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Moving Meditation (On Breath)
"Breath Connects Us All"
- Professor Trance
 To breathe is to live! The quality of our lives is synchronous with the quality of our breath. To improve the quality of our lives, we must learn to breathe more fully and deeply. People in our culture often have shallow, held back and irregular breathing patterns. As fear and uncertainty increase in our society and the world, it is as if the collective breath is “on-hold.” When we hold our breath, it is difficult to feel grounded, and we become light headed, panicky and confused in our direction and focus. One of the main benefits of dancing is relearning how to breathe. As we move and breathe, we begin to break up old repetitive patterns of motion held in our bodies, which correspond to habitual patterns in our lives. That is one of the reasons many people experience powerful emotional releases when they dance; the body lets go of feelings, experiences and traumas trapped in cellular memory. This simple process purifies the consciousness of self-limiting thoughts, beliefs and behaviors.
"Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts."
- Thich Nhat Hanh
In Latin the word "Spiritus" means breath. When we learn to take full breaths again we are literally tapping into the spirit that moves through all things. All religious and spiritual paths have a component of prayer or meditation that focuses on the breath and the taking in and releasing of air. So you could say that breath is our direct connection to God or Spirit! Our "Sunday Sweat Your Prayers" are silent moving meditations of heart opening music meant to in-spire you and give you direct access to the Spirit within. Our 5Rhythms classes are designed to learn, among other things, the different breathing patterns associated with the 5 rhythms and to unite the body, breath and consciousness. This practice is at its most fundamental level a practice of breathing. I invite you to take some time each day this week, in a place of stillness, to spend a few minutes just focusing on the movement of your breath down and into the "moving center" which is about two inches below the navel. Pay attention to the four components of breath – breathing in, feeling the stop at the top of the breath and breathing out and again feeling the stop at the bottom of the breath. You will be rewarded with reduced stress, claming of the mind, clarity of insight and revitalization of creativity by just spending a few minutes a day of focused breathing.
"The healing power of Christ, the miraculous power of Moses, the charm of
Krishna,
and the inspiration of the Buddha - all these were attained by breath."
- Sufi Master Hazrat Inayat Khan
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