Take a minute. No, like a WHOLE minute. First, you must know: there you are, you are there — sitting or standing or running or listening to someone or some computer voice read this to you. And what else do you need? A little air, perhaps? Yes, yes, breathing is good. But where to goes that air? Of course to the lungs, but which part?

Can we not send it down deeper, use the belly, breathe like you did when you were mere months old, with no preconceptions about raising your shoulders and puffing out your chest to breathe? Can we not just use our bellies? They are there for a reason, you know? Just try and imagine it: A large maternal hand over the navel, with its own gravity pulling, drawing air into the belly, helping it expand, helping it to bulge OUT like it should when nature is allowed a purview into the concrete-mentalist’s hard-cornered quarters — there is nothing else required. Three or four of these and you are done. But what are you worrying about? What are those thoughts sullying the tranquility that is rightfully yours?

It’s not that they don’t belong; we all have worries and pains. But don’t let these stop you from returning to the innocence, the peace you felt as a child resting, vulnerable, yet safe — the world is dangerous, yes, but in our suffering can we find the mercy of being vulnerable and breathe into it — no need to flaunt, puff up, spit bravado, or stomp around. Just sitting or walking or standing here — there — where you are — and engaging in some efficient oxygen exchange with the machinery passed down to you by your parents and whatever God you believe in. Just try to lean into it a bit.

As Rumi once said, “Suffering is a gift. In it is hidden mercy.” And whether yours if visceral or ethereal, your trapped and contained and locked-down trials and hardships may, if you chose to let them, flow out through that gentle mother’s caress, with that full and profound breath, in that pure-child perspective that knows no other way than to absorb what it finds around it, continually growing despite the growing pains that we all still face, even if we’ve long ago stopped getting any taller…

So there. Breathe once more and you’re done. Ok, one more for good measure… And don’t forget as you go off and away that your belly truly wants to be used! Best exercise it from time to time.

MORE ON BREATHING AND MEDITATION: Pranayama Medicine for Health (Reality Sandwich)

SEE ALSO: My PDF version of the article “Pranayama Medicine for Health”, by Eliza Bishop.