Work can be fast and relentless: pressing deadlines, looming goals, endless meetings; email, phone calls, “to do” lists. At times we can feel out of control, as if driving a car with no breaks, rushing through our jobs holding onto difficult turns, cutting corners, racing through an occasional red light. We might even say to ourselves at the end of the day: “Hey, what just happened – I just spent my whole day at a job without noticing any of it!”….When we are mindful of our job’s speed and hecticness, we take a subtle step: we actually slow down in order to notice how fast we are going. By simply observing the speed mindfully, we have tapped the breaks, so to speak, and slowed down just a bit.
Michael Carroll, Awake at Work
I have heard it said that 90 percent of getting along well in life is in showing up for it. I’d add to that thought – showing up fully in each moment. Being present is not just present in body alone but in body and clear mind…We may acknowledge at some level that all the moments in our lives are teachers, but we don’t always want to meet the teacher., so we seek sometimes to control or regulate our experience in a variety of ways. If we have any hope of being free from the habitual swings of our reactions, if we have any wish to live more openly and freely, if we see to, as writer Barbara Kingsolver says “look life in the eye and love it back” then we need to take a look at what is clouding our view.
Breathing is a means of awakening and maintaining full attention in order to look carefully and deeply to see the nature of things. But sometimes we try very hard to practice to remember to breathe. “Breathe, my dear” is like a gentle voice …reminding us to come back to ourselves with awareness of our breathing. It can give us comfort to practice to take it easy, gently, slowly.
The principle of breathing dictates that we are to be aware of every step of our breathing. Simply: be mindful and understand happiness. A person is able to sense more than one perception at the same time. Hence, being aware of our breathing – the rhythm of inhaling and exhaling – should be incorporated with our daily routines – sweeping, cleaning, walking. The person will then enjoy better health and a brighter soul – that is true happiness. Guided by this perception, the mind will simultaneously move in harmony with the actions.
At a gathering in San Francisco, I met Marco, a careful and patient photographer from Santa Clara. When asked what surprised him during the last year, his voice began to quiver. He’d witnessed two breaths that had changed his life. His daughter’s first breath. Then his mother’s last breath. As his daughter inhaled the world, it seemed to awaken her soul on Earth. As his mother exhaled her years, it seemed to free her soul of the world. These two breaths jarred Marco to live more openly and honestly. He took these two breaths into his own daily breathing and quickly saw their common presence in everyone’s breathing. Is it possible that with each inhalation, we take in the world and awaken our soul? And with each exhalation, do we free ourselves of the world, which inevitably entangles us? Is this how we fill up and empty a hundred times a day, always seeking the gift of the two breaths? Perhaps this is the work of being.
Mindfulbalance 