Sunday, April 15, 2007ExhalingThis is the blog of a person with a very clean garage.But what's amazing about my garage, is that it looks maybe 20% less full than it did two months ago when I started this insanity. At most 30%. But for the last 6 - 8 weeks, I have been throwing TONS of stuff away. Five - six hefty bags a week. Giving piles of boxes away to various charities. My estimate of the give/take ratio was about 80% being tossed or donated. And yet it looks like only about 20% is gone. This is unnerving. But it leads me to some interesting conclusions. 1 - I am extremely good at consolidating my baggage. 2 - Stuff proliferates. No matter how much you give away, there is always more to take its place. This makes me think about breathing. It's been feeling like ... finally ... my house has been allowed to exhale. As the stuff gets thrown and given away, it feels like my household's pores are being opened. There are major arteries being unclogged. This has had some amazing ramifications. I feel much more able to take on new thoughts and projects. I feel less bogged down, more ready for the future. Like there is a flow going in: now that there is outward movement, we're ready for some new things coming in. As a regular practitioner of yoga, I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about my breath. This is a good thing. Breathing -- arguably the thing we do by far the most in our lives -- is at once very simple and yet incredibly complex. It's the place where consciousness and instinct meet. I can control my breath to a large extent with my brain, but can not control it entirely. Suicide by breath-holding is simply undoable (which is why maybe that's the threat of choice for a temper-tantrummy two-year-old.) At some point it goes back to being an animal impulse. One day not too long ago, as I was prone on my back thinking once again about my breathing, I realized I felt FAR more comfortable inhaling than I did exhaling. Inhaling makes me feel safe and strong. I'm bringing in a world of new possibilities, pulling them inside of me where I can control their disposition. I can accumulate experiences, sort and catalog them, expand my body to accommodate them. The exhale, on the other hand, makes me a bit fearful. All that releasing... it's so vulnerable. What if letting all that precious life-giving air go is dangerous? What if something happens while I'm emptied out and I can't replenish fast enough to stay alive? Then, too, if I let all that stuff out... what might I lose with it? On a physiological level, I might lose precious oxygen. On a metaphoric level, I might lose something that I'll miss deeply. If I let it all go... what if it never comes back? Breathing out makes me feel vulnerable and soft, open and exposed. With my lungs full, I can literally exist a few more seconds than I can with my lungs empty. The breath is my protection, literally, on a primitive level. It is the air we breathe. But there's a flip side to the bonus of control and safety. When I could get around the tremors of fear long enough, I felt that letting out all that old dead shit felt great. Used air, dead air, carrying with it pieces of used up emotional baggage -- who needs it? The air is the conveyor belt letting all that old stuff out. In cleaning my garage, I've started my house and my life breathing again. The blocked passageways have been evacuated. A flow is starting. I'm feeling changes in how I'm looking at my work (both writing and employment). I'm feeling changes about how I'm looking towards the future (more optimism; less dread). I feel more like I'm living in a boat than in an historical society. The things I need (and the things I simply love) are at hand. The signal-to-noise ratio is much much better. And what's scary and amazing is how much is still left. I look around and I still havge way more than plenty. This is not a life of scarcity, or even taut efficiency... by a long shot. Yes, it's streamlined. But there's still nowhere near a dearth of stuff. Which is kind of another lesson. Mo matter how vigorously I move the stuff out, I will never be stuck with nothing. Even if all the material objects disappeared with a whoosh, my life would still be filled with people and activities and project and words. The life force remains, even as you cleanse and prune it back. Until this physical body stops for good, life is always going to be a continual flow of pulling in, holding to our hearts, and letting go. It happens with our oxygen, it happens with our old love letters, it happens with our parents, it happens with our children. We inhale our loved ones in, hold them to us, and then we need to let them go. And all the while there is new love to bring in, new things to discover, new life force to ingest. We bring in. We savor. We release. It's such a beautiful system, it almost takes my breath away. # posted by Katherine Doughtie Nolan @ 11:16 PM  
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