Where is the Breath?

It is the hot sunny day after a wet day. I have had a good morning in the land with a rotating handful of stewards and animals.

Kayla, a good friend who moved to the neighborhood after joining a Hamakua journey, Nina, who is currently on her own journey with us, and I are sitting beneath the peach tree with Snoopy, Aries, and Meowi.

My eyes are closed, I am listening to the sound of the birds as I meditate. They are always calling back to one another. "Would you like to do a shared breathwork practice with me," I call out. Nina and Kayla tune in and both agree.

Hold one of your nostrils closed.

Breath in through the other,

Switch to holding the other nostril closed

Exhale out the opposite.

Breathe slow and long that you cannot feel the breath flowing.

Keep alternating...

The birds call back and forth overhead.

Somewhere in the stillness it feels as though we were doing the same thing.

Not with words.

But with breath.

---

Clouds form and shift in the sky. As Kayla opens her eyes she says,

“We are always breathing,

and breath is the only automatic body function we can directly control.”

---

A few more breaths.

Kayla and I are in the lanai, deepening our intention with breath. Breath is not in the mind, it is in the body. Where is the breath?

This has become our mantra. Where is the breath.

---

As we breathe, I look out at a plant through the screen of the lanai.

Where is the breath?

A moment of clarity arrives with the plant:

Whenever I notice another living being I take one breath with them.

A small practice.

Almost nothing.

And yet it feels capable of changing the way a person moves through the world.

What better world can we discover together through our shared breath?

---

As Kayla is getting in her classic forest green jeep with stickers on the rear window, she says, "You know something we have always done when we hug?"

I am glancing back as we both take an inhale together. And with a smile, Kayla says,

"Breathe together."