Monday, April 16, 2012

In a Hurry to Inhale

In addition to taking the class from Hard Teacher, I am taking a short course from her in Pranayama. I find it very interesting to learn about the expansiveness inside.

There was a saying in graduate school in poetry -- if you have to ask the question you will never know. Poets are so snotty. I'm not sure it's different in yoga, but the teachers smile and say, listen to your body. I think it's the same answer, just one is meaner... sigh.

Last week I talked to her about my anxiety about the exhale. It makes me scared to be empty of breath. I feel like I am not in control. To hold the breath out seems almost to invite emptiness... emptiness of life.

We do a three part breathing -- upper chest, ribs, abdominal... breathe each separate; pause between segments. I asked -- is there a pause again before inhaling...

It's not so much as a pause -- think about the idea that you are not in a hurry to inhale.


Isn't that wonderful. Not in a hurry to inhale. It's not an expulsion -- not a denial -- simply a moment -- like Scarlet O'Hara for pranayama... I'll thinking about it when I get to it...

Aren't we so conditioned to rush the next --
Don't leave a job without the next --
Don't leave a love without the next --
I don't even think I ever run out of peanut butter...

Of course if you know you are safe -- and loved and housed and fed...
If you know that breath is waiting to fill you and life is all around...

You don't have to be in a hurry at all.

2 comments:

LIsa said...

The breath is one of my greatest teachers. I hate that I take it for granted most of the time. And your lovely observations remind me to sit with my breath, my body, my mind, my soul, a while before I allow hurry to abuse my breath for yet another day.

xo

PS: One of the most powerful teachings I've come across talks about emptiness...how the "empty" cup is the most receptive to the wonderful creative and joyous blessings of the cosmos...life itself can only manifest itself fully when we are empty of our attachments and stories...which is probably why meditation is so powerful...it "can" be a process of emptying all that...and the breath "can" be a way to get there...

Jennifer S. Flescher said...

I love this, Lisa! Thank you.