sense. I hadn’t the space for a new language to sprout, take root and blossom.

So, an explorer lost in the deserts of my life, I became willing to test the terrain. To dig holes here and there, to taste all the strange unrecognisable fruits, until I might discover the sustenance I need to thrive. I became ready. Well, ready enough. And quiet enough. And still enough. And empty enough. And the way seemed to appear, clear and defined, well clear and defined enough.

My embracing of ritual and conscious intention as a means of opening myself up to this new language of breath is a tilling of my soil. It makes ready my ground. It invites new growth, it provides permission or the conditions for fecundity.

And the fruits of my ritualistic intention are evident. While in Bali I was introduced by new friend and fellow traveler, C, to the Pyramids of Chi in the hills of Ubud. A wonderful space with a calming energy and good helping of fairy dust sprinkles. Light, vibration and sound healing, cacao, blue lotus and full moon ceremonies, ice immersion, many and varied breathwork workshops and more. I was hungry and thirsty and the Pyramids provided sustenance with grace and seeming authenticity. I was able to deepen into new breathing capacities: right-left nostril breathing, open mouth, fast breathing, slow and deep breathing. Intentional breath. My vocabulary ever expanding.

Silence, stillness, practice and breath. I am bathing and basking in my intentions. I wanted more. I wanted to go deeper.

It seems that once I embark on an intentional journey, pathways of interconnection present themselves.

I found the next space of deeper moreness. The Bali Silent Retreat is nestled in the mountains of the Tabanan region. It’s a (mostly) self guided silent retreat. I opted for six days. A relaxed but intentional place for a choose your own adventure style retreat, with some basic conditions, one of which is to be silent. I would then choose, in addition, to switch off all my devices and not read anything and not do any work for my time there. Just meditate, contemplate, do yoga, walk slowly, eat slowly, write slowly and breathe slowly. The retreat space is an amazing setting, with clean food, from farm to table. And the farm is mostly on site, so it doesn’t travel far.  And sharing one’s individual retreat collectively with other similar minded seekers is supportive. It’s been another long, slow, deep breath.

***

We in the West, largely, aren’t taught how to breathe. We are pushed out of the womb and our autonomic nervous systems kick in. No decision to breathe is required. But to consciously breathe, no instruction is provided. Well, not in my family of origin. And it wasn’t a part of the general school curriculum either, just like emotional regulation, non-violent communication, how to love and how to be our divine selves weren’t prioritised. Well, I was in fact indirectly taught much of the above, but at the School of Dysfunctionality. I would like to create the School of Divinity. Kind of like Hogwarts, but for the development of our realistic divine capabilities.

Why do we need to be taught to breathe? We do fine and survive without such superfluousness. Yes, we survive, and that’s all our basic breathing does for us. It keeps us alive. That was mainly all that was required of us pre-consciousness and pre-socially complex development, pre-industrial, -technological, -A.I. and etcetera revolution. Pre- the 40-60 hour working week, living in highly dense environments, de-communitisation, relative disconnection, and all the economic, social and mental stressors and illnesses that pervade our current epoch. Our autonomic nervous systems have not evolved to manage such complexity, autonomically. And besides, I don’t want to just survive.

Why breath? There are incredible, and often mystifying, health benefits — physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. This is something that one needs to explore and experience for oneself, I suspect. It’s a hunch that I am following. That something is not quite right. Although it takes some research and practice. If there’s enough space and stillness to allow for it, that is.

Breath is a ritual of intentionality. And it’s a command system of my whole being. Think of an airport’s control center, ensuring the functional and safe operations of an incredibly complex system. Well, I would suggest that humans are even more complex. Sure, our autonomic nervous systems have our basic survival covered. But what of our post-conscious selves?

Something changed in our human development around the time of the evolution of human consciousness that distinctly shifted our trajectory away from other animals. This ‘something’ gave us capabilities to engage with and alter our environment and in turn ourselves, creating significantly greater complexity. Alongside this complexity, it would seem that we got somewhat closer to the divine. And more capable of drawing on the laws of the divine. Closer to the divine imprinted in our DNA, such as beyond survival breathing. Yet, we are not readily taught to breathe this way, not during our formative years anyhow. Nor are we distinctly taught about other supposed laws of divinity. We are not universally taught about our divinity. Why? Probably, namely, because it generally doesn’t fit squarely into the dominant religions and ideologies of our current times. Science and Global Capitalism being the most dominant right now.

There are yogis in India, Indigenous sages and healers of the Andes and surrounds and others around the world for whom seemingly supernatural feats of breathing are second nature. Wim Hof discovered and developed these capabilities too. Those who have mastered the art of breath have demonstrated to scientific researchers the ability to increase lung capacity by more than thirty percent, control body temperatures, blood pressure and cortical function just through breathing practices. It’s not so exceptional though. It is our human-divine nature. Yet seemingly secret and out of reach of most. But only secretive in so far as it’s not part of the dominant discourse.

Now, I have little need of changing my body temperature, but I do want to nurture my ever increasing capacity to manage my mental, emotional, physical and spiritual health. And breath seems to be a key element.

We are of divine fabric, I am sure of it. I sense it and sometimes experience it. If we look close enough, we discover we are of this divine creative form. But we need to experience this divine nature for ourselves. And it takes space and stillness and conscious intention. This ‘it’ is simply these laws of divinity that lay dormant in most of us. Some might call it the laws of nature, others physics, and others God. But these all seem too limited by their dogmatic containers. The secrets held within the art of breathing may well be one of these laws.

That everything is prayer could be another. Self-help film and book, The Secret, brought this kind of idea to the mainstream in 2006. But I am sure it’s been an experientially known phenomenon for millennia before. We cannot not pray, I challenge you. That everything we say, think, do, how we function in the world, sends out a message of our intentionality. We are often just unconsciously, unawarely doing it. And our prayers seem to be answered in kind, through some energetic channels that I don’t pretend to anywhere near understand. Maybe. Take a deep, conscious look. These things need to be experienced directly.

To experience directly and observe the divine is to be a mystic. We need more mystics.

***

So, I started in Bali with the basics. I would go there and just breathe. I would practice breathing in a literal sense and in a figurative one too. I would simply, consciously practice slow, conscious, deep belly breathing while: meditating, doing yoga, while walking, running, eating, drinking, talking, sitting watching the mountains and the birds, dressing, bathing, swimming, when physically or mentally disturbed, when excited, when at rest, while falling asleep and on waking up…everything would become a breathing practice. When I remember to do it, that is, or intentionally set aside time. That has been my intention.

Figuratively, deciding on uprooting my life was my first, and going to Bali was my second slow deep breath. For me, to have the space between things is to breathe consciously. Not to be rushed and puffed and short of breath, unless I consciously choose it. And to just observe and notice when I slip back into conventional ways of unawareness.

Osho suggests in The Book of Understanding, as do countless other teachers, that everything can be meditation. Not just sitting in posture. He simplifies meditation as breathing and observing. During meditation practice when we veer away from breath and the mind attaches, just be a witness and return to breath, he says. Taking Osho’s meditation aphorism and modifying it, ‘everything is breath’, is my current mantra. Osho is one of many fertiliser of my soil. It takes a village of (sometimes misfit) rebels to raise this divine being!

While preparing for my trip, another seed sprouted in my increasingly fertile ground. This time a very old one that had been left to rest for a while. Just before travelling I was contemplatively leaning more into this breath development pathway and wanted to go deeper still. This old seed was nourished into a sprout by a work colleague who spoke about holotropic breath work they were intending on doing. Ahhhh, the interconnected and interdependent web of life! Surely another law of the divine. I have a sense that if I listen and trust in the flow, and listen consciously, I am closer to these laws.

So this seed sprouted. Two months in Bali seemed like the right amount of time. And I contemplated, ‘what else, what next to fill my three month breath’, and just breathed my long, slow and deep breaths.

This was possible because I created time and I created space.

I had heard of the Esalen Institute in California long ago through my reading. It’s got a remarkable (and sometimes controversial) history, originating in the late sixties, of alternative, often radical, experimental therapies and medicines aimed at awareness raising and transformative healing. I breathed in their web page’s offerings. And there it was: a two week residential based breath work course at just the right time. The course description resonated strongly and harmoniously with me. California is also home to the giant red wood forests, another old seed of intention of mine. So, to California I will go. To learn to breathe. To breathe in the trees and to better breathe myself into existence.

The Esalen breath work course suggests a book by James Nestor called Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art for some pre-course reading. There is a significant focus on nostril over mouth breathing and the myriad benefits of this one simple change. As well as many other breathing techniques and research evidence to support its claims. The book has been facilitative in guiding my journey of breath. More fertiliser for my soil. And further evidence of the mechanics of a consciously intentional interconnected and interdependent life.

My life is breath, I have decided for now. How I live my life is how I breathe. And how I breathe is how I live my life. Is my life characterised by unconscious short, shallow fast breaths? Or consciously intentional breathing?

I’m reminded of this big little quote by Martha Beck that impacted my life in a significant way, albeit very subtly, some time ago. “The way we do anything is the way we do everything.” It was passed on to me by a teacher who was observing my practice. A key takeaway, inadvertently, from that moment was how much more in command I am of myself than I am usually consciously aware of. And so, I attempt to be more consciously aware where and when I can.

This overseas trip is a conscious breath. A relatively slow and deep exhalation preceded by a slow and deep inhalation. Life just prior to this was often like survival breathing. I was in my sympathetic nervous system more than was healthy for me. Why? Habit. Unconscious momentum. Forgetfulness. Living more out of awareness than in, which is far from my own unique rhythm. My authentic rhythm wants more intentional space, stillness and silence…and conscious breath. What about yours? My authentic rhythm requires conscious ritual. How about you?