Life begins and ends with the breath

Yoga teaches us that our vital life force energy, or ‘Prana’ travels on the breath. It’s the vehicle by which we nourish, and sustain our optimal health; so naturally, our breath’s desire is to reach every cell in our body with each new breath so that we may be filled up with this vitality all the time.

We all desire to feel more awake and alive, relaxed, less anxious and we all want to be living with fewer physical and emotional pains, yes? So, why are we? The answer begins with, you guessed it, the breath!

When we feel small, undervalued, not seen; when we feel stressed-out, anxious or emotionally hurt- it manifests physically and we cut off from the breath. We shut off from the one vehicle our vitality travels on. Nuts, right?

Emotional stress can cause our breath to become more effortful; shallow, halted, stuck in our upper chest, neck and head.

When we are living in physical pain (headaches, neck, shoulder, back, joint pain) what happens to our breath? Same effect; it shortens, becomes stuck, sometimes quickens, or goes dormant and we forget about it altogether because after all, it’s breathing and we do it without even having to think about it, right?

What would happen if…when we slowed down to observe our physical and emotional imbalances, we invited a slow, deep inhale through the nose, expanded the belly, waist, ribs and chest outwardly (think 3 dimensional), then paused, holding that vital energy with ease; and then released that breath slowly out through the mouth in a sigh. How good would it feel to do it 3 or 5 more times?

The yogis taught that we have a finite number of breaths in our lifetime – let’s not waste them breathing the way fear, judgment, pain and stress make us breathe. Why not invite more presence to our breath as often as we can, and breathe the way nature intended-expansively from belly on up.

We are born to this earth on the breath and we will leave on the breath, so why not stretch the breath to stretch our life…