The Breath is a Kiss

"Breathe more," says my yoga teacher Anne often when she lights her hands on my body and adjusts me in a pose. Breathe slower. Breathe here. More breathing, less thinking. Just breathe.

Several years and thousands of breaths into my practice I still marvel at the profoundness and simplicity of conscious respiration. In fact, each time I am being reminded and guided to just breathe, either by my gentle teacher or by a wise and knowing voice inside, it is a revelation all over again.

The breath is the kiss that awakens the body. It is the gaze of a lover on your face, and the drop of dew on a spider's web. It is the single bird flying through the morning sky, and the wind revealing the sun behind the shadow of a cloud.

The breath is the key ingredient of yoga - leave it out, and you get exercise. Not that exercise is a bad thing - it still strengthens the body and gives it a healthy glow - but yoga without the breath is like getting ready for a date, and then no one shows up. Yoga without the breath means getting lost in thoughts, getting distracted, bored, restless and tired. You can move through an entire yoga class without ever having touched your body.

I know what I'm talking about. I've been there many times. Too many times. Moving my body on autopilot through my practice, I am thinking about the phone calls I need to make, or peek at the woman with the beautiful backbend on the mat next to me -- all the while negotiating my tenacious hamstrings and middle-aged spine. But thinking, peeking, or not, I am moving, and my body speaks to me. That's the good news. My body's mass is gliding, flexing, stretching, gripping, pulsing, pleading and beseeching me to listen, to please listen and breathe!

And then, every now and then, something miraculous is happening. I breathe! I say yes, and oh! that's what you're trying to tell me!, and I breathe more and think less, and let be.

I kiss my body, I fall in love with it, I understand once and for all. My body smiles back at me, yawns, and stretches itself, wakes up and says: Lets begin.

August 2008

<!-- end main content -->