Breathing Life, Shimmering Sound
“O Thou! The Breathing Life of all,
Creator of the Shimmering Sound that touches us.
Focus your light within us — make it useful:
Create your reign of unity now —
Your one desire then acts with ours, as in all light, so in all forms….”Aramaic into English Version of the Lord’s Prayer
by Neil Douglas-Klotz in Prayers of the Cosmos
I stared at the screen waiting for my Zoom interview to begin. The thought crossed my mind, “Now I am here (early as always). What do I do?” I lengthened my spine in true yoga teacher fashion and decided to breathe.
A week later I sat on my bathroom floor paranoid during a tornado watch. My back against the wall with my laptop and my book: “Now I am here. What should I do?” I sat up a little straighter and intentionally breathed.
Yoga taught me how to breathe with purpose. In one of the first yoga studio classes I took, I learned how to breathe. The next day my chest was aching because I never really breathed deeply until then. Ujjayi breathing, also known as ocean breath, fills the lungs of the student before releasing a breath while the muscles constrict in the back of the throat. The sound that vibrates through the practice mimics a crash of an ocean wave or a sigh that fogs up your mirror. Though there are variations to the practice, I’ve known the inhale as quiet, just existing. The exhale is loud announcing the life being released. The wave builds with anticipation and claps with certainty when it finds the shore.
Breathing Life, Shimmering Sound.
When I first heard this translation of the Lord’s Prayer in a workshop with Doreen Corwith Eckert (read her review of the book here), those four words were etched into my consciousness.
My inhale embodies the Breathing Life. My exhale escapes as the Shimmering Sound. My soul breathes in God the Spirit and finds life by simply being. Breathing God’s life navigates into every fiber of my being. The vibration of God’s will leaves my vocal cords to dissipate into the world with confidence. The sound shimmers like gold glitter being blown into the wind, traveling near and far.
Create your reign of unity now.
God appears in yoga through my intentional breath. Every time I step on the mat to practice yoga as a Christian I ask God to “create your reign of unity now.” I seek the unity of God’s life-giving action and this seeking creates refinement like shimmering gold. I breathe God in with the way I know how, humbly waiting to be filled. I transform God’s good news as I breathe out God’s word. God finds the small spaces set in my heart. In the pause, God speaks. God moves into the world crashing loudly like ujjayi breath or gently like a shimmer.
Create your reign of unity now.
Image found through Unsplash free license.
As in all light, so in all forms.
God exists in the many forms of my breath and being, among both the loud crash and the gentle shimmer. How am I to navigate holding what seems like two opposing truths: the impactful sound and the quiet whisper? Maybe even holding my imperfection with God’s perfection? Yoga creates the sacred holding space of feeling inadequate and complete at the same moment in time. Following Christ’s teaching of the golden rule—“love your neighbor as yourself”—allows the holding of two truths, the space for honoring my faith, and my spiritual neighbors who saw the beauty of yoga. The beauty lies in holding the two truths, whether that is the crash and the quiet, my imperfection and God’s perfection, or the Aramaic translation of the Lord’s Prayer and the one I recite from memory.
