I’m Not Dead!

Forgive me bloggers for I have sinned. It’s been two weeks since my last posting.

Ugh. I feel really bad about it. But, I had a lot of assignments due all at once this past week (and an exam) and just had to keep plodding away at them until they were done. Now that most of them are finished, I feel like I can take a few minutes to focus here.

I’d like to just take a couple minutes to notice that I’m alive.

That’s something my yoga instructor said in class the other day. Just breathe and take a moment to notice you are alive. That maybe your back hurts or you have tension, but you are alive to feel it. Take a moment to feel the energy moving through you. Ground yourself to the Earth, feel connected to the energy from the Earth so you can draw strength from it.

So, I’d like to invite you to join me in noticing we’re alive.

Another thing we do in yoga is yogic breathing. First you just watch and notice your breath. Sometimes just paying attention to the breath can cause you to change your breathing, perhaps deepening it. Then after a few minutes you deepen the breath on purpose. You inhale, filling your belly, then chest, and then the area behind your heart.

Then pause.

Then exhale, releasing the belly, the chest and lastly the area behind the heart.

Then pause.

And feel the emptiness.

Then repeat.

We usually just do three rounds of yogic breath. You could take as much time as you want with that, though. I’ve been cautioned in other classes that I’ve taken that you might sometimes feel lightheaded from it when you first start out. I’ve also had other classes where the goal of the breathing (after you’ve done it for a while) was to do it in counts of four. Breathe in four, pause four, breathe out four, and pause four. But, those pauses can be rough. So, I think it’s nicer to just pause a moment to notice the emptiness or fullness as we do in this class.

So, this is my invitation to you this day, this week, this year….

Take a moment to notice you are alive.

and don’t forget to breathe!