The Fire Breath
I've had this quote written on my whiteboard for the past 3-4 months:
"Trust that you are held and protected as you presence the spectrum of intensity."
And this one, too:
"Be bold, courageous, and follow vitality."
The writing was on the wall for a long time, and I'm only just starting to understand how it reflects truths of my daily life. Though I'd like to take the spirit of these affirmations and refine it to more closely capture recent experience:
"An revitalized body is a discerning organism is a surrendered soul."
A few weeks after moving to the land-based living collective I'm a part of, I shared with a landmate a recurring challenge I experience in this season of life: following a spark long enough for it to build and sustain the fire for a life of creative emergence. It happens subtly, and on bigger scales; in conversations where I'll feel a flash of interest for a certain topic, I might offer a few words about it to see who bites, but the kindling won't doesn’t catch enough for me to build out a proposition and take pleasure in the conversation thread myself, and so it dies in the middle before its due time. Alternatively, I'm so focused on the sparks of others that I can't sense what's becoming vital in my own field of experience, enough to track it and build it out. Or with creative projects; I can't tell you how many notes pages I have of group programs, one-off workshops, in-person events that I want to facilitate, and the story repeats nearly identically each time: I'll have an idea come through with a surge of fire behind it, frantically build out as much of the details and vision as I can, then when I go back to start considering practical implementation, I find that there weren't enough logs in the fire and the furnace long gone cold. The spark ignites, there is vitality for a creative mode of being, but the thread, consistently, is that I just can't stay in it long enough to build a lasting fire.
I've often wondered if this is just a feature, and not a bug; Human Design principles tell me I'm a Manifesting Generator, and our multi-passionate playgrounds are just that - a field of sparks we flit between, occasionally catching fire. I can see the benefit of taking a more gentle perspective, yet I can't deny having consistently felt myself wanting to follow the growing flame, only to find that I was snuffing myself out. Whether by minimizing the importance of my interests relative to others, being fearful of others rejecting my fire, or projecting what I think others might find interesting at the expense of exploring my own, there are countless instances to support a pattern of self-cooling.
So there I found myself this past week, on a platform in the woods, learning how to do the fire breath as part of a Kriya yoga practice, for the way to the mind is through the body.
I've since continued the practice every morning. It starts with 7 minutes of alternating nostril breathing, followed by 7 minutes of an inhale-hold-exhale-hold pattern, then 3 minutes of fire breathing. One way to think about it is that by intentionally activating the sympathetic nervous system with somatic practices such as the fire breath ( that comes with responses such as increased heart rate, blood pressure, cold hands/feet, dilated pupils, decreased blood flow to the gut, a feeling of electricity or expansion, tingling/numbness, etc.), we build our capacity for experiencing Shakti. She is energetic fire, the personification of the divine feminine power that creates, sustains, and ultimately destroys the entire universe constantly. When you're in it, the feeling is very much, "HOLY SHIT, HOLY SHIT, am I gonna pass out? Can I handle this? Am I gonna make it?". Meeting with, allowing one to be imbued with the power of Shakti, means to train the capacity to withstand heat in all forms; self- and other-inflicted. It is dizzying, humbling, and there's no better high than the experience of merging with creation itself.
I end the Kriya yoga sequence with 10 minutes of a mindfulness meditation. This come-down always starts with a physical centering practice; I'll purposely tilt myself off-centre, swaying front to back, then side to side, slowly feeling my way to the happy middle. Usually I'll tilt a good amount off centre in each direction to sensitize myself to the experience of "off", before I can tap into the more subtle shifts of a few degrees astray, finally landing in a good centrepoint. Today, though, I was surprised at how pronounced the "off" felt even just a few degrees away from centre. Fired up and vitalized, all my cells were on and sharp, working to support a whole-body sensitivity in high-definition like I hadn't felt before. The thought then was, "This is a discerning body."
What is it about getting fired up that affords access to a more granular sensitization? As we actively (and mindfully, couching our practice within a relational context of experienced teachers) push into the upper realms of heightened states of arousal, we expand the entire spectrum of experience available to us. Presencing Shakti's fire electrifies and casts light on more of life itself - the discrete "now"s, with their subtle qualitative changes in the spectrum of experience. If we dare to travel to the far reaches of feeling and open to the light of a universe burning, then the everyday moments on solid ground become as precious and distinct as each breath of fire. When we let in more light to illuminate our path of "now"s, we can more easily discern when we have strayed a few degrees off-course; a discerning organism will course-correct to track vitality more accurately and immediately than a dull, numb body. I'd rather correct for a few degrees off-centre at a time, than a whole 20 degrees in 20 years' time. While we can't always live in the heightened state of merging with pure creation (or at least I can't sustain it to that extent for now), the practice is teaching me that as we withstand the heat and light of the fire in dedicated practice containers, we build the capacity for more subtle, surrendered movement with Shakti's fire in everyday moments. That's really what it's about; to look back and see a life dedicated to creative emergence means you sensed and trusted the spark, allowing the heat to grow as hot as it may, be sustained for as long as it needs, and let cool when it's ready, a million "now"s over.
