Breathe Strength

Breathe Strength

Strength is to generosity what compassion is to love. Strength..just feel what happens when you let this word roll of your tongue. As you say it out loud how does your body, mind and spirit respond? What is its vibrancy in your being? What does this tell you about the quality of strength? Feel it in your spine, in your heart. I am finding myself sitting upright, finding the gravity of my own back bone...feeling my center. There is a steadfast quailty, a grounding in, a sense of noble knowing. Notice what happens to your own body.- When does strength become fixed and rigid and more like arrogance and "rightness". When is strength in service of the higher good, when it is tamed- when does brute strength become noble strength?

Breathing strength is an invitation to feel your center- your core, your ability to take the raw vital life force of protection, tenacity, perserverance, convition and be able to focalize its amazing fire inside your loving heart. Strength without heart becomes dagnerous at best and domination at worst. Strength with out generosity or compassion runs the risk of being untamed, unfocussed and in its ferocity may burn all who step close.

Have you ever felt yourself in the heat of your anger wishing to be of service to the higher good- of wanting to say something important- but found your self communicating in a way that simply burnt all those around you? Often times when we are feeling our strength it can be connected also to our anger- this is when the harsh light of our "truth" may in its ferocity damage somone. Breathing strength gives us the chance for us to take responsibility for our amazing life force energy to focalize it through the lens of our hearts before we choose to communicate in the world.

Finding our strength is an internal 'blissipline" (thank you Kat for passing this on to me!) it is commitment to feeling the deep power inside of ourselves and offering this power in service of the higher good. Strength is physcial, emotional and spiritual in nature..exploring our ability to live in our strength in a loving and compssionate way is a core spiritual practice. Breathing strength is the pracitce of staying heart connected as we move into our power.

The shadow side of strength can have many faces- control, domination, violence, negation of feelings. fixity, arrogance, or alternatively it can look like collpase, victimhood, lack of internal center, inability to say no, fear of staying the course,lack of responsibility in managing emotions. In our culture strength has been extremely genderized- how we understand strength is colored by our cutural obsession with the need to be the 'best'. To be somehow superior. To be strong implies that others are weak- indeed survival of the fittest is a core value of our cutural belief system. As we move in our evolution, strength becomes a virtue, a quality that is an alchemical distillation of complex emotions into a noble feeling state where there is a conviction based in humility and kindness.

Fierce compassion is a form of strength that we all need in our lives and in our world. Breathing strength is an invitaiton to look at all the ways that you may have misued or abandoned or negated your own strength. What are the beliefs that you have about being strong? And what happens when you hear the word weakness- how does your body respond? Do you collpase a littel or do you feel yourself rally? In noticing how we hold these different energies we are able to bring the focus of our awareness and the light of our heart so that Breathing Strength becomes a practice of subtle ferocity.

An invitaiton for today: think of someone you admire- who is the epitome of this kind of loving strength. How do they hold themselves in the world? I look to the Dalia lama- whose strength is loving kindness - Breathing strength is a practice of feeling and taking responsibility for our thoughts, words and actions...it is finding the way to communicate with conviction and love. Intend today to breathe strength in all your thoughts, words and actions..........