Breathe

Earth’s breath in the reeds

The practice is simply this: keep coming back to your breath during the day.  Just take a moment.  This will give your mind a steadiness and your breath a gracefulness . . . There’s so much to let go of, isn’t there?  Your nostalgia and your regrets.  Your fantasies and your fears.  What you think you want instead of what is happening right now.  Breathe.

~ Rodney Yee, Yoga: The Poetry of the Body

Wind in the oak

It’s morning, and I’m sitting here thinking about, concentrating on, the breath.  Inhale.  Exhale.  Too shallow.  Try again.  Inhale.  Exhale.  Take a deep breath.  Pause.  Let it go.  What is it I’m letting go of?  The breath, the tension, the fear.

I am dealing with a fear today.  It’s a silly little thing, but I’ve had it forever and no amount of immersion therapy seems to help.  However, it is something I need to do so I will do it.  I am going to get in the car and drive for the first time since moving to the Eastern Shore.

Turbulence

Those who have followed me for a while already know, maybe, that I have a fear of driving.  I drive when I have to, but it seems that every time I drive the car, the fear grows worse, and I worry that there is a limit to that fear, that I have so many drives left in me before I can’t do it at all.  I know that isn’t true, although it could be true if I were to allow it to be true.

Driving here should be easy for me, I think, once I get past this first drive.  There is some traffic around here, but not much (especially if you compare it to the traffic in the Baltimore and D.C. areas).  I want to be able to drive myself to Assateague Island so I can roam around with my camera and not feel as if I’m holding someone else up while I slow walk or spend an hour in the same area, watching and listening and learning.  I want to be able to take myself to the store to do the shopping.  I want to go to Chincoteague or to the library or to get my hair cut without having M drive me.  Mostly, I want to banish this fear, but wonder if that’s even possible at this point.

Light at the end of the trail

In about an hour or so I will get in the driver’s seat of the car, start it up, grasp the steering wheel tightly, and white knuckle my way to a hair salon to get my hair cut.  It’s an easy drive.  A left out of the driveway (and I have 1/4 mile of driveway to warm up and recall my driving skills!), a right at the end of our road, a left at the first light, straight on for about 14 miles, take a left, stay to the right around a small curve in the road, and I’m there.  The return trip will be even easier.  Left and around the curve, right to get back on the highway, right on a road that runs on a diagonal (a shortcut on a back road), another right, a left, and the final right back to the driveway and home.

The important thing is to remember to breathe.

Blustery day

Listen, are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?

~ Mary Oliver

Time for me to get up and walk and think about other things for a little while.  Thank you for visiting, and sitting with me as I work my way through my fear.  I feel better already.  When I return from my trip, I’ll go for a walk and see what the strong wind wrought yesterday.

Fearless Robin.  (Paint strokes on the sky done in Photoshop.)

Be good, be kind, be loving.  Just Be.  🙂