The Tools We Carry

Over the fall, I have taken on a traveling adventure across the great United States. To see places I have not been, to meet people I do not know, and to stretch my comfort level in ways I have not done. My car is loaded with more supplies than most families of four would require and yet I have one tool that I did not have to think about packing, but occasionally have to remember that I have it with me. Whether we are off to cross the country or off to the local grocery, we all have a tool that is necessary to carry along. That tool is our breath.

Yes, I know…we all have it with us all the time, otherwise we’d not be traveling at all. That said, how often do we forget that our breath is with us and able to do more than bring oxygen into our lungs and release toxins out? I forgot the other night as I heard the Prairie Dogs yelping close to my tent out in the Badlands of South Dakota. I forgot it again as I was cut off in a busy traffic area in a big city. I forgot it when I was lost on the side roads of Indiana. But something triggered a reminder. That something was the realization that I had packed along a great and vital tool.

At the beginning of each yoga class, I ask students to draw their awareness to their breath. Some may say awareness is becoming an overused term, but the practice cannot be overused. Whatever it is that we are doing, we have the capacity to slow and respond with our breath. When we do this, magic happens. The person who cut us off no longer has the upper hand, because we have our calming breath at hand. The night sounds that alarm us, relinquish their power when the breath soothes us to hear our own breathing. The anxiety of being lost lessens when we focus on the place inside that holds familiarity—our breath.

Yoga has given me great gifts, but the greatest is truly the most simple. Mindful breathing is backed up by plenty of research but it is most sincerely backed up by how we can change our disposition, change our approaches, and change into calmness.

Life will go on as long as we breathe. Life will go on better as long as we are aware that we carry along our most vital tool.