I'm blissed. This sounds very California, but it is a feeling I experienced this morning, between wake and sleep. It was a deep, calm, warm, energy I felt at my body's center and I was weightless and bodiless. My breath was even and I was emotionless.
The book The Tao of Breathing by Dennis Lewis, is the assigned reading in the breathing awareness sessions I am taking with Gay White's as part of the Yoga Advanced Studies Program. Gay has us focusing on our natural breath and Lewis talks about the diaphragm being an emotional area of our body as we breath in and out. Now I understand the description.
Gay asked us to identify cues during the day that would be points when we pay attention to twelve breaths. It may seem easy to observe twelve ins-and-outs of your breath, but it is nearly impossible to not change your breath while you are observing. Yesterday I determined that every time my mind wandered to a painful subject, groping in my mind for affirmation of insecurities, I would practice the twelve breaths, not judging. If distracted from this practice, I would begin again. There were dozens of times during the day that I followed my cue.
Over the past few months I have been exploring the opportunity to pull energy from within myself, something that Extroverts derive externally. Now, this morning while I lay in bed, that practice filled me with calmness. I was passively observing my breath and letting it flow deep and radiate easily through my body. The feeling was absolutely like floating or flying as I was effortlessly and weightlessly just "being". Perhaps this is the path to my Year of Balance.
