Returning to the breath.
A portal to belonging.
I am feeling really excited to begin teaching again this week both in person in Folkestone but also online this Sunday via this portal.
This Sunday 11th January at 6pm UK time we will gather on zoom for an hour or so of gentle and nourishing somatic practice.
At the bottom of this email will be all the details for everyone who has a paid subscription, including the zoom link.
I also thought I would share a little of where we are going this month in our somatic exploration. This is for everyone to enjoy and you can take or leave the invitation to join us for practice.
Breath as belonging.
I have never understood why we call it breath work. Why do we make everything about us work? The idea that we need to be in a constant state of productivity to justify our existence. Always fixing and doing.
It’s also wild that we have made the breath into another version of this validation through productivity when it’s actually one of the most direct ways to really remember that we belong here.
Without having to do anything.
Without having to prove ourselves worthy.
Without having to fix ourselves.
The breath can be the portal back to belonging.
Abigail Rose Clarke calls it breath magic.
And it was Robin Wall Kimmerer who really showed me this magic in her book Braiding Sweetgrass when she talked about the absolute miracle of photosynthesis.
This is magic.
Our breath is magic.
We are magic.
And we don’t need to ‘do’ anything to remember that.
Last year I shared this on my other Substack publication…
Let me tell you the story…
Around 2.3billion years ago an organism called Cyanobacteria, the first organism to convert water and carbon dioxide into oxygen, started to create so much oxygen that it left the ocean and entered the earths atmosphere. This is the very beginning of the evolutionary journey that shaped our respiratory system. We have been shaped by the ocean, plants, earth & sky. This is the duality, the constant and relentless connection between our bodies and the world around us. The breath.
Oxygen is also a finite resource. It travels through cyclical time, through the process of breathing and photosynthesis. Constantly recycling. Your next breath could be filled with the same atoms that spent 400yrs waiting to be released from an oak tree as carbon to then be transformed by another plant into the oxygen you breath. We are in constant reciprocity.
With every inhale we are receiving a gift, we are breathing the world in.
The magic of aliveness.
And then as we exhale, the world breathes us in.
Take a moment and feel your lungs gently fill as you inhale.
Maybe notice the moment at the top of the breath.
Fullness, nourishment, aliveness.
Then gently let it go.
Release, descent, softening.
Perhaps linger in the void at the bottom before the next inhale comes.
Remember… you belong.
And this is just the external respiration, as you breath… trillions of cells that make up you are breathing with you.
And this the space we are going to explore and rest in on Sunday…
As our beautiful tree like lungs and the external and internal breath.
You can join us in these practices once a month on every second Sunday for just £15.00 a month. The classes are recorded and shared on here after.
Please note that at least two people need to attend live for the class to go ahead.
I offer Embodied Care in the hope that I can begin to offer more and more people more affordable one to one therapy. So by signing up you are supporting me, other people and yourself.
If you are already signed up the zoom link and details for the class are below!