Breathing - the act of taking air in and out of our bodies - is an activity intrinsically tied to being alive, yet most of us live with little conscious awareness of its existence on a daily basis. The reality of being alive can be defined by the act of breathing itself. Breathing in and out in a steady rhythm signifies that there is life within a body. When one places the finger under the nostrils of a corpse, one is seeking the feel of the breath as the telltale sign of the presence of life.
However, despite the vital role of the breath in the phenomenon of life, one can feasibly spend an entire lifetime without ever noticing that one is breathing. In lives lived such, if ever this awareness does arise, it might only be when when one finds oneself gasping for breath, after a hard workout or maybe in the unfortunate situation when one is drowning underwater. In the absence of breath, breath is quickly recognized as the most important necessity for life.
The human body is an orchestra of numerous physiological processes. Among all of them the breath holds a very unique place, as it exists on the edges of certain dualities within the body-reality. An analysis using the binary of a duality can be seen as intellectual lethargy (as it undermines the existence of multiplicities), it is nonetheless useful to articulate an overarching understanding of the phenomenon of the breath. This dualistic articulation would indicate that the human body has two types of bodily functions. Take a look at any middle school biology book, you will find the mention of these two actions as Voluntary actions and Involuntary actions. The terms are self explanatory. The former refers to actions that are consciously initiated (like picking something up, chewing, speaking etc.) while the latter includes actions that are not consciously carried out (like the heartbeat, muscle spasms, salivation etc.) As we can already see from the above characterization, there exists within the body-reality atleast two dualities that are relevant to this discussion - voluntary versus involuntary, conscious versus unconscious.
While almost all functions of the body neatly fall into this dualistic representation, the breath is one of the only bodily functions that cannot be categorized as such. That is to say, the breath is neither completely voluntary nor completely involuntary; neither fully conscious nor fully unconscious. In the absence of conscious awareness of the breath, we go about your daily lives, and breath continues to flow in and out of our bodies without any singular moment of volition on our part. It is an automatic action, involuntary, continuous. On the other hand, when the consciousness is directed to the breath, you discover that you can voluntarily stop and start breathing, as you do when you take a dive underwater or hold your nose when you walk past a garbage truck. There is no other action in the body that operates in such a way. In this manner, the breath has a unique position among all human physiological functions and stands on the edge of voluntary and involuntary, the conscious and unconscious mind.
It is therefore no coincidence, that meditative practices that have developed around the world over thousands of years, with an articulable goal of "expanding consciousness", all begin with a focus on the breath. This is true for all types of meditations, be it the 15 minutes guided meditation on Youtube before you sleep or the very rigorous practice of Vipassana meditation for 10 hours a day, the act of meditation begins with an intentional focus and conscious awareness of the breath. This is so because of the unique place of the breath between the conscious and the unconscious mind. As such, the breath is the gateway to the unconscious mind, and the key to expanding the boundaries of the conscious mind.
While the act of paying attention to the breath may sound simple enough, many people including myself, find it to be one of the most difficult things to do. For it is the nature of the untrained mind to flitter in between the spaces of attention that one might achieve momentarily. Nonetheless, a habit of being aware of one's breath is the certain first step towards understanding the unconscious nature of one's own mind and the unconscious reality of the universe.
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