Breathe and Grief

The pause between inhalation and exhalation

There are times in life when all you can do is breath. In my Daoist training I learned to think of breathe as an expression of the Divine that was breathing us into existence with each breathe. Simply focusing on your breathing pattern and observing your breathe is a way to connect to and rest in the still Divine part of yourself.  There is a whisper of space and stillness that happens spontaneously between inhaling and exhaling, these two mutually supportive elements of breathing.  When you stop and focus on your breathe you become aware of that space, really a pause, that happens between the inhale and the exhale.  Most of the time we do not notice it because it is a spontaneous, necessary process that we engage in without conscious thought.

It is possible to have moments or even longer spans of time in deep meditation where your breathe stops, or rather the external process of breathing seems to stop and you are breathing internally supported fully by the Divine, intelligent flow of life force energy. I have touched that place in meditation spontaneously.  In those moments, I was so engaged in my inner world and internal focus, so relaxed, my awareness resting in the spaciousness inside me, that my breathing stopped. Every time it was a spacious experience with an underlying feeling of freedom and joy. The minute the thought arose that my breathing had stopped, all my focus and attention directed to the not breathing, immediately I was breathing normally again. Those times I went to those depths where breathing stops I felt less alone. 

When I first met Andres the thing I noticed most about being with him was that I could draw deep breaths in his presence.  It was such a revelation to me, both the ease of my breathe and how spontaneously spacious my breath felt in his presence. In nearly the whole first year after he died, one of the things I was most aware of is how much it hurt to breathe.  There was a pain that was present in my lungs that made them feel constricted, where breathing felt like labor and effort. Underneath the constriction I could feel the truth and finality of his physical absence.  

Whenever I have had to make a decision (like saying no when someone wants a yes to exercise the voice of my own needs and preferences) where I have had to go against a lifetime of conditioning and disappoint others I also feel my breathe tighten and constrict. I have never been scuba diving but I imagine it feels the same as the pressure scuba divers feel when they descend down into depths of water, where the only oxygen is that which is in their tank and the sheer force and pressure of the water is pressing on each inch of skin.

In Chinese medicine the lungs represent the metal element, which in balance, is the awareness when we can see our past, appreciate the beauty we have gained, and discern the parts that no longer serve us. It is a seed of  inspiration and appreciation, of the perfection of the present moment and how we got there, of the certainty that everything is changing and nothing will remain in its present form. The moment we sense the beauty of what is passing is a very pivotal moment. I think that is what grief is. It is that keen awareness of what is changing form and what will now never take on form. It is a moment of pause between the inhalation and exhalation.

That pause is what I miss most about the early days of grief. Not the raw pain of it that feels like an open wound, but the timeless quality of being suspended, held in a protective bubble, like soft cotton insulation. The loss itself opened up a moment, a time where all I could do was be in the pause. Those two states, pain and pause, existed at the same time in equal measure.

And now, those two states of being continue to coexist in extreme intensity in precise moments that create a pause. Like when I was racing with my son, lost in a moment of playful joy and the next moment I was lost in overwhelming sadness and tears thinking of how Andres was not there to play with us. Both existing side by side in equal measure.

I am reminded of one of my favorite poems by David Whyte, “The Well of Grief”:

Those who will not slip beneath
the still surface on the well of grief,

turning down through its black water
to the place we cannot breathe,

will never know the source from which we drink,
the secret water, cold and clear,

nor find in the darkness glimmering,

the small round coins,
thrown by those who wished for something else.

Thank you for taking time to join me here. I look forward to the next time.