I’ve practiced yoga for many years, sometimes in a studio and sometimes sandwiched between the couch and coffee table at home. It’s the only form of exercise that keeps me and the only one I’ll spend my money on. If you’re of the opinion that it’s just a glorified version of stretching, I’d say that A) you haven’t really done the work, and B) so what?

It occurred to me the other day, after having gone almost every afternoon this month and last, that my body had started to crave (sort of involuntarily) this deep, cleansing yogic breath that we practice in class. The technical term is Ujjayi – commonly translated as “victorious” or “oceanic” breathing. In through the nose and out through the mouth with intention. Like water being drawn together and forming a wave, which crashes and lingers to the shore. Corralling a hurried mind and an aching body, letting the two of them meet and buoy one another into a safe, controlled rhythm. The ribs expand all the way and then the naval touches the spine as the breath again recycles to the earth. It should sound loud, like the sigh from a mother who’s just put five kids to bed. Similar to Darth Vader in his mask, if you’re having trouble.

I’m not prompted for it every breath but maybe every twenty or so, just as I’ve finally gotten used to the quiet again. It’s become habit and a really good one – sending oxygen to the brain, keeping my heart rate steady, slowing functions down so that I react fewer times out of impulse.

As I’m thinking about this movement, the very one that allows you and me to wake in the mornings, I’m wondering how many of us have missed out on its restorative depth and for how long. We’re shallow breathers mostly. Sometimes we hold our breaths and don’t know it. But ultimately we’re passive recipients to the thing that lets us live. Think about that. You’re probably doing it now. Your stomach will rise and fall through your shirt. And it’s not threatened when you don’t engage it deeper, but the impact it would have on your system would be profound should you ever choose to.

My friend asked yesterday if I really believe that the Spirit lives inside me, and I thought of course! For in Him, we live and move and have our very being. Scripture says so, but I actually do think that. And then I filled my lungs to the top with air and all at once wondered how much of Him I’d missed and for how long. We live in him and He in us. His love is what keeps me alive on this ground. But what’s been the cost of a flat breath? Not His presence (fortunately for us, that’s here whether we summon it or not, similar to breathing) but perhaps its richness. Perhaps the cost of shallow breathing hasn’t been spotty salvation or death but rather a hurried mind, an aching body and sometimes joy but no fullness of it. 

If it really is His breath in our lungs that the church sings about, then we pour out our praise by way of engaging that presence. Maybe not every breath but let’s say every twenty or thirty or hundred, for a start. It’s a discipline and it should be, but watch. Our bodies will begin to crave it. The mutuality. The participation and symbiosis. Our existence and his worship keeping perfect time.

We’ll stretch our limbs toward the thing that sustains us and have peace while there is strife. Patience while there is ignorance. Self control amidst a world that tells us to indulge. We’ll stand upright, work our muscles, and day by day, we’ll commune with Christ.

To be meek. A gifted teacher. Others-focused and small. What more might I offer if I harnessed my tongue like her, hushed my emotions like her, and was modest. Gentle, unassuming, lowly, and light. Running like script over the life of Jesus, these are the same words I find consequently missing from mine.

When I start to feel my heart turn cold with envy, I’m unbothered in terms of better clothes, climbing success, an easy marriage or a painless life. But I’m wracked with grief wondering – in all our uniquity – if she might have access to parts of His likeness that I never will in this flesh. It always picks back at the scab, this deep sense of loss that recognizes my imago dei but lusts still for hers.

And maybe someone else needs to hear that the image of God we see in our sister doesn’t threaten the one he’s forming in us. He may, in fact, be softening edges, teaching me joy, and nudging me to the humility of a quiet mouth, but we should take care to learn about his image in its fullness. The life of Christ is marked by more.

He is also radical, decisive, unreserved, and sure. He spoke on cliffs with conviction and felt with his neighbors deeply. And often. His words were pronounced and he drew into himself – his father – for wisdom, and he did it alone. I hope my saying this doesn’t translate as some sort of means to justify a staunch, stuck personality, but I do hope it encourages someone else that there is nothing inherently lost or wasted in them. 

However polarizing, there is a thread between humanity and him, and he’s fashioning the whole of it to draw us closer to himself. I’m sure when we get to look full in his wonderful face, we’ll see the things we can’t right now. Woman to woman, shout out to all of us out there doing it in the meantime. Thanks for letting me in on a really good work in you.

“The eyes of love had seen you as precious, as of infinite beauty, as of eternal value. When love chooses, it chooses with a perfect sensitivity for the unique beauty of the chosen one, and it chooses without making anyone else feel excluded.”

- Henri J.M. Nouwen, Life of the Beloved