To everything there is a season… I reflected on this as we passed the equinox in late March (I live in the Southern Hemisphere). This moment is perfectly poised between the utter out-breath of high summer and the deeply indrawn breath of midwinter — so delicately poised, yet the intentional motion is inward. For some of us, crossing this threshold into inwardness is an unsettling time, while for others it is a great relief after summer. We learn something about ourselves in observing this — it has to do with rhythm, and the way we ‘breathe’.
What is breathing? We can extend its physiological reality to all aspects of the way we live (this is true of each life process). In everything living we can identify a breathing process: a breathing in, and a breathing out. It is in the seasons of the year and the seasons of life; in the seasons of each day and of consciousness; in our sleeping and waking; in sensing and reflecting; in laughing and weeping; in sympathy and antipathy; in social interaction and in solitude. All these polarities, and the midpoints between…
We take a deep breath before confronting an ordeal, for both physiological and psychological reasons, and this is a kind of ‘yes-saying’ to whatever may come. On the other hand, there is panic. This word ‘panic’ derives from Greek times, when a simple goatherd-boy, for instance, out on the mountain with his flock, would suddenly feel the approach of the god Pan; fearful of being possessed — of being ‘inspired’ by the god, of actually breathing him in — he would succumb to wild panic.
There is hyperventilation, and there is also the momentarily-arrested breath in gasping with surprise. Then, in the anguish of loneliness, my breathing may become particularly shallow. While in doubt — especially self-doubt — breathing seems to be suspended. This inability to breathe deeply is a form of denial, an inability to say 'yes' to both self and world.
Through becoming conscious within the expansion and contraction of the breath, I find poise — presence, breathing in the light. Just think for a moment of its inverse — panic, hyperventilation, the incapacity of anxiety — and recognise the counter-force of presence. To be present means ‘to be before’ — if I am present, it is always in relationship to some other.
So in autumn, I am taking, so to speak, a ‘last’ deep breath of the world — deeply aware of its loveliness in the autumnal sunlight — before turning inward towards dreams and contemplation. Something is calling to me — it is my self. I want to be more attentive to my inner life, and as I do so, I feel more whole, and healed.
And when I reflect on the tasks of parenting, considering the life process of breathing, I recall sitting by the bed of a sleeping child before dawn, after a time of illness, sensing in her deep steady breathing the healing power of rhythm. A wonderful sense of peacefulness pervades the room. There are these moments when a child’s breathing seems like this, just between sleeping and waking, when a uniquely human yet spiritual presence taps upon a membrane of silence…
