Breath: The Surprising Power of Invisibility
Please welcome my inaugural guest blogger, writer Leah Silverman.
Leah Silverman grew up in rural Ontario, Canada, and still misses the chickens that used to run around her back yard. She moved to Texas for her husband's job in 2001, and is still getting used to the weather. Her happy place is at her computer with a cat in her lap.
"Look," my mother said to me; I must have been seven or eight. "Look how strong our breath is." Then she blew a stream of air at the paper mobile hanging from the library's low ceiling.
I don't remember what the mobile looked like, but I will always remember how the dangling pieces were pushed into a slow turn by my mother's exhale. I remember how fascinated I was, that something seemingly so insubstantial could move something else. I hadn't thought breath could be a powerful thing.
It still shocks me sometimes; how powerful our breath really is. We breathe unthinkingly about twenty thousand times a day, and yet it is the most immediately vital of all our bodily functions. We can live for days without water, weeks without food, but without air we only have minutes. We can calm roiling emotions if we control our breaths, and we learn to intuit others' emotions by how they breathe.
An average human being breathes over 20,000 times a day.
My mind wanders too easily to be good at meditation, but I've always appreciated how it focuses on breath and completely filling your lungs. Deep, slow breathing is calming, nourishing and satisfying. I like imagining the oxygen flowing from my lungs through my veins, keeping me alive twenty thousand times a day, for all the days I still have.
The breath is as insubstantial as air, but strong enough to give life, a powerful thing indeed.
Learn more about kinetic art and artists here: https://magazine.artland.com/top-ten-kinetic-art-artists-and-pioneers/
Read more about breath and health here: https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/relaxation-techniques-breath-control-helps-quell-errant-stress-response