To breathe is to absorb ourselves in what surrounds us, to take in little bits of life, understand them, and give pieces of ourselves back out. Respiration is, at its core, reciprocation.”

James Nestor

Author

Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art

Breath is yet another umbilical cord, keeping us grounded within our body. We draw from our inner tree, our bronchial branches mirroring the trees outside that offer and reciprocate our breaths. Blood circulates in our bodies, flowing with each breath much like the mighty oceans that continuously move, circulating Earth’s climate with its own breath.

We have been plucked from our mother’s womb and planted into the Earth. Breath is our umbilical cord—the invisible thread weaving the web of life.

Breath is like spirit. We don’t see it, but we know it, feel it, recognize it. It moves through our bodies and within the world. The word spirit itself is conceived from the Latin spiritus, meaning “breath, spirit,” from spirare, “to breathe.”

Humans are spiritual beings. Since the dawn of humanity, we have shared stories of the spirit and our creator. Every corner of the world, each community, each religion offers us these stories, making the invisible spirit visible through acts of faith, kindness, love, and virtues that unite us with mysterious realms of fulfillment.

We are ingrained to seek meaning and purpose, to connect with something greater than ourselves. In our search for our creator, we have conjured endless worlds of vivid imagination. It’s a journey, leading us from one truth to another, each one powerful and viable. We may call out to the skies and search for heavens, but the ground beneath our feet is the ultimate sign of our creator. Earth is the source of the creation we see around us. We are already connected to something larger than ourselves, in every moment, with every breath.

Breath and language are bridges to other worlds, from the innermost to the outermost. Within each of us lies a hidden realm, a sacred space where we converse with a higher power. This is a quiet dialogue, where the mind’s eye reveals our unique truth, and yet the personal and the universal feel as one.

Language may be a gift through which we reach into each other’s inner worlds and expand our collective moral imagination. It is the keeper of magic and mystery.

I wonder—who first imagined the spirit, transforming an individual’s inner dialogue into a collective language? The breath, spirare, became the spirit—the glimmering, invisible reality we reach for. Everything around us is breathing, human and non-human. Then what makes us spiritual and the non-human only corporeal? Couldn’t the “non-human” also be called the “more-than-human”?

The “more-than-human” intelligence speaks another language—a language that reflects cumulative coherence, a collective wisdom. The words we know as humans are borrowed from this intelligence. Language is not unique to humans; we have only discovered part of the language spoken by the whole.

There are stories all around us. If spirituality is the expansion of self into the realm of fulfillment, connecting with the collective and the whole, then who gets to decide that the metamorphosis of a butterfly, the murmuration of starlings, the schooling patterns of fish, the offerings of fungi, and the interwoven roots of trees are not sharing stories of their creator? Can we truly reach their inner dialogue? How can we know they lack a sense of sacredness?

The rational mind may reach the moon or fathom the deepest ocean, but it might not unravel the riddles of our own complex emotions. Who is the animal that lives within us? What is the purpose of our inner light and our internal darkness?

Each of us, every human among us, carries an inner darkness—losing a loved one, suffering illness, facing neglect, witnessing the climate crisis. We carry the weight of the world on our fragile human shoulders. Searches for “eco-anxiety” and “climate anxiety” have increased by 4,590% from 2018 to 2023. The youth live in a constant state of grief, with news arriving at their fingertips. We are told repeatedly that Earth needs saving, that if we don’t act now, it will be too late. But what about individual suffering? Is there a space for a moment to breathe, to know the truths of our own spirit?

What if Earth needs us to save ourselves, rather than her?

Perhaps then we would finally be liberated from guilt and breathe with her spirit. We are still connected to her by an umbilical cord, and we humans, as a species, are in our infancy.

We are here only to work on our inner light; our best selves are the greatest gift we can bring to the world. Every time we learn to shine and guide ourselves out of our internal darkness, our light reaches other spirits in both the human and more-than-human world. We belong to each other, in both darkness and light.

So breathe, and call your spirit back home into your body!

Don’t let it wander in misery. Breathe as if it’s your prayer and offer it to the Earth, for she will let you be your own saviour.

Oh! What a beautiful gift indeed!

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice—

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

“Mend my life!”

each voice cried.

But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do—

determined to save

the only life you could save.

The Journey by Mary Oliver 

Words by Priyanka Singh Parihar