40 Years of Breathing

Breathing The first time I wondered why I was breathing was when I was two years old. I noticed that air was going in and out of my nose and I didn’t know why. I tried not breathing and found that wasn’t possible, but I couldn’t understand why breathing was necessary. Figuring out why I needed to eat and drink was easier—to the two-year-old mind it was obvious, but I couldn’t understand breathing. That need to comprehend breathing has stayed with me—and now 40 years later, I’m finally beginning to answer my question. Judaism is a religion that I love. It is a part of my being—in ways that I am still only beginning to understand. As I have changed, the parts of Judaism that speak to me have changed too. A good example of this is the Sh’ma. This most important prayer/meditation has never meant very much to me—even though I know that it expresses a lot of what it means to be a Jew. I say it along with everybody else when I’m at services, but have never really put my energy into it. However, now that I’m seeing more about why we breathe, I’m also seeing more in this watchword of Judaism. Sh’ma Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad. Listen Up Israel! Hashem is our God and our God is ONE! Webster’s Ninth Collegiate Dictionary says that ONE is the number denoting UNITY. It goes on to say that ONE constitutes a unified entity of two or more components. The verb unify indicates a process of becoming ONE. But if God is already ONE, then where is the process? Where are the two or more components that are becoming ONE? We find the answer by understanding breathing. Judaism says that God created the world by speaking. The first thing that God spoke about was Light. On that first day of creation, we see three things—Breath, Light, and then the absence of Light, or Darkness. Looking a little closer, we can see a fourth—Movement. Breath is all about Movement. There is the In-Breath and there is the Out-Breath. But Light is also about movement because we can only have Light if we have Darkness—so we move from Darkness into Light and from Light into Darkness. The linking together of Light and Darkness through Movement means that we can participate in the process of UNITY. Another way of saying this is—Breath creates Light and Breath creates Darkness through Movement. Everything is linked and it is the linking which is the KEY. One of my favorite things to do is to sing a niggun. I love singing a niggun on Friday night to begin Shabbat dinner or to link hand washing with motzi. The niggun, because it repeats itself over and over is said to peel away the layers of a person and allows a person to reach the very core of their being. Why does singing have the power to do that? Because when we use our breath to sing we are actually connecting with the other layers of our being. To understand this, we need to look closely at the layers of the body. Yoga speaks very clearly about the layers of a Human Being. The Tibetan Book of Yoga says there are 5 different layers. These layers are: 1. The layer of the physical body 2. The layer that sustains the physical body 3. The layer of communication within the body 4. The layer of thought 5. The layer of the mind The Tibetan Book of Yoga describes each of those layers in detail, saying that in the second layer lies anything that gives sustenance to the body. Food and water, as well as breathing are located in the second layer. But breathing is so very much more important than eating or drinking and we must cut ourselves off from breathing when we eat or drink that I am going to describe the second layer simply as Breath. The third layer contains the Central Nervous System, which is where the electrical system of our body is. Looking at the layers in this way gives us another way to describe them. 1. Physical body 2. Breath 3. Light 4. Movement 5. Stillness All of the layers are linked. This means that making changes in the physical body or the Breath will make changes in the amount of Light, the amount of Movement (thoughts) and the amount of Stillness (Mind) available to us. So far we have looked only at the layer of Breath, saying there is the In-Breath and the Out-Breath. The Tibetan Book of Yoga says that life begins with an initial In-Breath at birth, and ends with a final Out-Breath at the moment of death. We can see this when we look at a tombstone as well. Tombstones frequently have two dates on them separated by a hyphen: Birth, Death and the Space in between—or, the first In-Breath, the last Out-Breath and the Space in between. We all know that everything we are takes place in the Space of the hyphen—the Space in between. This means that we must look more closely at Space. What do Judaism and Yoga have to say about Space? Both say that Space is very important and both say that creating Space is not trivial. The Jews were made to wander in the desert for 40 years before they were allowed into their Holy Land (Holy Space). Yoga tries to create space regardless of what is happening in the outside world. No matter how the body is bent or twisted, the goal is to create space. Creating space helps us to find our Center and finding our Center allows us to remain non-violent both to ourselves and others. We learn to support the heart by creating space in the body, and in that way our heart can open up to All. Before the universe was created, God was All there was. Because God’s essence was All, there was no Space to create anything. In order to Create, God pulled some of the essence back—tsimtsum—and put some of that essence into physical form. In other words, God’s Light took on a physical form in order to create the universe. This means that each person has God’s Light within—in the form of Divine Sparks. Looking a little closer at tsimtsum we can see that it describes God’s initial breath. The pulling back is the In-Breath (creating Space) and then the world was created through the Out-Breath, but it was a controlled Out-Breath (why we must also learn to control our breath), leaving everything in the universe permeated with God’s essence or Light. And here’s the interesting part—liberating the Divine Light—or Divine Sparks as they are commonly referred to actually increases the intensity of Divine Light available to the universe! Where can we find Divine Sparks most easily in our body? To answer that question we return to Webster’s Ninth Collegiate Dictionary. There, a spark is described as “a luminous disruptive electrical discharge of very short duration between two conductors separated by a gas (as air).” This is very interesting because we have such a space within our body—in the Central Nervous System. In the gap between two neurons, a spark travels when a message needs to get somewhere in the body. This means that God is in the Spaces. Looking in this way at Space we see that God was with the Jews when they were traveling in the Space of the desert, and when they were finally allowed into their Holy Land and we see that God is present with us each time we breathe. How nice to know that since we are constantly breathing, God is constantly with us. And since our lives can be described so easily as the Space between the two dates on our tombstone, it is another way to see that God is always with us. Now we understand that we breathe in order to create Space, and we create Space to find God. We find God to find ourselves and what we’re really doing is breathing in order to become ONE. The reassuring part for me is that since we can’t help but breathe, we can’t help but become ONE. I once described yoga to a friend by saying that it justified my body and soul. It was the best way to describe how I felt after a yoga class because the word justify has a very physical meaning to me. Some time ago I worked at a book publisher where my job was to put books together. When all of the pages had been cut and ordered, I would pick up the stack of papers an