Life Is Breath

Category: Personal Development for Adults

Consider the most fundamental human needs. Let us begin. Tell me, what is most essential for life?

Let us start at the very beginning. When you first saw the light of day after leaving your mother’s womb, what did you do? You cried, most likely. Yet to cry, you first had to draw a breath.

With that first inhale, your life in this body on planet Earth began. From that moment, you have been breathing and living. At times you breathe quickly and shallowly, usually when you feel tense, under stress, or seized by fear. At other times you breathe deeply, gently, and with ease, and life seems to flow smoothly while you feel at peace. Through the breath you can learn a great deal and transform your inner state.

Why have yogis, for thousands of years, emphasized the importance of breathing? Because the breath connects us with life and sustains it. Breath and spirit form the foundation of the body’s vitality. Consider this: does a lifeless body breathe? The body remains, yet breath and spirit are no longer present. We say the person has passed away.

Consider the most fundamental human needs. Let us begin. Tell me, what is most essential for life?

Television, a car, a job, and what else?

First and foremost, breath. Without it, life in this body lasts only a few minutes, for world record holders roughly seventeen minutes. After breath come water, food, sleep, and movement. Only then may we list anything more.

So, the breath. It is remarkable that breathing proceeds entirely on its own, without any conscious effort from the one who breathes. We breathe while scarcely noticing it, all while attending to a hundred other tasks. Yet breathing is also a function we can guide with full awareness. We can slow it down, speed it up, and deepen it, thereby shifting the state of the entire psychosomatic system. Consider whether you can consciously regulate your heart, your liver, or your pancreas. Most likely you cannot, unless you have trained diligently in body awareness and, like certain ancient and contemporary yogis, cultivated such clarity that you can influence even those functions.

All of us can influence the breath, yet too few people use this power. In yoga, breathing practices hold a place of great importance because they truly embody our connection to life. Did you know that you can change your stress level by changing how you breathe? Did you know that breathing can soften, and even completely transform, negative emotions? Did you know that each breath delivers oxygen, which enables the exchange of nutrients and waste products throughout the body? Did you know that this is how the body clears toxins and prevents many illnesses and adverse conditions?

Recall what happens when fear makes you freeze during a stressful moment. Along with quick and shallow breathing, you often hold your breath. You halt the flow of oxygen and life itself, which every organ, every system, and every cell requires in order to live and to perform its purpose.

With shallow breathing we distance ourselves from life and hasten the process of dying. Bit by bit, parts of our organism fade, and aging speeds up. Why are people who exercise more vibrant? Because they activate the entire psychosomatic system. Greater exertion calls for more oxygen, which leads to deeper and more efficient breathing and supplies the body with the very fuel of life, namely oxygen and nourishment, that is, vital energy.

Understand, then, that you have the power to change yourself even through the breath, that seemingly simple function available to us all. When cramp, stress, tension, or fear grips you, settle into the present moment and breathe deeply. Breathe comfortably and gently, filling your lungs, and observe how you feel.

Remember that what separates your life from death is breath, the very spirit. Breathe deeply and be alive.