“Sitting and breathing mindfully brings four important elements into our lives: peace, clarity, compassion and courage.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
Life is so simple, but we insist on turning ourselves inside out.
Think about it.
There’s always something that gets in the way of living.
Much has been written about happiness but, for me, it misses the point: living at peace with who you are should always be enough.
And there lies the riddle: we’re so driven to having, getting and grasping that we fail to see what’s in front us: this moment.
Of course, trying to build a life around ‘presence‘ hardly sounds inspiring and, for many, will sound too Woo Woo, but if you’re able to sit back, relax and reflect, you’ll understand without much insight that this moment is all we have.
And only if we tried living fully in the moment and not allowing our minds to constantly distract us from that reality would we experience a new kind of bliss.
I’ve quoted Thich Nhat Hanh above not because I covet his methodology (i.e. mindfulness?) but simply because the breath lies at the heart of all mindful practice. But more than that it’s something that we rarely, if ever, pay attention to save in circumstances where we notice we’re about to lose touch with life or are placed in a life-compromising situation.
It might be as easy as saying find your breath, and you find you.
If I can invite you to do one thing today that’s to hold your breath when you lose touch with the moment, and right then you’ll realise when you start gasping for air, how important your breathing is to your beingness.