Liberating the Breath

The oxygen in the air we breathe is the most important food we need to survive.  Even so, when lost in thought and identified as the speaker of those thoughts, you hardly breathe at all.  While the pattern of breath that sustains the consciousness of lost in thought is capable of keeping the body alive, it’s not nearly full or deep enough to kindle The Awakening.

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For the body truly to relax and awaken, breath must be allowed to make transmitted motions throughout the body’s entire length so that breath can be felt moving through the entire body not unlike how a wave moves through a body of water.  The Secret Door allows you to begin to relax and awaken the cellular shimmer from its slumber.  For relaxation to continue over time, you will want to learn how to keep breath moving and flowing freely through the entire body. 

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At the onset of inhalation you relax completely by surrendering your weight to the pull of gravity, and a much larger volume of air comes rushing in to your body.  In the manner of an amoeba the entire body expands on the inhalation, retracts on the exhalation.  

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In The Awakening there are two sources of spontaneous motion that you learn to surrender to.  The first is the dance of upright balancing that occurs when you explore the vertical axis.  The second is the breath itself.  

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Many spiritual traditions speak abstractly of liberation.  In The Awakening liberation is very concrete as you learn how to liberate the breath from its imprisonment in unnecessarily held, unmoving, and inert flesh.  Alter the breath, and you alter yourself.

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As you breathe in, breathe in through the whole body.

—The Buddha

bringing breath to life 

is the essence of every true path

of spiritual awakening

let every breath you take

cleanse the body and soul

of all its holding and pain

so you can continue

to glow brightly

—Rumi

Body is something wrapped around a breath.  Let the wraps flow freely like silk scarves.

—Ida Rolf