Today’s special post is due to the unique fact that it is spring break.
Monday, rather than uploading anything to this blog, I’ll be on a Campus Ambassadors’ missions and service trip in San Francisco, California. It promises to be not only awesome, but challenging and engaging. No computer and no internet access compel me to upload a bit ahead of schedule.
My thought is about how necessary this break has rapidly become. It has become everything up to a physical necessity. It is a time to take space to breathe.
Sometimes I forget to breathe – to slow down enough to take a deep and refreshing gasp of air. I need a breath from my stomach and diaphragm, not just my chest. It is a time to refocus, engage more deeply, and become a bit more conscious of the specific moment.
It’s even written across the top of my day-planner. ”Breathe.” Whenever I see it, I take a deep breath. I don’t do yoga, but I do want to be fully in a space … physically as well as mentally.
So, as I’m running around this week during engaging and rewarding things (if not exactly restful), I fully intend to be aware of my breathing. My challenge is for you to do the same.
A few thoughts:
1. 10 second rule
2. Ah yes, breathing is tricky sometimes. It makes me think of voice lessons. There, one learns HOW to breath “correctly” (at least for singing). Your breath should just “fall in” and go into ones diaphragm. This enables you to take a deep breath rather quickly and have enough air to sing…SF took a different sort of breathing…not necessarily a quick breath you take, but a much deeper one…where you take more in then air. Its the sort of breathing that you take to prepare yourself to do something great. It takes effort and vulnerability… of courage and a willingness to serve rather then be served. Its a breath that fills…everything.
3. I definitely forget to breath here at Willamette sometimes….sometimes it seems all the good air has vanished.
3a. but that’s totally not true :)
3b. God is here.