Breath as Orbit

from Getty Images

“multiple orbits in one body. what a complicated wreck.”

me. yesterday morning.

“we can listen to the balance.”

kasha ho. last night.

So I changed my mind. The sexiest thing about the sun is that she rotates at different speeds within herself, faster at her equatorial regions than anywhere else. exploding at different densities closer to the core and out like the kundalini teaching bellydancing polyrhythmic ancestor that she is.

Today, dancing as part of my morning meditation, it felt so good to embrace the multiple orbits in my body, all the rotations, especially the ones where energy feels stuck. The snap crackle pop of waking up in my particular body. (I promise I won’t reference cereal every time. Actually, I can’t promise that.)

This morning I participated in a beautiful practice offered last night by Kasha Ho, co-founder of The Embodiment Institute (it’s on their Instagram, you should watch it after this). The practice is called “Breath is a Reciprocal Relationship with Earth.” YES!!! Kasha is one of my favorite teachers because she lives by and lifts up the truth that our embodiment is not individual. The places that we call our bodies are complex environments made up of multiple systems and populated by drastically more diverse microbes than cells that share our particular DNA signature. And on top of all of that, Kasha reminds us, our every breath is in interdependent partnership with plants on this planet as we engage in the necessary interchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide participating in a carbon cycle that is as old as the Earth.

Holding my breath (because Kasha said so) I could feel my internal population start to protest. And I could feel what Kasha is always teaching: just as our minds are not sovereign rulers over our bodies, our species does not rule over this planet. Our awareness is union not separation. “We can listen to the balance,” Kasha says.

Ooh GIRL!!! This is what it feels like to hold our breath as a species, huh? To refuse to give what we are here to give, to pretend we don’t need what we are here to receive? No wonder we feel like we are about to pass out half the time.

Because we are no different from the sun. We are an ongoing process, a bright explosion, an energy event and the universe is watching us burn out. Wondering what this supernova will generate.

No. We are no different from the sun, radiant in our multiplicity. I agree with Audre Lorde, who refused the understanding that stars are not planets, that planets are not stars, just like I believe in everything else Audre teaches us. We are all of who we are. We are planets. We are stars. What else could we be made of?

So now I am thinking, what if breath is orbit? The choral breathing of all these cells and the bacteria that love them? The set of cycles that ground me to this planet, keep me in communion with other species and connect me to the universe in an unbelievable polyrhythm.

What if this is my one job? Allowing air to change its life through me. All these different rates of movement in my shoulders, my waist. All these intersecting cycles, my willingness to show up, my need for silence, my conversations with the dead and the living and those unbound by the difference. The long cycles of my recurring dreams and the short spin cycle of my daily tasks. This infinite loop between what I want to tell you and what I suddenly don’t even know any more.

Can I count on you to breathe today like the planet wants and needs it? Not at my pace or in time with my demands, just sometime in the lifetime of this star. Because my pulse is saying one thing again now again now again now.

I need you. I need you to breathe.

P.S. Come cycle with me this week in The God of Every Day Week of Practice