Coming Home Meditation Is Tuesday Morning at 9am EST ~ Opening the Breath

Tomorrow's meditation will be about the profound simplicity of the breath

Dear friends,

Join me tomorrow (Tuesday at 9am-10:15am EST) for a meditative session on the breath. Sometimes I overlook the importance of this immediately available tool. I forget how quickly a thoughtful approach to breathing can calm my body and mind; how conscious awareness of the breath and skillful management of the breath can change my state of being almost completely from constricted and stressed to open, spacious, and free.

When I am guiding clients through a process of trauma integration, there is often a moment when we begin to feel what hasn’t been felt in a very long time, when I sense them holding their breath or breathing in a very shallow manner. When I notice this, I will often direct their attention to this and they can often feel surprised by the recognition of this cessation of breath—totally suspended, so shallow it’s hardly noticeable. I think this is a result of the “freeze” response to trauma because it is often accompanied by a broader immobility in the body—like a prey animal that doesn’t want to be spotted by the predator. If we can support the process of the breath coming back into the body, we can begin to thaw frozen trauma structures and encourage energy to move again.

Try this…As you read this, simply notice the quality of your breath.

Is it deep or shallow? Is it smooth or ragged? Is it rhythmic and even or sporadic and uneven? Does your breath feel pleasurable or laborious? Some of you may notice you’re hardly breathing at all. As Reggie Ray says:

“Most of us have a very constricted breathing process. That constriction inhibits our awareness and contributes to our feeling of being disembodied.”

There are many breathing exercises that come to us through the yogic traditions. Pranayama is the Sanskrit term for the purification and preparatory practices that work with the breath and prana or vital life force energy. Pranayama is used to calm the mind, steady the body, expand vitality in the body, inhabit the body more fully, and even to manipulate the kundalini energy and achieve states of enlightenment.

In the Tibetan “inner yogas,” conscious manipulation of the breath is essential to many alchemical practices that literally change the chemistry of the body and bring the practitioner into a mastery of their life force energy, which they can then use to achieve heightened and subtle states of awareness. The breath is the gateway and the portal to both higher states of mind and deeper state of embodiment.

Tomorrow is an open class, so we will keep it simple. We’ll play with some breathing exercises you may already know and work with simple retentions and deep belly breathing. We’ll also explore the subtle energetics of the breath moving in and through the lungs, around the heart, and throughout the body.

I am a beginner student of Chinese medicine. I like the deep understanding it contains related to the elements. I’ve always resonated with the elements as sentiences. I like this brief blog post about the lungs and metal energy. We have a grave imbalance in the metal element in our modern and technological culture. Metal is excessive and also defiled by its use so often in history to destroy and desecrate. Tomorrow we will work with this energy of the season by honoring and purifying the breath. Let’s let go of any old tension in our breathing patterns and let in that crisp, fresh air—physically and metaphorically.

I’ve been thinking more about the lungs and the breath recently because I had COVID last week. This is also why I haven’t been posting. I am happy to report I am recovered and ready to write again. I am missing my regular connection with you all. If you can make it, join the meditation tomorrow !

As always Coming Home weekly meditation practice is a pay-what-you-feel event. Recommended contribution is between $10-20, but you can pay whatever you feel including $0. Your presence is a gift. Here is the way: Venmo to @ElizabethSchuyler-Brown or Paypal to schuyler@artofemergence.com. All donations are appreciated!