We rarely think much about it – letting our lungs just do their thing; but philosophers down the ages and more recently holistic health-practitioners have more and more taught how to concentrate on one’s breathing as a way to settle one’s mind. How many of us I wonder sit at the computer and breath in through our noses and out through our mouths?
There are many things we do which we do almost without thinking, or allow emotions to drive us without any brakes, which might produce finer results if we did think about them first. From thinking we are in love to getting angry we tend to assume more than we know and a good deal of hurt flows into our lives. It is as if we each have to learn everything for ourselves before we believe it, or worse assume what we have been taught is the perfect truth.
Next time you breath in you should know you are breathing in air that the whole world has breathed out from human to animal to plant. An admixture of millions of varied lives that keeps us alive. We are even possibly breathing in molecules breathed out by those who are now dead.
The mind also needs to breath; to be filled with ideas and the sense of life others have and if it worries you to hold two contrasting ideas in your head to which there is no resolution breath deeply. To live without certainty is to be wise.
Beautifully put as ever, Daniel – and I immediately adjusted my breathing!
So was I:)