It helps me to run up the mesa twelve hundred feet in altitude past the sage brush on the dirt road toward the plateau. It helps me to hike with the 45 pound pack and saw across my shoulder up the ridge line, when my boots are sliding backward every other step on the dry gravel with the weight. It helps me hear and receive feedback, and choose my response working on a new crew with new leadership. It helps me sleep in the back of a truck in a parking lot in a quiet town in eastern Washington where nights are only cooled by the battery-powered fan my mom sent like an angel from heaven that I velcro to my canopy ceiling, to circulate fresh air around. It helps me navigate a moment for its entirety, from inception to closure. I am talking about breath.
My breath is my anchor. My anchor is my breath.
These words were taught to me by a mentor in fire and mindfulness. The concept existed somewhere in my subconscious before that, fleetingly experienced through deep yoga practices or the act of smoking. Taking it in and releasing. Opening and closing. They are inseparable, because it is all energy. Rumi writes about this in his poem, “Birdwings”. If your hand were always a fist or always stretched open you would be paralyzed. Your greatest presence is in every small contracting and expanding.
This seems especially fitting in fire, where we must be able to adapt constantly, as I discussed in an earlier article, Dynamic Creatures (check out my archives). There must be a closing of some sort to recognize where you are — a closure of the past, and of the future. There must be an opening to realize the next possibility. And it keeps cycling. Opening and closing. One cannot be rigid in mind and body and expect to perform well. I anchor with breath, which in turn ignites my core and brings my entire being into the moment. When this happens I feel strong. I feel free in the wild knowledge that I am unlimited by my mind. I am still at a stage where this is fleeting, but I am working on reeling it in. And letting it go again.
The ultra runner Courtney Dewaulter said in an interview that she deals with the challenge of mental endurance by picturing herself “chipping away at the pain cave, making it bigger”. I tried that on at work today while hiking, and the result was a true smile when I realized I was indeed expanding upon my known capabilities by thinking I was capable of more than I was doing (first I had to acknowledge that I was doing this steep ridge hike at a good clip with a bunch of weight at all!). It seemed like this was a hint as to how I could navigate the hard road of leaving behind the idea that I have a fixed potential to fill and instead can be and do anything I set my mind to. Sounds corny but damn is it refreshing.
There is a space between breaths that I want to acknowledge, too. A tiny one, maybe, but the real thread that binds us to this world. There is a slowness, a deliberate way to breathing that doesn’t get talked about much. We are told, Breathe! usually at the worst possible moment when we are struggling to breathe at all. While the intention might be good, I know a lot of us get stuck on how to stir together the ingredients of breathing and moving to create a lightness of form and grace in our actions, and end up with a rigid, overtaxed structure that crumbles to the touch. I find this challenge to be a fun one. How could we lace our movement with breath to create a more light and fluid experience? There is a lot of invisible strength involved. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t trying to dance my way through this life. It would be too dull and painful not to.
Dude though, its a freakin workout.
Learning any dance feels clunky at first. We all get muddled over what the order of the steps is. We get caught up in different advice from different humans on how to do it just right. Landing a partner is extremely difficult if we don’t know how to communicate. My advice is to free-style it on your own til you know your own feet. Find your own rhythm, and then tie in to a greater collective beat with that. Keep free-styling it. Nobody can tell you how to breathe, or move, or be fully present. That, my friend, is only your mission. And we will all benefit from you dancing.
Howard Thurman said, Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. Well, breathing well makes me feel very alive. I am still figuring out how to do it fluidly no matter what I’m endeavoring to do. It is a constant goal. And an interesting one, because if you overthink it, its easy to falter. Trying not to try — the title of one of my favorite books, comes to mind. How to do this all, effortlessly?
I wonder about the ceilings we give ourselves. Maybe they are glass, and can shatter completely when we finally recognize the invisible wall limiting us from the sky beyond. Maybe they are stone, and the process is long and slow by hammer and chisel, and light peeks through on occasion while you try not to get dirt in your eye with all the sweat involved. Maybe the ceilings are made of words — words that someone told you once, that trapped you into thinking a certain way or believing something about yourself that maybe is only actually true if you believe it to be — psych! Maybe the ceilings are made of unmet expectations, and you need to be easier on yourself. Whatever the ceiling, I like to picture the jam session outside of this sounding barrier we give ourselves. Maybe then we’d take a risk and try to let down the walls and truly sing — with all the breath we can muster. Here’s a revisit to that old comic strip of Calvin and Hobbes looking up at the stars before I say goodnight.