breathing life
It happens to me frequently, both with the people I work with in consultations, and in more personal situations, that the idea of the need to breathe arises in conversation. "I need to breathe", "this situation is suffocating", "it's like I'm short of breath", "I could use some oxygen", "I need to take a breather"... these are things that people sometimes say when we are immersed in a complicated, demanding, difficult situation, etc.
Breathing is one of the elements that is usually first affected by our physical and/or emotional states. It often happens that, without realizing it in a scary situation, we have shortness of breath, or that feeling stress, anxiety or fear makes it difficult to breathe calmly and deeply.
I like to realize that breathing is both an instinctive process of our body and also, if we want, a determined and conscious behavior. It is something that we never stop doing from the moment we are born, except perhaps for a few moments. It is part of the “engine of life”. And at the same time, we can stop doing it, we can decide to change its rhythm, its latency, its depth, as people who sing or play wind instruments, for example, know very well.
Today I would like to invite you to take a few moments… and breathe. Breathe together, together, even. At this very moment when you read this text, (if life allows it), I am also breathing. Breathing in, breathing out. Taking and releasing air.
Although it may be a no-brainer, I want to focus on the fact that there are two parts to breathing. Inhale. Exhale. Two movements that need each other. Inhale. Exhale. And sometimes, by breathing, we mean just the first. It often happens that if someone tells us to "breathe", we take a breath. And taking a breath, something so simple and everyday, is loaded with meaning. Exhaling is too.
Inhaling is receiving. It allows us to be in contact with the world. It is taking in the air that surrounds us and envelops us. It implies letting us help, accepting what comes from outside and can nourish us and do us good. It means welcoming, and at the same time, in the movement of aspiring, it implies the effort that I have to make to actively take what is good that surrounds me and that I attract to me. In a way, it means two things: assuming that there is something I need, and taking it.
Exhaling is letting go. It allows us to be in contact with the world. It's giving back to the environment something I needed, took and no longer nourishes me. It implies letting go, accepting that something has stopped being healthy for me, that something can stop being enough, it can be empty. It means emptying my lungs, and at the same time, in the movement of letting go, it implies the effort I make to actively remove what I no longer want inside, what I push away. Again, in a way it means two things: assuming that there is something that I no longer need, and letting go.