And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life: and man became a living soul.’

Genesis 2:7King James Version

We generally take breathing for granted.  Breath is a fully automatic process, beginning at birth and continuing without interruption until the day we die.  It can be a fully unconscious process.  There is no need to attend consciously to the way one is breathing.  We expect to breathe quite adequately while sleeping each night, as we do during our time awake. Our hearts also beat continuously without any conscious effort, as we digest our food without actually doing anything about it.  From moment to moment throughout our lives, there are thousands of vital processes occurring in our bodies, of which we are generally unaware and uninformed.  This part of the workings of the body is driven by unconscious intelligence, so that our conscious awareness is freed for other pursuits. With the breath, there is a difference:  breathing can be a completely unconscious process, but it can also become a conscious, intentional practice.  This is a unique quality of the breath, that it can be both conscious and unconscious and this quality makes it a link between the conscious and unconscious aspects of our being.

 TBA