LEARNING TO BREATHE

At the age of nine, I made my first real dive into a swimming pool, part of a graduation from summer swim lessons. Each person in the class had to swim a pool lap and dive into the deep end – in front of parents and instructors. I dived into the pool with fierce energy, touched the bottom of the pool, and somersaulted to shove back up, but, as I did, I saw more distance up to the surface than I thought I had air. The memory of that moment has never diminished the fear and desperation I felt trying to reach the top, my oxygen depleted and my brain on fire. Erupting through the surface with half my body above water, I gagged on huge gulps of air, while the group, unaware of my danger, cheered loudly. Ever since then, I’ve had a keen awareness of how we breathe.

Not just the automatic, largely unnoticed breathing, but the expulsion of air when we hold our breath in fear, giving CPR, the challenge of breathing for friends who have respiratory diseases, the sigh of relief, and our peculiar expressions like “Don’t hold your breath” or “Hold your breath and count to 10.”

In my work over the years, I have learned the importance of breathing to relieve stress and create a calm presence in myself or for others. Yoga has taught me how to wed the spirit and body through conscious breathing. In the most difficult pose, the instructor will remind students to breathe – something that is easy to forget when the body is entangled. In one class recently, we started our usual relaxation and guided breathing, which moves the breath into and down the body, from the nose to the toes and back again. The cycle is repeated, and the experience is full. As I followed the breathing, I wondered what it would be like to breathe in God’s presence at the same time, and since then, I have used this guided breathing to connect physically and spiritually with God.

Scripture has given me more lessons on breathing. In some of the earlier chapters of the Bible, God is often a great blast of air. Poor Job refers not only to the fire and ice of God’s breathing, but to his own determination to trust God until the last breath. In the Psalms, David writes breath into many images: life, wisdom and human existence “as frail as breath” (Psalm 28:11) or gone in a moment like the breath of wind. What came with our risen Christ, however, was breath of singular kind — the Holy Spirit. The breath of eternal love, both essential and mysterious.

A lovely song, “Breathe,” puts it simply: “This is the air I breathe . . . . Your very presence living in me.” With each deep breath, I can imagine the Holy Spirit living in me, nourishing me.

As you consider the sun rising on that first Easter morning, the shoots of light in the sky, may you experience the reality that He is with us every day, anywhere we are, and with each breath we take.

— Leia Francisco

Courtesy of The Church of the Good Shepherd United Methodist