Breathe. Move. Rest.
I like simplicity. I like balance. I like truth. The mantra, “Breathe. Move. Rest.” provides a simple, balanced attempt to organize life around and within truth. It’s a mantra that helps cultivate balance in my daily life.
However, life has taught me that preferring these conditions is not enough to make them reality. In fact, I’ve learned that to live simply is complex; to live in balance requires a lot of negotiation; and to live from a place of truth and knowing requires admitting what I don’t know first. Irony abounds.
It’s hard. Living like this. Living from a place of intention and values, it requires effort and takes practice. All that said, life really is as simple as: Breathe. Move. Rest. Notice I said, “simple”, not easy. Let me explain.
Breathe: Balancing the IN & OUT
Have you ever noticed how the breath has a slight pause at the top and bottom of each breath, at the intersection between the inhale and the exhale?
Go ahead, take a breath. What do you notice?
As long as we are breathing, life is relatively simple. It’s when we stop breathing that things get complicated and even messy, quickly.
The breath is the beginning, the middle & the end.
We count the first breath (an inhale) as the beginning of life and the final breath (an exhale) as our departure from this life. It’s what happens between those two breaths, the 672,768,000 breaths in between, that we call “life”. Making the most of life is making the most of each of these breaths.
With the breath, we have the power to literally fuel our body to move and feel (senses) and our minds to think and feel (emotions). When we can consider life as a circular pattern, a repetition of “Breathe. Move. Rest.” repeated approximately 672,768,000 times, we can simplify each moment as a choice to breathe or not breathe. Can it be any simpler?
INSPIRATION lives in the pause between the inhale and the exhale.
Inspiration is where change begins. It’s where SHIFT happens!
If breath is the fuel for life, the pause within the breath is the spark plug of inspiration. In the pause we direct moment-to-moment attention in order clarify our intentions and choose our actions wisely.
Move: Balancing the UPS & DOWNS
Movement can be qualified using directional opposites: up-down; right-left; forward-back. In yoga practice, movement is embodied in the asana routine, or the intentional placement of the body into shapes or postures. In other words, the asana practice is a series of movements up and down, right & left, forward and back done with purpose and precision, and sometimes even with a little bit of grace.
However, Yoga is more than a routine of postures. Yoga is said to translate as ‘union’ and is the practice of uniting one’s mind, body and energy as well as uniting separate beings into a shared community. Yoga offers a philosophy and a way of being in the world. As a practice, Yoga offers us a way of living intentionally in alignment with our truth and provides three rituals for the practice: Asana (postures), Pranayam (breathing) & Meditation (mindfulness). As a practice of movement, we experience yoga as movement in three ways:
- Asana: movement of limbs and whole body
- Pranayam: movement of energy and application of effort
- Meditation: movement of thoughts and feelings across the THREE “minds” (brain, heart, belly).
Rest: Balancing the EFFORT & EASE
After the storm comes the quiet and yet after the effort often comes more effort or the next big project. No pause for rest. No permission for play. No moment for gratitude.
At least that’s how I lived my life for the first 40(ish) years. Since yoga & since my accident, I promised myself and my family that I would practice more balance. For me that meant more rest. For others, it might mean more movement or even more (deep, slow) breath, but for me it’s was the quiet, stillness and ease that was lacking if not missing from my way of being.
I was privileged (ironic, I know) to take a year “off” from the grind of work and life to recuperate and re-build my life. It wasn’t easy. But if necessity is the mother of all invention, crisis is the father of transformation. From this energy of necessity and crisis, I was fortunate to birth a new way of living. I was lucky to find yoga to teach me the practice to support this new philosophy. In this season of recovery, I discovered the framework for a new philosophy for living, I call it Transparent Alignment.
Breathe. Move. Rest. is the foundation of Life’sWork Yoga. Balance is a priority of living in Alignment.
Transparent Alignment (TA), the original, foundational philosophy of Life’sWork Yoga, is the practice of cultivating the daily habits of living from intention, by directing attention and consciously choosing wise action as often as possible. It’s the mantra of “Breathe. Move. Rest.” put into practice through the mind, body and energy in intention, attention and action.
TA is ultimately a practice of choice. It’s a daily habit of choosing to (1) identify and (2) live in alignment with our TRUE SELF across the roles and responsibilities of a modern, engaged life. Transparency and alignment allow for smoother transitions between roles and diminish suffering, reduce identity confusion and diffuse conflicts when facing life choices and challenges. In order to find the sweetness (sukha), ease or rest in alignment, we must see the truth of WHO we are in each layer (role, responsibility, etc) of our self and our life experience. The more these layers come into alignment, the more ease can be experienced in living, thereby enhancing transparency of our values and principles. Enhanced transparency, in turn, cultivates trust and builds a community that supports living in truth for all its participants.
Life’sWork Yoga, as a studio and training center, supports, equips, and inspires practitioners (and teachers) to find their passion & purpose (their life’s work) and to live it. In other words, Life’sWork Yoga employs the philosophies and practices of yoga to help bring our community together and to breathe deeply, move freely, labor lovingly and live vibrantly.
