Tuesday Tributes - The Pause Between

On this gray, dreary, misty, wintry morning, I sat on my mat at the end of yoga class and listened to my breath, especially to the pauses in-between.

I’m granted this opportunity every week I practice at my intimate neighborhood studio, Amsa - to surrender, become absorbed, immersed in my breath - but this morning I was especially able to savor the experience.

Throughout the day, I continued to reflect on this morning gift of gratefulness. I was struck by how little attention I afford to my breath - that automatic thing we all do in order to live. The constant current of our life force, that breath that breathes us into a continual state of being, holds such surprising gifts. 

The same lessons learned on the yoga mat are analogous to ones absorbed working at the studio table.  If we listen to the tide of our breath, to the rhythm of our inhales and exhales, we gradually begin to become more present, more attune with our essence, our essential selves.     These exquisite pauses hold vast potential where everything dissolves into nothing.  It is within this nothingness, this pause between, where we are bestowed glimpses of an intimate inner peace some refer to as brushes with the divine..

A larger force bestows these gifts of gratefulness, reflection, knowing, and wisdom, but we have to do our part by showing up. 

In this New Year, consider pausing from your life's routine to take advantage of Healing Icons creative offerings  and consider signing up for a week of artistic and cultural immersion in Italy this May – where we will have many opportunities to honor, reflect, create and awaken more fully into our lives.

"A lifetime is not what is between
the moments of birth and death.

A lifetime is one moment
Between my two little breaths.
The present, the here, the now,
That's all the life I get.
I live each moment in full,
In kindness, in peace, without regret."

Chade Meng, Taoist poet

Frankly, I wish he had said strive to live each moment...because I think it is impossible to live each and every moment as he describes ... but we are lucky if we get glimpses into this pause.

"Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
While the soul, after all, is only a window,
and the opening of the window no more difficult
than the wakening from a little sleep."

Mary Oliver

       from - Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches