Category: breathwork

  • Peace, Presence, Power: Walking The Dog Again

    I’m still thinking about the dog walking. “Now to carry Dog’s lessons when she isn’t there at the end of the leash to keep track of my mind.” Exactly. It’s so much easier when the dog is there beside me.

    I know what to do, but without that waiting, eager being at the end of the leash, I forget. I still behave as if I think that Be Prepared means Expect the Worst. Stay Alert to all the ways things could go wrong. Watch for Trouble. Gird your loins.

    “Breathe. Sink into each step and be here with the earth, pacing her heartbeat into my own. Let that steady, slow, peace fill me…There is only this moment, this breath, this meditative footstep, and beside me, her toenails clicking,” I wrote.

    Peace and presence bring power, but if I want to be present in peace, then loin-girding and tensing my muscles to spring isn’t the way to go. That kind of preparation doesn’t work. Not in our urban jungle life today, and not, I suspect, all that well for the pre-historic hunter either. It certainly doesn’t work for me. It takes calm, centred awareness to survive in jungles.  

    presence-615646_960_720

    The dog taught me how to calm the moment. If I pay attention, I can see that she has another lesson for me. She is always in each moment. She doesn’t carry any burden with her from play to sleep to eat to walk.

    Me, on the other hand, I had to breathe and focus through every step of our walk because my worries bounced on the end of my toes and clamored for my attention. I can’t blame them. I invited them along.

    I found myself thinking about a poster my pilot brother had on his wall when he started flying lessons. 

    “A superior pilot uses his superior judgment to avoid situations that would require the use of his superior skills.” – Frank Borman

    Ahh. I see.

    Being prepared for life means living the kind of life where the things that I am preparing for don’t need preparation. I don’t always know what will happen or what other people will do, but I can choose to always know what I will do.

    I’m about to go to a meeting. I have some seriously negative expectations about that meeting. I think I’ll let them fly away, bounce from the end of my toes into the sunny air as I walk through trees and sidewalk patios and summer downtown on my way there.

    I’m prepared, peaceful, present, and powerful. I know what I will do.

  • Walking the Dog: Why the leash in my hand guides me more than the dog

    I don’t have a dog in my life. I used to, but he went with everything else in the divorce. So when  I got to take my friend’s poodle for walks while they were away, I remembered why I loved taking my huge white Pyrenees out for long, long, rambles around the city. And I learned some things too.

    Dogs feel every tiny shift in the person attached to the other end of a leash. They feel you noticing the bicycle, the jogger, the squirrel, and they feel you worrying about it. If you are worried, they are worried, although they don’t know why. And that makes it even worse.

    sabre great pyrenees

    Dogs are entirely present all the time. They don’t understand our proclivity for absence.

    They know when you are away from yourself. They feel your mind scuttling between tomorrow, yesterday, your problems at work, your problems at home, and all the other foolish places our thoughts go when we let them.

    Dogs know when you aren’t here and now, and that worries them. If you aren’t here and now, where are you and how do they do their dogly duty sticking with you in a place that doesn’t exist?

    It seemed to me and my distracted, anxious brain that the dog was unstoppable in her frenzied desire to jump on cyclists, chase rabbits, leap in horror at ducks, and hurl herself and her lolling tongue at potential petters.

    When I saw a bicycle coming, I prepared myself.  When I spotted a rabbit, I girded my loins. Watch out. Be ready. Hold on

    So the dog said, okay. I get it. I feel you tingling right through the lease and into my skin. You want turmoil? Can do.

    And then I remembered.

    I paid attention to the knotted set of my shoulders, the hardness in my hands, and most of all, my leaping, sizzling thoughts. Breathe. Sink into each step and be here with the earth, pacing her heartbeat into my own. Let that steady, slow, peace fill me and pour down the leash to the listening dog.

    There is only this moment, this breath, this meditative footstep, and beside me, her toenails clicking.

    The next cyclist passed without a flicker of an ear.

    Now to carry Dog’s lessons when she isn’t there at the end of the leash to keep track of my mind.