Breathing into the Heart

I absolutely love fall in Colorado. Coming from Finland, I am used to a cooler temperature and the summers in this desert climate can feel brutal on me. Whenever the temperature drops, I feel myself coming alive again. I have been waiting for this ever since my daughter and I came back from Finland in July.

Coming back from our yearly trip to Finland was different this year. After rushing home to attend my grandmother’s funeral, I came back to move out of the house we have lived in for 5 years, and to start filling paperwork for a divorce.

Needless to say, it has been a very emotional and intense 6 months.

Oftentimes when people talk about healing, it is a glorified concept and perceived almost as a blissful experience. Something one does at retreats where you have excess time, and a laser focus inward. This does not apply to most of us.

Most of us live too busy lives to go on retreats for weeks or even months. Most of us are caught somewhere in between routines of the family responsibilities and work. The “must do,s”. Most of us come back to work on Monday, not even being able to answer the question of what we did last weekend, because we are too busy doing, doing, doing. Not having time to stop and reflect.

When did we change our narrative from human “beings” to human “doings”?

This particular Monday morning, I find myself crying. I am feeling fatigued, with a quite physical heaviness placed in my chest.

As I drink my morning coffee, I wonder “when is the last time I meditated? Or how long ago did I do breathwork on myself?’. When life gets too busy, it seems like the very things that recharge us, are the very things that we seemingly don’t make time for. Quite ironic how the human mind works.

Somehow things aligned in the stars so that I don’t have work this Monday, and from my 20 years of experience with vipassana meditation and soul searching through BASE jumping and other unconventional ways, I know that healing takes immense work and frankly, its messy as fuck.

Therefor, I lay down on the floor and I start breathing.

The breath is the medicine.

I should reframe that, the AWARE breath is the medicine.

At Vipassana retreats, we observe the breath and nothing but the breath for 3 entire days before getting into Vipassana. This technique is called Anapana.

What I am doing right now is very different. This type of breathing is very much manipulated, and it’s called “Conscious connected breathing”. It is a type of breathing that is stimulating the sympathetic nervous system and can be a very somatic trauma releasing practice.

As a breathwork facilitator, I hold space for other people, assist them through a 40–60-minute session of breathing. And the emotions that rise out of that.

Today, I am breathing into the heaviness in my heart.

60 minutes later, I sit up on my meditation cushion. With tears streaming down my face.

Tears for my grandmother, whom I miss dearly. There are tears because of life changes that I wish didn’t have to happen, but undoubtedly needed to. However, more tears of relief because of finally connecting with myself. The woman within that is strong, brave, wise, kind, patient, and knows her worth.

She is not lost; she knows her path.

 Sometimes that is all we need to do, changing the narrative from human ‘doing” to human “being” in order to shed some layers. It doesn’t require us to go away to a retreat for weeks or months. It is making time for us to go inward for 30, 40, 60 minutes. The hardest thing to do is to commit to sitting down on the meditation pillow, or in my case, laying down on the floor. Once you are there, just be.

 I close my session, giving gratitude to the guidance I received, and I get up and walk outside. Into the coolness of this beautiful and colorful fall afternoon in Colorado.