Breath

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about this word lately. It’s a word I use surprisingly rarely for someone who teaches meditation and yoga; I prefer its medical synonym, which is colder and more impersonal: “breathing.”

I remember suggesting not too long ago to a new yoga teacher that she use the term “exhale” rather than “blow out,” since the latter evokes for me the weariness of a sigh.

I know my breath; I’ve been returning to it constantly, moment by moment, on my meditation cushion every day for several years now. When I practice yoga, my movements are carried by my breath; when I run, my stride is sustained by my breath.

My breath brings me back to the present; when my mind and body follow the breath, I am in a relationship with reality that is not yet colored by the filter of my thoughts and emotions. There is something raw in this experience of the breath—pure potential. I draw unshaken confidence from it and see in it a constant reminder of the fragility of my existence and the urgency of fully embracing it.

This morning I was running along the ocean, the breath of the wind and the water mingling with my own. My breath became more pronounced as my stride sank into the sand of the dunes, while the breath of the wind and the sea drowned out everything as I approached the cliff.

The breath of the world will remain after mine. It is both comforting and terrifying. Perhaps that’s why I love running and swimming so much—I feel myself breathing in unison with the earth and the sky—and that’s surely also why the word “breath” frightens me: it essentially contains both my life and my death.