Breathing .. is our most intimate and immediate link with the world and it mostly goes unnoticed. People talk of the sky above forgetting that the sky goes right to the ground. We don’t see the air we breathe and fool ourselves into thinking it’s just empty space.

It’s solid enough to support an 80,000 kg aeroplane and without it we cannot exist ..

Many people have a conviction that they don’t breathe well. They have a number of ‘shoulds’ in mind. They should breath more deeply, or more freely but perhaps they’re looking at it from the wrong perspective?

‘Breath’ is defined as the air we take into and then exhale from our bodies. We have a tendency to think of ourselves (surprise! surprise!) and not see what is around us. We think of the way we move air in and out rather than think of the air moving us.

We are, amongst many things, a product of the air. Land based life couldn’t happen until air reached it’s current level of oxygenation about 500 million years ago. Our atmosphere is amazing.

Consider this .. a half litre breath of air has a mass of roughly half a gram. It contains 10²² molecules. How do you imagine a number that big?

Well, if earth is around 4.5 billion years old and there are 32 million seconds in a year. The total number of seconds in earths existence would only be 10¹⁷ seconds.

Sam Kean, in his book ‘Ceasar’s last breath - Decoding the secrets of the air around us’ suggests that in every breath we take it is possible that there is a molecule from every previously inhaled breath that every human being who has ever lived has breathed.

I’ll give you a moment to consider that ..

If that is so, we are interconnected with each other through every breath we take, across time and space.

It’s interesting that we assume that we are substantial but the air is not when in fact a nitrogen molecule (80% of each breath) can exist for 10,000,000 years!

It is we who are so fleeting .. We’re just a crazy, mixed up mash-up of molecules

So this week we’ll consider the air in which we move as a vital presence. We’ll use the rhythm of our interaction to consider the sense of life and the co-ordinating role of our eyes.

Co-ordinating two eyes with the natural movement of our breath is an interesting experience. It’s amazing how scattered, disorganised eye movement is related to a scattered body image.

We’ll sense the volume of our eyes and the volume of the respiratory space and see if we move our eyes more smoothly. As before, we’ll stay with the way we breathe now rather than trying to change it or ‘do’ it well and as with last week, you’ll notice a big difference.

Comparing how you breathe at the end of the class to the way you find yourself breathing during the week may inspire you to find that state of calm more often.

Is it possible to breathe slowly and easily in the midst of a busy life?

Each week we’ll go a step closer but you’ll have to try it to see.

This blog post relates to the third lesson in the breathing series. You can find that lesson by clicking here

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Breathing 3 - The eyes inside your body