Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Every Breath Birth Breath Breathing

I have been given an inner exercise that I am permitted to share. It is called Every Breath Birth Breath Breathing, or EBBB.

I will keep this in first person singular, as that is the only proper method of emanating, and the listener (or reader) can absorb as much as his or her being allows, and the rest simply gets deflected.

I am sitting, and writing on the keyboard so that I can free the breath from the interruption of it by talking aloud.
As I sit, I begin to center my self by calling on all my parts to come and join me. I wish to be all in one place for this. I wish to stay with the body, bringing the mind and emotions back to the body so that I am in only a single place, congealed and re-membered.

I notice the body, with it's aches and discomforts and I tell it to relax, as I pose no danger to it. I use my peripheral vision to see the things in the room that are stationary, and I close my eyes for a moment...I slowly open them and see that nothing has moved, and that I am safe. I may do this again...closing and opening my eyes and realizing that these things are in the room but pose no threat to my bodies safety, so I feel safe here.

Now, I wish to notice more deeply, my breathing...The air which strikes my nostrils is ever so slightly cooler than my nose, and I follow the breath into my lungs and body, relaxing more... I notice that my exhalations are warmer than the outside air and that exhaling "pushes" a puff of air a certain distance down the front of my body. I notice this distance, and I notice the depth of the inbreath, whether deep or shallow, I measure it in image realistically. I am not allowing my imagination to scatter or go away from this noticing.

Now, as best I can, I remember that I was once an aquatic creature breathing embryonic fluid in my mother's womb. That was a place of great freedom. I could hear sounds and taste and smell my mother's fluid of the womb and I was less subject to gravity. It is as if I were in heaven.

Then her "water broke", the Great Flood of yore and I was squeezed and had to make my way out lest I be crushed... I have been taken from that heaven and pushed into hell. It happened. I have no doubt. And when my crown showed, and my cheekbones came out the rest of my just slid out, lubricated by the mucosa of the placental sac. And I was taken by my ankles and held upside down and slapped on my ass, which was a large SHOCK.

I had never been HIT before, and so I cried, and I exhaled the fluid in my lungs and I was STRUCK again, by the SHOCK of the air rushing in, and turning me from an aquatic creature to an air breathing one. Every new inhalation is redolent of that first breath SHOCK, only after I got used to it I stopped feeling the shock.

Now, I want to remember that shock as deeply as I can on every inhalation, and submit and surrender to the exhalation, which is my dying to that moment. With the shock of each new breath I pull myself into the future, and with every exhalation, I pass the past behind me. It has become very subtle now, and sometimes the breath stops on it's own and I let it. It is then a time with which to ponder. Why am I here? Who is here? That organism that contains "me"?  The urge to again breath comes, but from where? I let it breath me and remain, until I leave the exercise and move into the currents of my ordinary life. I have been in a place of different time, but must return to the tasks which await me.

1 comment:

David said...

Every birth breath breathing. Try saying that 5 times fast! You will be breathing your next birth breath in no time.