Tag Archives: breath

TEA MEDITATION

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Funny how much more time I have when I’m up before 6 in the morning. I’m still on that stretch of disturbed sleeping. The good thing is I was able to drop right off. There’s no point wrestling in the dark when I wake and can’t get back to sleep. So what even if it is just barely 5? Out of bed I tumbled after a bit of tossing and turning. By the time I got all the business of going to potty, washing my face, brushing my teeth and hair, it was almost 5:30. I listened for the clicking of Sheba’s nails as she follows me. Surprisingly, none was heard.

Ah, well! The fur baby was still sleeping, having been up at 3 am to do her business. Apparently I was still dead to the world at the time.  I was a little miffed at her not getting up with me as usual. I set about to make my morning cuppa. It was nice to have to have some quiet and peace. No dog under foot whining for her breakfast. I was moved and soothed by the soft almost morning light. I did my qi gong movements waiting for the kettle to boil. After, I sat with cuppa in meditation, guided by my breath, watching my thoughts like clouds floating across my universe. It was so refreshing. My mind became a clean slate.

Then it was almost 7. I was happy that I had this time to myself before dawn. The noise and busyness of the past few days dissipated. I feel rested, relaxed and almost normal again. I shall hold the feelings of the moment in my mind to come back to again and again in times of stress. Beautiful Sunday.

ORDERLY ORDER

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Order is in the order for me today.  I rise, stretch and do my 18 heavenly qigong moves to the sunrise.  It is so fresh and still in the early morning.  I have to thank Sheba for rousing me out of bed.  She is quite insistent.  Get up!  Feed me!

And so I did.  And so starts another day.  I breathed and moved in the light of the rising sun.  I felt my breath slowing down, saw the robin on the fence and heard the stillness of the universe.  My breath deepened and my heart stopped its fluttering, my eyelids dropped.

All is copacetic.  I am relaxed and in the flow.  I feel the order within me.  I am not behind.  I have time…to put one foot in front of the other, to do one thing at a time, to walk and not run.  I have time to breathe, to stay here now, at this time, to be with me.

I am taking miniscule steps towards order, finding places for things, finding pleasure in the doing, finding kindness for myself.  And I am grateful.

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ON A WHIM AND A DARE

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I dare you to.  How often have you been dared?

I came upon  a website called 30days30dares.com the other day.  I thought I would like to do a dare a day, but maybe not for 30 days.  The dare issued out by Fakeku Fatumise appealed to me.  He dared me to breathe into my bigness and bring it out into the world.

Well, I am Chinese, the first born and a born again Catholic.  That should say something to you.  I am forever immersed in guilt and duty, and of course, perfection.  Even though I try my best not to fall into their clutches, down I would fall again and again.  I have  no bigness and my heart feels small and tight.  And my mind chatters ceaselessly into my ear – about how lacking I am, how small I am.

And so I sit and close my eyes.  I relax my shoulders. I take a deep breath in and breathe slowly out through this small opening in my chest.  I feel the opening widening, my chest expanding.  I’m rising out and above myself.  I see myself as this small human being who never thought of herself as being an individual with her own breath.  How could that be, a person with no breath of her own?

Well, she never lived for herself.  She was unconscious.  She was bound by duty and guilt.  Long ago in one conscious moment, she was aware that she would rather be unhappy herself than make another so.  But somehow we have this innate sense of survival and she could not quite forfeit that right.  It was a good thing, she was told by an expert.  Since then, she’s daring to breathe, but sometimes she forgets and falls down, down, down the winding staircase of life.

But I can pick myself up, dust myself off.  I try not to beat myself up too much.  I try not to obsess too much.  I breathe.  My heart is getting bigger and I see it is towards myself that I am being small.  I am unkind and ungenerous towards the one that really matters to me.  Without a me, I cannot do for others.

I DARE me to breathe into my bigness and treat myself with loving kindness.  The rest will follow.