Breath

The breath.  It is always with us.  When it is not, then we are soon not.  As long as we are alive, we are always breathing - expect those short times when we can consciously stop the muscular actions of inhalation or exhalation.

Of all the things we need to stay alive, the breath is by far the most immediate.  Nothing is more important to us than this invisible, odorless, air we inhale, extract some oxygen from, and exhale.  That the planet's systems refresh the atmosphere with the oxygen we need, and have for some millions of years, is an amazing thing.  These life sustaining systems, are, ironically, other forms of life.  It is the process of photosynthesis, that uses the energy of sunlight to build sugar from carbon dioxide and water, releasing oxygen in the process, that provides us with the oxygen we need.

Awareness of the breath is perhaps the most common tool of mind-body practices. The ability to focus the full attention of the mind on the breath, in a way, to unite breath and mind into a single thing, is very powerful.

As long as we're alive, we'll be breathing.  The breath is a tool for our practice that is with us, and will be for as long as we need it.

I wondered how much air I would breathe in a lifetime.  Just a very rough calculation, assuming each breath took in .5 liter of air, 6 breath cycles per minute, and a 90 year life, gave a total of a little over 62 million gallons.  On one hand that's a pretty big number, but on another, it isn't a really huge number. How to put that in context?

Water is something that flows in large volumes.  Since the Potomac River is near by, I looked it up and found that the average flow is about 7 million gallons per day.   A lifetime of breath is about the same volume as 9 days of average flow in the Potomac.   That seems like quite a lot.  One breath at a time.   Inhale, exhale.  For 90 years or so.