Coming Back to Breath

This week I returned to my usual activities after being out for over four weeks.

And when I say out, I mean no gym, no running, no hot Pilates… only slow walks and very gentle yoga.

What that time out gave me was something I didn’t even realise I needed.
Time. Space. Stillness.

It gave me the opportunity to practice breathwork on a daily basis. To drop deeper into meditation. To begin to gently peel away old feelings of anxiety and tension that I hadn’t even realised I was holding in my body.

And in doing so, it opened me up to a clearer way of feeling, a clearer way of thinking, and a deeper connection to myself.

I am a firm believer in the idea that the body keeps the score. There’s actually a book with that very title, currently winging its way to me as I write this.

What we experience in life, whether positive or negative, we carry it. We store it. It lives somewhere within us.

And for me, breathwork is the reset button.

My life, like most, has been a mix of highs and lows, a rollercoaster of experiences from childhood right through to now. And when things feel like they’re tipping into turmoil, my instinct has always been to do something drastic.

Usually, I go for the hair. I’ve gone from long, long hair to a tight pixie cut more times than I care to admit.

But this time… it wasn’t my hair that took the hit. It was the gym.

I had become so disconnected from my mind, my body, and my own personal story that I didn’t even realise I was losing myself.

So I changed gyms. Not once, but several times in just over a month. And somewhere along the way, I allowed my ego to take the lead. I pushed. I ignored. I overdid it. And it resulted in a significant injury, one that took away all the activities I love, the very things I believed were keeping me grounded.

But here’s the thing…

It was only when the movement was taken away and, I was forced to be still, that I remembered the breath.

As I returned this week, not just to a faster-paced walk, but back to my old gym, my familiar, my happy place, I had to check my ego at the door. And that’s not always easy. Because the ego isn’t all bad. It’s the part of us that gives us identity, it’s the part of us that allows us to move through the world as someone.

But yoga teaches us something really important about the ego. There is a difference between a healthy ego and an unhealthy one. A healthy ego is expansive, self-aware, and allows us to function and grow. An unhealthy ego is contractive, defensive, self-critical, and often driven by fear.

The practice isn’t to destroy the ego, but to observe it, to notice when it’s speaking and to recognise the stories it tells us about who we are and what we should be doing. Because when we over-identify with those stories, we create what yoga calls Avidya, a kind of misunderstanding or mis-seeing of who we truly are. And that’s where the tension, the fear, and the pressure begin.

What this time out has reminded me is that we don’t always need to push harder. Sometimes, we need to slow down we need to soften and to listen.

To come back to the breath.

Right now, with everything going on in the world, it feels more important than ever that we learn to live from a place of love rather than fear, and breathwork, meditation, and simply allowing ourselves to pause, these are the tools that bring us back.

Back to ourselves.
Back to clarity.
Back to what’s real.

Because sometimes, losing the things we think are keeping us grounded… is exactly what brings us home.