On Breathing
Breathing punctuates all of our most important moments. From our first gasp at birth to our final exhale, the space between is peppered with formative breathing.
At a workshop I attended last fall, a woman named Lisa with long, wavy dark hair guided us through two hours of breathing that I still have trouble explaining. While laying on a yoga mat next to a woman I’d met while crossing the street just a few moments before the workshop started, countless friends and family members who’ve died appeared in my mind. My final visitor was my mother who appeared as a young and healthy version of herself that I probably never knew. She approached me, took my hands and repeated “You are ok. You will be ok. Everything will be ok.”
While these visitations were occuring in my mind, my physical body was equally out of my control. I felt as if an invisible rope around my torso was pulling me towards the center of the earth. Tears streamed down my face. My legs trembled. My hands were cramped and contorted-relaxing them wasn’t possible, so I stopped trying and gave in to the result of my breathing. I was a thousand pounds and floating all at once.
At the end of the workshop I walked back through downtown LA to my hotel and laid down in my bunk bed. I had just breathed out decades of sadness and pain. I felt empty and exhausted yet full of possibility.
I am not the kind of person who believes in wishes. I work towards goals. That’s not to say that my life is void of whimsy, I create seemingly nonsensical rituals, prosperity potions, and even make yearly predictions about the future. But I never make wishes. Every year since I was probably ten, when I blow out my birthday candles (which almost never happens anymore) I simply wish for “something good to happen.” I decided it was better to hope for something nice but vague to avoid the inevitable sting of the fated unpleasant conclusion accompanying a granted wish.
It wasn’t until recently that I realized the idea of manifesting something, which felt the most preposterous kind of wishing, was more like setting a goal. A hyper-specific intention. Recently a dear friend told me about her uncanny success manifesting a man and I decided it was time for me to dip my toe in the pond.
I needed help. Lucky for me this friend was up for it and of course, the process involved breathing. Guiding me through meditative, hypnotic breathing, this friend helped me find the tools within myself that needed activating and imagine a clear picture of what I want to manifest- The Perfect Investor.
I’m three years into running a women’s health startup. I’ve had some amount of success raising capital, but it was not easy. And since COVID19 my pipeline has dried up completely. The Perfect Investor is a woman that I can now clearly picture. When I think about her, I can even hear her laughing. I have a list of her attributes that I keep at my bedside. I read the list in the morning and in the evening while I lay breathing the idea of her into each cell of my body.
If I can breath out the pain of my past, I can breath in a prosperous future. Right?
