After Alphonso’s share about the way a single stone creates ripples, I wanted to offer a breath practice to sit with that image a little longer. This is a different way of doing Bellows Breath. Normally I’d tell you to do this seated, so you can feel the whole circle of breath moving outward from your center. But lying down on my back after a long walk in the Florida sun, I could feel the concentric circles more clearly. On my walks along the marina in my neighborhood, I purposefully look for the circles left by dolphins. I thought of this as I breathed. The rise for air. The brief arc of descent and the widening circles left behind. It informed today’s practice. Funny how nature does that! So here’s a different way to work with Bellows Breath: - Inhale through the nose and visualize the breath rising through the central channel. Feel the lift of prana, the upward movement of life force. - Exhale through the nose on the “descent” and visualize concentric circles moving outward from the center of you. Allow yourself to gently push out the exhale, feeling into this widening response. If you’re lying down, notice how this can be felt in the back ribs, the side waist, the back of the heart, even the places that usually stay a little hidden from awareness. Let the inhale rise. Let the exhale ripple. Notice how one movement creates another. How the body receives ascent and descent. Practice this for 1–3 minutes and then rest for a moment. Notice what is still moving after the breath settles. (Or, if you're like me, use it to fall asleep!)

Like a stone dropped in the river and creates ripples in all directions, the One becomes the many!...those ripples can intersect and create new ripples and get fooled or fool other ripples into assuming or give the illusion of the source of the initial drop that created the original ripple...it becomes an endless search by primary & secondary ripples of seeking the original ripple...an intelligent one shouts, all ripples are the river 🤔, yes true, but the thought of the cycle ⭕️ of who created the river and the ripples or the stone or even where the stone came from, spirals 🌀...

I've been posting daily since April 1st and I always wonder will the day come when I run out of things I want to say? If you read my morning pages today--which is me in my roughest draft--you'd say no. But I won't post that here today. I want to spend sometime with the idea, give it a little space. And besides, today, I really want to listen. Do you know what I mean? Sometimes you're with family and friends and all they do is ask questions. Sometimes you just want to sit in the pause. Elongate it. Breathe into it. I've been actively practicing listening in a few ways. There's a technique called "focusing" introduced by the American philosopher Eugene Gendlin. Really it's just you echoing back someone else's felt sense. I've been taking a workshop through the International Focusing Center about the intersection between meditation and focusing. During the session we have breakout rooms where it's okay to just be in presence and not say a word. It's actually very powerful. And then, there's the experience of end-of-life doula training, which I'm taking at the invitation of the hospice center I volunteer for. Here we're taught that a doula's job is to listen, with your whole self, your whole embodied sensing, and just let the person in front of you speak. Or just breathe. No fixing. No advice. No sharing of your own experience, unless asked for. Just your silent listening presence. We don't need to fill space with our own voices, whether spoken or written, or through excessively looping thoughts. We can breathe into the space and really be present for someone else's voice. For someone else's breath. And for them to know we are here for them to be heard. I'd love to be that person present for you. Share. Or just breathe.