The power of noticing our breath.
It never leaves us, but we can forget it.
What lets you know you’re breathing? As you’re reading this, take a slightly deeper breath. Where do you feel the earliest sensations of your inhale? Get detailed and granular with the data. Sometimes, it takes some time to find the start. At first, it may be easier to find your inhalation's overall more extensive experience. Is it in your chest expanding? Is your belly swelling? From the larger experience back up, pick up the first move. That first clue you’re breathing is evidence you’re alive in the world. You’re here, present to what is, the only place we can be. (James 4:13-15)
Where the inhale starts
My first hint of inhale is cooler air in my nostrils. That’s the first hint I’m inhaling. Maybe I run hot or am usually cold, but the air always feels cooler. That cooler temperature is my first hint. It took some time to find that earliest and subtle beginning. From there, I can surf the sensation of inhalation into my chest expanding and belly expanding.
When I first began mindfulness and noticed my breathing, I realized I didn’t like my belly swelling to accept the inhalation. I didn’t want a swollen abdomen or a more noticeably snug waist in my pants. It made me think, “I should cut out sweets or get more steps.” So, I’d instinctively lessen my inhale. Talk about shallow breathing.
The mid-point pause
After the top and middle of my inhalation, there’s a second where I turn around. A noticeable place where things shift from inhale to exhale. It’s not inhaling, not exhaling; it’s a pause. A kind of midpoint or fulcrum. It’s easier to notice if I get curious about finding it. The solitary second, or maybe two at the most, where the gears shift and move from inhale to exhale. It’s there. For most of my life, it went unnoticed. Imagine carrying something with you and never realizing it. It went unnoticed until I was encouraged to notice it; how many of those seconds have occurred over 54 years?
Interconnected
The long series of sensations began at one starting point—the first time and now this time as I type this. These sensations are connected to my beginning.
We support the idea that each day is a new start. Each day, we awaken to this thing, a stream that began many years ago. Its origin connects us to the origin of man—the breath in our lungs—the creation itself—and the God of it.
Unnoticed and hard to find
We spend the bulk of our time lost in rumination about yesterday or today. All we have is right now. Time machine owners are the exception, but for everyone else, this moment, this inhalation, is all we have. Now, this pause — and the exhalation.
I spent a very long and confusing search for the beginning of my exhalation. I realized last week that it was “settling.” I feel more ‘seated’, more settled in my seating. This may be odd to you, and it probably should be because yours will differ. The weight of myself seated slightly (very slightly) seems to grow through my exhalation, and my chest eases downward, but that’s it. The exhalation ‘show’ is subtle, more whispered, and more noticeable about what isn’t there.
Who cares?
Ok, Osborn, who cares? Getting immersed in observing my breath isn’t going to change the world. No, but you are. I can view changing the world as separate from being home in myself, attentive and supportive of my needs. This is an erroneous compartmentalization. This is where self-care becomes marketed as something over there to sell. But self-care is intrinsic to our doing. We put our oxygen mask on first; it’s not selfish to breathe.
To see breathing and being mindful of it as separate from being a human might be the most unintentionally hilarious misunderstanding of mindfulness. There are other misunderstandings, like beginning to think about what *Casper was before he was a friendly ghost while you’re trying to focus on your breath is a fail. Getting distracted is part of the whole deal. Noticing we’re distracted and returning home is like a bicep curl for our attention. Do it enough, and you begin to see you’re on a train of thought earlier. You start to hear the train whistle before you’re in the next town.
Noticing our breath unites our thoughts with this present moment. A thing that is harder to do than we might imagine and more challenging to practice. By the way, the term “practice” implies you’ll be skillful some days, and other days, you’ll realize why it’s called practice.
Practicing the miracle of enough
Every breath is a miracle, connecting us to our first moment of life and creation. Becoming aware of this present breath brings us home to what’s here. It’s an occasion of wonder. And it’s far more available than a perfect sunset, mood music, or a sound bowl. Breath is autonomic, necessary, portable, and non-denominational.
In this way, I hope breath is enough—just like you. Before all our doing, thinking, theorizing, theologizing, politicizing, regretting, planning, and wishing things were different or otherwise, there’s our accepted self receiving without judgment and some notice of what is present—what our first present was as created wholly loved beings.
You’re joining seven billion people and tens of billions of animals all trying to get somewhere but often unaware of the sufficient here they’re in.
*credit Dan Harris for this joke and observation