"Breath is the bridge from doing to being..." ~KC HICKS
Do you ever feel like an impostor in your own body? When you look in a mirror does the reflection staring back at you seem like a stranger?
We spend most of our lives being defined by others. As children we become masters at the fine art of "reading" our parents - we learn to act and react in a way that is pleasing to them. In our teen years we try to break free from the confines of our parent/child relationship only to fall into a cycle of acting and reacting to the ways that are acceptable to our peers. Somewhere in our mid twenties some of us begin to get a sense of who we really are and set out on a path of becoming - except that for most of us that path is about gaining recognition for our material accomplishments. There is nothing necessarily wrong with becoming who our parents want us to be, their expectations can be wonderful boundaries and guidelines. And it is not a necessarily a negative when we behave in a way that's acceptable to our peers, some of us may NEED this sense of direction! Material accomplishments can springboard us to places we might otherwise never go and that's not a bad thing. But for some - we wake up at mid life and realize that we've spent our whole lives being defined by others.
In meditation, breath is often used as a metaphor of a bridge. The breath bridges the span from the business in our heads to a calm well deep inside of our beings. With a regular meditative practice of stilling our hearts and minds we slowly come to know the most authentic part of ourselves. At first even this place may seem as if we are an impostor and it may feel as if we are a stranger in a foreign land. With time, patience, we come to know that this still place inside of us has been there all along - waiting for us to arrive, yearning and longing for integration. From this calm center - we begin to choose our actions and reactions. In this place we are being who we were meant to be...authentically integrated into a whole in body, mind and soul.
