This One Breath
I was feeling a lot of grief tonight as I started my yoga practice. For the purposes of this writing, the reasons for that grief don’t matter. All that matters is that the grief was with me, and I was looking to my yoga practice and breathing meditation as a way of nurturing myself, and perhaps easing some of that grief.
Troubled waters are a strange thing. They aren’t very pleasant to be in, but a lot of the most rewarding learning experiences can only be found on that rock that’s stuck out in the middle of that turbulent river. It would be nice if we could just fly out to the rock like my namesake, the seaeagle, but we humans are destined to get ourselves wet struggling through through the rapids to make it to that rock in the middle.
So it was with my practice tonight. I found myself in the middle of that river earlier today, vaguely aware of only some of the things that had led to the capsizing of my raft. I turned to my yoga practice as I have done in the past, hoping it would help me find a rock that I wasn’t even sure was there, but at the same time not really believing that I’d find a rock. (One of these days I’m sure I’ll develop some faith!) As it turns out, my practice did lead me to a rock. At the moment, it’s covered with moss, and it’s a slippery little sucker to try to hang onto, but at least I now know it’s there.
The rock in question is the present. Just like last night’s discovery, this came about through the breath. I was paying a lot of attention to my breath, because of what I’d discovered last night, and as I quietly felt and listened to my breath, I noticed the grief ebbing and flowing like waves on the beach. (I seem to have a water thing going tonight!) It didn’t take me long to notice a pattern to the ebb and flow. The grief ebbed when there was only this one breath, the present breath, and it flowed when I became distracted from the present breath, either by stray thoughts, or by reflections of how the previous breath had lived it’s life, or by expectations of how the next breath will live it’s life.
I spent a little while thinking about that with the back of my mind, while the front or my mind continued to be present with my breath, and I caught a glimpse of understanding about how in this present moment, only this present moment matters. Moments from the past mattered when they were present, and moments from the future will matter when it’s their turn to be present, but for right now, only this moment matters.
If you are thinking I mean it’s ok to go do whatever you want in this moment because it won’t matter in 5 seconds, you’d be wrong. All the moments are interconnected, and what you choose to do in this moment is the culmination of all past moments, and will influence all your future moments. But for right now the moments themselves don’t matter. All that matters is this moment. You can’t change the past moments. Likewise none of us has enough power or knowledge to completely define what our future moments will be before they arrive. And even if we could completely define the path we take to get to our future moments, we still cannot live that moment until it gets here. We must live that moment as it arrives, and it is only as it is lived that the moment becomes completely defined.
I discovered during my practice tonight that the pains of the past and the fears of the future don’t hurt me if I am completely present in this moment, this here, this now. It’s a slippery rock to hold. It’s extremely difficult for me not to spread myself heavily into the past and the future, leaving precious few feathers to keep a SeaEagle’s present warm, but at least I’ve figured out that it can be done. And who knows, perhaps as I survive more troubled waters, I’ll wear some of the moss off that rock, and make it easier to hang on to.