Remember your practice.
Breathe: 15 minutes of intentional breathing twice a day.
Drink: 8 glasses of water a day.
Breathe with awareness.
The other day I told someone that her back could expand when she breathed. She thought I was making it up!
This week, during your 15 minutes of morning breathing, spend a few minutes focusing on the parts of your rib cage. One day, intentionally expand your back when you inhale. Another day, expand your sides. Another day, your chest. Maybe one day you’ll put it all together and expand it all! Won’t that be something?
Breathe into your belly?
I imagine that, at some point, someone told you to breathe into your belly. After all the expanding you do in the coming week, you’ll know that you don’t breathe into your belly. You breathe into your lungs, which are encased in your rib cage. But your belly is worth your attention. To make room for your lungs to expand, your diaphragm moves downward. When that happens, the organs in your abdomen have to find someplace to go, and your belly expands to make room. In that way, your belly does participate in your breathing.
The community of you.
If you relax, and breathe, and pay attention, you may notice that your entire body participates in your breathing. Where can you feel your inhalation? Can you feel it in your calves? Your scalp? Your perineum? Where?
Where am I?
Today we begin our trek southward. We’ll land in Blanco State Park, in Texas, late in November. Between here and Blanco, we have a few stops we want to make — southeastern Kansas for some maintenance on our trailer; Guthrie, Oklahoma for hair cuts; and Aledo, Texas for some jambalaya (Debra ate some when she was working in Aledo in the spring, and she wants another taste). These last months up near Duluth have been wonderful. But it’s cold, and time to go!