I had a shocking realization in yoga the other morning. I had a new teacher so I listened to her closely, unaccustomed to her teaching style and directions. At the end, pulsing with heat and dripping with sweat, I reveled in the feeling of lying still and breathing. The instructor began the cool down as usual asking everyone to bring their attention to their breath. She said, "Notice how your inhale shows our innate desire to rise towards the heavens and how our exhale shows our innate desire to feel the groundedness of the earth."
Incredible. My breath is ambivalent. The very thing I must do every day, all day. That I do without thinking except on rare occasions. You could say the very basis of who I am, me in my most simplistic (or perhaps most complex) form. My breath pulls me forward and draws me back every minute of my life. This is at first upsetting and distressing. I am confused. Should I go forward or stay back? Do I want to fly or rest? And what should I DO? "And the two have become one," I hear in my thoughts. Flight and rest go together. One is only a half and will always be lacking if it's not followed by the other. God is a season-maker. He turns the seasons in our very breath. The brave inhale before we jump, the pause our lungs and belly have reached their fullest, the great release of a long exhale. This is God turning our seasons all the time. Never leaving us where we were. My breath tells me ambivalence is unavoidable. It is woven into my very breath. This is such a relief. I don't have to be one or the other, I don't have to feel only one. God has made me to feel, to want, to be both. I want to stay and I want to go, so I run to the One who marries the two in my breath as my pencil moves along this page (or my cursor across this screen).
