Breathing In, I Am Calm

[Rounding out the weekly quotes related to somatic intelligence to recover our range of resilience, circling back to the power of the breath to bring us fully alive while soothing and stabilizing the body-brain-mind.]

Breathing in, I calm body and mind.  Breathing out, I smile.  Dwelling in the present moment I know this is the only moment.

– Thich Nhat Hanh

When you own your breath, nobody can steal your peace.

– Author Unknown

There is one way of breathing that is shameful and constricted.  Then, there’s another way: a breath of love that takes you all the way to infinity.

– Rumi

The practice is simply this: keep coming back to your breath during the day.  Just take a moment.  That will give your mind a steadiness and your breath a gracefulness….There’s so much to let go of, isn’t there?  Your nostalgia and your regrets.  Your fantasies and your fears.  What you think you want instead of what is happening right now.  Breathe.

– Rodney Yee, Yoga: The Poetry of the Body

A healthy mind has an easy breath.

– Author Unknown

For breath is life, and if you breathe well you will live long on earth.

– Sanskrit proverb

Listen, are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?

– Mary Oliver

We live in an ocean of air like fish in a body of water.  By our breathing we are attuned to our atmosphere.  If we inhibit our breathing we isolate ourselves from the medium in which we exist.  In all Oriental and mystic philosophies, the breath hold the secret to the highest bliss.

– Alexander Lowen

Happiness breathes when you do.

– Terri Guillemets

The path of humanity is always coordinated with heaven and earth in the alternation of movement and stillness.  Human energy is always in communion with heaven and earth in the alteration of exhalation and inhalation.

– Ming dynasty work Anthology on the Cultivation of Realization

When the breath wanders the mind also is unsteady.  But when the breath is calmed the mind too will be still, and the practitioner achieves long life.

– Svatmarama, Hatha Yoga Pradipika

Inhale, and God approaches you.  Hold the inhalation, and God remains with you.  Exhale, and you approach God.  Hold the exhalation, and surrender to God.

– Krishnamacharya

When you inhale, you are taking the strength from God. When you exhale, it represents the service you are giving to the world.

– B.K.S Iyengar

Let the air become you, and then leave you.  Forgive each breath because although it abandons you, every single time, it also brings you life.  A man who cannot forgive the air has no chance of living.

– Edmond Manning

Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky.  Conscious breathing is my anchor.

– Thich Nhat Hanh

Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies.

– Erich Fromm

I am breathing in the laughter, tears, victories, passions, thoughts, memories, existence, joys, moments, and the hues of the sunlight on many tones of skin; I am breathing in the same air that was exhaled by many before me. The air that bore them life. And so how can I ever say that I am alone?” 

– C. JoyBell C.

[Deep bows to The Quote Garden as the online source of many of these quotes.]