Moonthly Letter XIII: Breath as mantra, breath as medicine
On stillness, spaciousness and surrender through a new love affair
Dear wanderer, in case you’re new here, hello. Welcome to Moonthly Letters - a series of personal meanderings that take you behind the scenes on what it means to cultivate trust in paving our path. I imagine this to be a place of honest conversations from my heart to yours. Plus, each one includes a few delights that have been lighting up my world recently. Deep breath, Silvia.
It was during this morning’s yin yoga practice when my teacher spoke these words. It was in that moment when they truly landed in my body:
Our breath is our mantra.
When I reflected on it, I realized the profound depth of it. Our breath is our mantra, our medicine. Our breath is our trusty companion. Our breath is the sweet medicine for racing thoughts, restlessness, frustration, chaos, or anxiety. Funnily enough, it is our breath that holds the power to change our state of being.
Isn’t that wonderful?
It was in a recent breathwork session that a breather of mine was able to tap into her life force energy that she’d not felt in a long time. She reflected on her meditation practice and wondered whether a conscious breath practice might be better suited to her busy mind.
Her Head and Ajna in her body graph are both completely open.
Combining Human Design with breathwork has been a dream of mine since breathwork found me. I could pretty much straight away see the beautiful synthesis and the medicine they together could offer.
My own rewilding journey with my completely open Root center began with breath. I remember attending a 6-week container with a local breathworker and really struggling to connect with the pacing of the breath that she was using.
It was only in the third or fourth session that I realized that I didn’t have to follow her pace. In the altered state of consciousness, I could hear my truth. I could hear that it was OK to trust my own pace. I could hear that I was allowed to trust my own pace.
And so I did. And that whole experience was such a beautiful permission slip to connect with my sacred pace.
Earlier this week, I held a group breathwork session where we as a collective explored what it means to trust our sacred pace. We explored the concept of rewilding in correlation to our Root. Rewilding as an ecological restoration of land and nature fits so perfectly when applied to rewilding our body graphs.
I see it as a restoration of our bodies’ natural way of moving through this life and our natural state of being. I see it as honouring our inner guidance and acting from a place of our truthfulness rather than from a place of scarcity, lack of self-trust or self-worth, or external pressures and conditions.
What rewilding our centers intends to do is to reconnect ourselves to our inherent truthfulness through self-inquiry, self-reflection, self-exploration, and breathwork. Breathwork allows us to create space to inquire, explore, and reflect but in a more somatic way that is ultimately what Human Design promotes, an experimental and experiential way of being. After all, our Human Design body graph is a representation of each of us as an energetic being.
What I’m discovering is that breathwork allows us to tap into that. And the below quote sums it up so beautifully.
“The process of breathing, if we can begin to understand it in relation to the whole of life, shows us the way to let go of the old and open to the new. It shows us the way to experience who and what we actually are. It shows us the way to wholeness and well-being.”
-Dennis Lewis-
I am beginning to see a thread weave through everything that I am here for. My personal struggles are very much tied to my open Root center but it is also a place of immense wisdom if I only choose to open up and receive. Although I consider myself a patient person, that external pressure always gets to me. And then I wonder why I feel so stuck or frustrated or way out of alignment.
Oh, the joy of the Generator way. Oh, the joy of going against our inner guidance.
So yin yoga has been such a beautiful addition to my toolkit. I find I am able to slow down despite the discomfort of my edge. I find I am able to use my breath to really connect to a point of stillness and spaciousness within. I find I am able to surrender to what is, especially as the injury from 3 years ago is still very present in the deep tissues, muscles, tendons, and ligaments of my leg.
So, although the practice itself helps me with my overall flexibility and deep tissue healing, I am finding more so, it helps me to embody the wisdom of my open Root center. And so the learning then becomes about bringing that same stillness, spaciousness, and surrender to everyday life. That’s the tricky part, right? But, as with anything, it is always a process.
I’m curious: what’s your stillness practice?
Sending you a deep and nourishing breath,
Silvia
*I LOVE the interviews of Tom Power. He recently interviewed Dan Levy where they talk about all sorts of cool stuff like the self-doubt of the creative or why there aren’t many places where we can have open and honest conversations on how hard it is to be a human.
*If you’re curious about yin yoga, I’d highly recommend Travis Eliot’s YouTube channel. There are a bunch of great sessions there. Perhaps start with this one if yin yoga is new to you.
*Even though I’ve been learning and experimenting with Human Design for about 3 years now, I am still finding that going back to basics is so empowering. I know I can definitely get lost in all the fancy details but even just your Type can open up a whole new door. The videos on types from The Human Design Portal are so worth watching.
*Another thing I’ve been exploring is the use of my own voice, which is part of our facilitator training. I came across this guy and his video on how to hum. Not only is it practical but he is hi-la-ri-ous!
I am now taking astrology, Human Design + Breathwork bookings for February.
One-on-one breathwork sessions to explore what’s present for you in your life through dialogue and various breathwork techniques. These sessions are 1hr15min for £33.
Human Design + Breathwork to explore cultivating a deeper connection with your inner guidance. These sessions are 2hrs 30min for £111.
The Pilgrim’s Inn is my Human Design + astro offering to explore your charts through a more embodied, explorative, experiential space so that you can reconnect and realign with your beautiful magical self and really ground yourself in the present moment. These sessions are 1hr for £69.
You can also support me and my work by becoming a paid subscriber, either £3.69 for a month or £36.90 for a whole year. In either case, you will receive a mini 15-minute astro+Human Design voice note from my soul to yours, full of insights and wisdom nuggets to help you ground in the present moment. Alternatively, you can become a Founding Member and receive a one-on-one Human Design+Breathwork session with me.
Love the breath is our mantra perspective! And open root here so I feel you on the pressure. I think this is my biggest challenge within my chart if I’m honest, of course it alchemises to wisdom but it’s a constant learning! X
I love the way you have reminded me that stillness is so needed. I have begun walking in the mornings, in the stillness of the crisp air along a lake where the birds come out for their first morning swim. It's lovely and refreshing, and really helps to balance my moods as well as how my body feels sitting at a desk all day. I stretch when I get home but I don't really stay there long enough to fall into the stillness, to let it catch me. And reading your post I realised I should, I should stay a little longer than my busy brain feels is necessary and shift into the uncomfortableness of it.