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Writer's pictureKarin Craven

Elemental Selves

by Karin A. Craven

 

“Tell me, what is God?

God is the breath inside the breath.”

                        ~Kabir~

 

Elements – earth, water, air, fire -- exist, and in relationship. As earth creatures made from dirt and water, our life begins and ends in breath, ordinary and warmed by divine inspiration. The quality of air moves with the turning of seasons. In this transition of summer into autumn, wind propels change. Dry air becomes humid, laden with moisture. Clear blue sky becomes opaque. Air currents dance hot and cold, forming new creations in the sky and down below on earth. Shifting sky rivers and torrents of wind sculpt land. Slides of mud flow down mountains and water sluices carve canyons from the floor of desert sands. Trees splinter and fall, uplifting roots. Plants are buried, swallowed whole by earth. Water is drained of its power, swiftly leaving traces of its impact, scenes of destruction.

 

I wonder about how my bodily selves – the interconnection of elements -- belong to autumn. Fire with its smoke stains the waning light into tones of blood red at sunset. Earth melts into mud and hardens until it is like iron. Water slows its movement and settles into a skin of icy stillness. Air continues its sky dance: trees bend, wave and sometimes fall with in company with the colored leaves.

 

How is this season finding me this particular year? How might the shelter of fall befriend me anew? What practices might focus and cultivate elemental awareness? In particular, I find myself drawn to “sound” as an experience of both air and breath.

 



The haze of wildfire smoke has drifted aloft on changing winds to alter my experience of breath. I see, smell and feel the particle-laden air, and at times, I can almost taste its smokiness. The sound of my voice changes, becomes more rough.

 

Air becomes breath, a bellow pattern of expanding and constricting lungs. The audible sense of breath changes with mouth or nasal breathing. I hear myself breathing; I know myself as a body with breath. Breath naturally connects my inner and outer worlds.

 

Each of us experiences our bodily selves from the inside out and the outside in. I feel the cold air in the morning as I walk, wearing layers to ward off the damp chill. I take gulps of air and feel ragged cold flow within me.

 

We are a body. And we have a body. Involuntary breath is the innate experience of the body regulating itself without our conscious awareness. Voluntary breath is the conscious experience that we have a body we can regulate within limitations. Certain activities – singing and running -- make us aware of breath patterns and bodily limitations. We feel and hear the sustained note sputtering out sooner than the musical notes dictate; we hear our labored breathing and feel the running tempo slow down to a jog. We can play with those breath patterns to enhance the performance of singing and running. Conscious work with our breathing allows us to consciously move back and forth from the experience of being a body and having a body. In that interplay, we can observe our bodily self and its experiences. We live within the skin and bones of our particular body. And at the same time, we have an bodily witness that offers distance and perspective enough so as to reflect and make meaning of embodied sensate, relational experiences of self and others.

 

This doubled experience of our incarnate nature is foundational to the human capacity for self-reflection. Being able to reflect consciously enlarges our ability to connect to self, others, and the non-human world. Breath is a bridge that guides our observational witness as it emerges from our bodily self.

 

I use breath as a tool of intentional focus into the inward dimensions of silence and solitude, contemplative prayer. In that cultivated space I can be a witness to my many self-states, as thoughts, feelings, images and sensations arise with the ebb and flow of breath.

 

The experience of observing our selves intentionally yet with detachment is the way of poets, prophets, and mystics. It is also the path of ethical agency with the call to know our own voice, to distinguish it from the sound of other voices, even that of God.

 

African American mystic Howard Thurman encouraged graduating students from Spelman College to listen to the sound of their “genuine voice,” and to find a way to cultivate a discipline of listening. Feel the power of his question resonate in your own body: “What is your name, who are you and can you find a way to hear the sound of the genuine in yourself?” This question resounds throughout our lives. So does the imperative to discover practices that allow for deep inner listening to the sound of the genuine within us.

 

Singing and running are bodily experiences that can be cultivated individually or in a group. These activities depend upon familiarity with one’s own breath. As we move through warm up exercises, we might notice daily or seasonal changes in the range of our capacities of singing or running. Listening to the sound of our own breath can shape these practices, perhaps be a spur to vary fundamental exercises. The experience of breathing when we try to run at a faster tempo or sing with extended smooth modulation might be an initial awareness of our need to increase breath capacity so as to sing longer on one breath or run faster with less aerobic effort. Attention to the sound and sensation of our breathing may also just be delight in being alive as we slow down and sit in meditation.

 

And as we attune to the movement, shape and texture of our breath, we become more aware of the distinct nature and sound of our particular voice. And it becomes less about the correct forms of how we breathe in singing or running and is more about what happens in the flow of these activities. We are connecting with our own vulnerable nature. In this flow of breath – singing and running -- we are simply aware that we are holy blessed beloved creatures. That deep felt knowledge is the genuine reality beyond our everyday illusions and goals. May those bodily moments of deep wisdom and big love become more sustained, that we might reach out with purpose, living from the sound of our genuine voice and listening to the sound of the genuine within others.

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