Breath and tide

We are tidal creatures, all of us on this planet. Tides come in many kinds: a tide of light flows from day to night and a tide of warmth flows with the seasons. The tide which describes how we fit into our world is: the breath. In, out; eat, excrete; listen, talk.

A strong hunger for air, food, information, drives our in breaths, and those of us living in the comfortable strata of the developed human world tend to find these hungers easy as well as pleasurable to satisfy. I know I'm not the only person who regularly devotes hours to a snack-food-and-information combo on the sofa. Intake intake intake. It's a real privilege and I love it.

The out breath is often more problematic. I'm sometimes aware of a sensation of being mentally over-full. My mind jostles with ideas and projects: things to make, things to write, new techniques to learn, new experiences to have. I can't do - or even think about - all of them, and pulled in too many directions at once I'm quite likely go to bed and sleep it off. In the morning I'll be hungry, ready to breathe in again.

But breathing out is essential, and to do that we must - just for a minute - stop breathing in. The out breath of the lungs stimulates the calming, rest-and-digest responses which is why pranayama yoga breathing patterns tend to spend longer on the out than the in breath. The mental out breath is creativity and communication.

Having taken in a day's worth of new sensations and concepts, we must breath out again by making, dreaming, thinking, communicating. We hold our breath for fear that the contents might not be up to standard, but that's not the point. The point is to breathe out, so that you can breathe in again, and out again and in again. Waves wash to and fro: some are beautiful, some just wet, but each one is part of the next. They are all needed.

Breathe out as well as in: so that you can ebb and flow with the tidal life of this little world.