Air

Pranayama is the discipline of yoga dealing with the breath. In modern times, our deeply physical relationship with air has all but been forgotten. Except for the pollens and molds, dusts, pollutants and other constituents that cause physical harm or allergic reactions, we don't see it, so we forget that it is alive within us, bringing with it necessary oxygen and other gasses that have been in the atmosphere since before our species differentiated from the rest of the living organisms on the planet. We forget, partly because respiration is such an involuntary act and the volume of air that we breathe is, for the most part, invisible. We forget that the ocean of air is directly affected and disturbed by our very passing.

Each of us is followed by a low pressure cell, if we move at all. The caress of the breeze is known less and less as we sit still in front of our computers. The sweet breath of the forest and the moist, energized  aura of the babbling brook are often unknown to those who live in canyons of concrete and steel. The air holds resonant frequencies of the life that takes place within it. These waves and reverberations wash up on us as surely as the tide washes over the shore, carrying the enrgy of far off interactions with it.

May your breath find home in a plant, may the plant one day nourish another creature and may the oxygen that the plant creates in the process, one day, find a way back to your blood. We live in an ocean of air that is slowly being poisoned for profit. May we find ways to calculate and understand the true cost and nature of crimes against this shared resource and make those responsible atone for their desecration of the most vital fluid on the planet.