I don’t know about you but I have sometimes lost my equilibrium as I stressed over issues I cannot control in my life, or imagined negative future events. On those days I need conscious connected breathwork more than ever. It’s also on those days that I resist this work more than ever.

Before discovering breathwork, I would sit in my familiar discomfort and gradually lose more and more stability. The consequences of not dealing with my emotions would make me edgy and unsatisfied with life, and then I would wonder ‘how did I get here’?

Now I know better. I find a comfortable place to sit or lie down and I start breathing. No pauses at the top, no pauses at the bottom. The first few minutes are really uncomfortable. As I move through the layers of my mental defenses, I feel as if I am ripping through myself. My mind does not want to give up control and I want to quit. I want my familiar dark. But I push and I embrace the uncertainty of letting go of my mind. It feels risky, but I am brave. Eventually, I surrender to my body and there is no more fragmentation. I become an ocean of waves rising and collapsing into myself.

My mind and body are one, sweet consciousness experiencing itself. What the breath brings I never know until it happens. Sometimes I desire a release but it doesn’t come. Sometimes I set an intention to bring clarity or resolution to a problem, but the breath delivers clarity on something else, unrelated to what I was fussing about. When I finish, the session I am strangely whole and relieved even though my wish for a specific outcome didn’t come to be. The darkness has dissolved. The confusion is gone.

I have come to understand that sometimes in order to resolve one thing, you first have to grasp another truth, which in turn resolves the one you were concerned with. Truth unveils in layers and in a kind of order sometimes. It’s not linear and it’s not black or white. I have learned to let go of outcomes and just focus and trust the breath to illuminate what needs to be revealed. The breath knows better. There is safety in this trust.

The breath is the light, not just on your truth, but on truth itself.

Jasmina

To find out more about Jasmina take a look at her profile in Practitioners Corner