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The Santa Ana winds come almost every Fall to the Los Angeles area.
Experiencing them as an eight year old I felt they were like having
someone gigantic, blow a hot, dry, outward breath into my face.
The feeling was so stifling that I could neither breath out or in
easily. My long hair would become entangled and crossing in front
of my eyes and mouth. The heat and wind would catch the dry brush
on fire north of where I lived and soon hillsides would be raging
with flame. I learned that the Santa Ana wind was powerful, and
it’s impact unpredictable. It always left the landscape changed.
In our culture we usually say that a persons life is measured in
years. My grandmother is now 95 years old. She lives in Northern
California now, far away from the yearly Santa Ana winds of Los
Angeles. I’ve read recently that the Tibetans say that in
an individual’s life they have the potential for certain number
of breaths. I wonder how many breaths my grandmother has taken so
far? I worry about how few she has left. My worry is futile isn't
it? She has what she has left. And as my friend Tommy Longabardi
would say “and that is that”.
I wonder how many breaths I have left?
Have you ever experienced having the wind knocked out of you? It
seems with kids around, one was always hearing a reference to getting
the wind knocked out of him/her. Usually it meant that the child
in question, was playing and fell or got hit by another child -
so that for a moment they couldn’t breath. I had that experience
on a crowded beach when I was about 12 years old. Jumping through
the waves I landed in such a way that something in my mind/wind
pipe connection totally locked. I could not breath in or out. I
could not speak to tell the very concerned people around me what
I was experiencing. I think at least two minutes went by without
a breath. During those two minutes I had this intense mind clarity.
There was nothing on my mind, but seeing what was happening.
Another very real way of getting the wind knocked out of you is
experiencing an emotional shock. It can often occur with the death
of someone close, an illness diagnosed or the ending of a relationship.
Sometimes the impact is not clarity but confusion. Sometimes one
cannot think at all.
Life isn’t easy. And it may seem like getting the wind knocked
out of you is happening all the time. And our reaction is to hold
onto the breath. To pull it in tight. Not to let it blow.
One of the values of Yoga practice is to learn how to live within
the difficult spaces of the breath, specifically the exhale and
the pause afterwards. In the event that one experiences that moment
of no breath in and no breathe out, you’ve trained yourself
to not panic. There may be corrective measures to take or perhaps
one will be required to become the observer of the event rather
then the do’er.
Prue Kestner teaches that yoga happens in the pause that exists
between the exhale and the inhale. I often say to my students that
I am not concerned with them taking a breath in. I am concerned
with their taking the breath out. I don’t teach them often
enough to learn to get comfortable with the pause before the next
breath in.
Your exhale, like the wind of Santa Ana’s, has a great power.
It leads into the moment of pause. Will there be transformation?
Is it another breath toward death? Are you consciously embracing
change and transformation. Are you taking ownership of choice to
go forward into what is known and unknown. Do you trust the universe
to give you the next breath? Can your rest in the pause?
I say “let it blow” and see what happens... |
