Welcome to the Path of Breath
The paths of healing are many, the tools we have varied, and the outcomes of our efforts are not always easy to predict. Yet, all begins and ends with the breath, which can restore life and without which no healing can occur. The words I'm writing, your ability to read them, the technology that makes this all possible, cannot occur without our ability to breathe.
All of my herbal teachers, in different ways, emphasized the importance of the breath, and sometimes explicitly breathwork, in all healing work. Whether it was breathing in deeply the scent and soft heat of a freshly brewed cup of tea before drinking it or recommending simple breath-centered meditations alongside any herbal remedy, the breath as an inherent healing gift of the body was pointed to again and again. When our ability to breathe freely is disrupted, whether from illness, poor air quality or physical injury, everything else about our ability to exist and move through the world is affected. So carrying with us the sense of wonder first cultivated on our first path, I wanted to explore the path of breath with all of you.
As a far-flung community tethered together not by place, but through the time and space of our magick, it feels powerful to call upon the breath as a shared experience. Breath is a process of exchange which not only ties us deeply to our bodies and each other, but to all life on earth, from our plant kin to the vast watery lungs of the oceans and waterways of our planet. Every breath that we take today, draws in the breath of our ancestors and passes through us onwards towards our descendants. If you've ever done any sort of somatic therapy, you have probably experienced the way that our breath can help us travel backwards and forwards along our personal timelines, helping to make tangible the feelings of our experiences, from the tight breath of trauma to the relaxed sighs of release. Every breath carries a bit of our spirit, helping our soul find its way back to the body whether it's been traveling through the dream world, traveling through time and space as a part of healing work or gotten lost after an experience of shock.
Breath is a beginning. The hungry cries of a newborn baby, filling their lungs with breath as they settle into physical existence outside of the womb; the shared breath at the start of a class as everyone shifts into a space of learning; or the breathy noise of protest and wild keenings as change is fought for.
Breath is an ending. The labored death rattle of the dying as blessings are offered one final time into their ears carried on the breath of gathered family; the sun's warm sigh as day ends; or any intense outpouring of breath at the ecstatic culmination of effort.
We all have our unique relationship to our breath, whether we have a many-year breathwork practice or are just discovering what it is to breathe with intention. But all of us breathe, are breathed in by and breathe in the world around us. Whatever your work or practice in the world, there has been a time when what you did with your breath shaped the way you related to another person or an experience - whether slowing your breathing to help calm your nervous system so you could think clearly during a high-stakes moment or found yourself out-of-breath from anger in the middle of a fight. How has your breath shaped you and your relationships? While many things in our life will come and go, our breath will be with us until the very end, and so spending time on a path with our breath is one of the ways that we can practice life.
Over the next two weeks, as the Moon grows from a sliver of a crescent to a full bellied orb of light, pay attention to the ways that you are shaped by and are shaping your breath along The Gathering Path. How does your breath move through your body at different points of the day? Does your breath feel free to move or hindered? What is the path your breath takes through your healing and magickal practice? How does your breath flow between you and the people you are in relationship with?
As a witch, breath is one of our greatest vehicles of magick.
As an herbalist, the breath points to where tension and expansion lies in the body.
As a community, breath is shared and gives life to our work together.
For the path of breath we'll be journeying into the land of the lungs, exploring lung-supporting tonics and the ways that the lungs are the seat for all sorts of deep emotions in our body. We'll explore the way breath acts as a path of connection through divination and practice sacred inquiry to help us find our way along the path. Our Full Moon ritual is a simple rite full of intention that focuses on the way that we cultivate hope as a practice, helping us to recenter our energy as healers and helpers.
I hope you feel encouraged to participate in the ways that feel the most interesting and inspiring to your practice, reach out to your fellow journeyers, and bring what you learn and love back to the land you live with and the communities you love.
