Just Breathe

Breathing.  Its a simple reflexive movement.  We do it without ever thinking. It just happens.  From the moment we are born until the moment we die, breathing is life.

We hold our breath when we smell a pungent odor, or swim under water.  We hold it when enter a public restroom, or pass by a landfill, or a chicken farm.  Sometimes it's a matter of popping our ears on an airplane, or getting an x-ray done in the lab of our doctors office. Whateverthe reason,  holding our breath is uncomfortable, stifling, and it offers a brief passing second of what it would be like NOT to be able to breathe.

For the most part we spend our days breathing normally, slow easy breaths that take no thought, no effort (at least for most of us). Our breathing increases with exercise and slows at rest. We take 10 deep breaths when we are angry, or anxious. It's a way to calm ourselves and find our center again.  Breathing is soothing and the oxygen in our brain and muscles and blood as we visualize it brings us tranquility and calm.

We take it for granted that it will always be there.........until its not.

That one day, that one moment in time when breathing suddenly can't be found. You struggle for each ounce of air, you swim between consciousness and unconsciousness. Your focus is gone. The pressure in your chest is unbearable and your hands and feet tingle as if falling asleep. You are dying with each passing second and your brain screams that you want only to live. Someone help...Please. And then you begin to surrender...to accept and let go....and as you do.....the fight for your life begins. Others begin to fight for you. 

Its not until you can't breath, until it is taken from you suddenly without warning, that you realize how valuable and miraculous the gift of breathe is.  The process of our body and how it functions is truly amazing.  Rather it be an illness, an accident, a source of confinement....a sudden and dramatic loss of oxygen in your blood and the ability to breathe freely, can be devastating and terrifying.

If you are lucky enough to come out the other side, even as you fight to return to some semblance of your pre-trauma state, you learn to appreciate the act itself.  To stop each day and regard the miracle of breathing. You vow never again to take it for granted, and then.....you don't. You know how much it means.

Each day you wake up, you swing your legs to the side of the bed, you stretch, and you begin your day with the simple act of a Deep Cleansing Breath.