Invisible yet Essential
Do you know what it is?
I have been sitting with my father this past week as he is taking his last breaths.
He is still with us, but his time here is drawing to a close. He is 90. A big innings. I have spent many hours listening to his breath.
My father grew up in Malta, and his life has been quite tortured mentally and emotionally from World War 2, where Malta, a tiny island, sustained the heaviest continuous bombing attack, and supply ships could not get in for years. Yes years. His culture and religion placed all sorts of restraints and judgements on him. His relocation to another country at 17 in the hope of a better life than the rubble left behind was another unexamined cataclysmic event. The generation that just got on with things.
But these things never leave us if they are submerged beneath the conscious mind. They metastasise and manifest in unhelpful ways.
How do we transcend all that we do, all that happens to us, all that we believe we are?
Our stories inform who we are. But they do not determine who we are. We can choose to see beyond the stories if we have capacity through techniques, strategies and support to do so.
Maybe that’s why I do what I do. I have lived under the cloud of a life scarred by the experiences of life and have borne witness to its destructiveness.
Taking Time
I need a day of nothing, a reprieve from the spinning merry-go-round of my life. Shrug it off like an old winter coat and hang it by the door. I need a day where I am not asked, wanted, or noticed. To know there is a wall of silence between me and everything else. - Lang Leav
Do you feel the tugging constantly at the fabric of your being? I know I do. From others. From life. From myself.
I am always exploring this notion of being in the middle of it all. The chaos, the expectations, all the hard stuff that jumps out unexpectedly.
I am always trying to rise above those things that cause us distress, not to disconnect, but to detach from the emotional reactivity in order to respond. I use these techniques in my work too. What I do works. Because it starts with us.
We are the centre of our life, so doesn’t it pay to harness our own energy first.
I have been itemising daily the 5 foundational elements which form the structure of MNL on instagram. Even though I have them numbered 1-5, they all sit evenly together, informing each other, interdependent on each other. But most significant this week for me has been the Breath.Listening to and guiding breath has been a stalwart for me in my own practice and in my teaching for many years.
I regularly take myself away. Press the pause button. The last few years have been a bit treacherous, so I have learnt that the only way through intact is to build a framework that encompasses all the things I know to be true to support my physical, emotional & mental wellbeing. .
When I say I go away, it might only be for an hour, a few hours. Where i can gather. Breathe. Reset. Inserting these times into our days helps us to manage life. I pay attention to the breath every day in some capacity as part of a meditation practice or a stand alone event. I know the power in its conscious presence.
Where can you literally take a breath?
Where is your place that you can go and feel like you can breathe when life gets overwhelming. This is one of mine. A salt water swim to me is a balm. As much as a yoga practice, listening to music, skiing down a mountain and cooking is.
Breathwork has become the flavour of the year. But it’s something the the ancient sages spent a lot of time exploring, and working with. In some Eastern philosophies, there is the belief that we are born with a pre determined number of breaths and when we are done, we are done.
If that is to be believed, why are we huffing and puffing our way through life, using up our allocation of breaths?
We have the capacity to slow it all down. Time. Awareness. Desire.
It’s not very glamorous to attach our experience to only the breath, to nothing but the breath itself.
No ice bath. No infrared sauna. No exercise.
Simply breathing.
Noticing.
The breath. The mechanics. The mystery of the origin of the breath and it continuing to arise and fall. Being curious of, and harnessing the breath, and using it to our advantage has benefits that go beyond what we can see.
It is in the unknown, in the felt experience that we start to tap into its rewards.
For something that is invisible, and necessary, why do we pay it so little attention?
I have pressed pause on a couple of workshops for the next couple of weeks until things settle, but I will have a Breathwork/ Meditation Workshop + Dinner coming up very soon. If you would like to be Waitlisted, please click HERE and simply write WAILIST with your name.
As always, thanks for being here.
Until next week….
Inhale. Exhale. Repeat
Love
Mon
Top Photo: Miriam Espacio
Clovelly Beach: By Me
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