Breath

The ability to let go is like a muscle. If left unused, it will need to be toned, brought back to life, given attention. When that ability to let go is cramping, resisting, and refusing, breath and nurturing is often the best tool. Our bodies, like our hearts, so badly want to cling to the familiar, want to remain in the comfort zone, no matter how knarly the comfort zone might be, but it's the plunging forward and into the sticky mess of discomfort that gets us through to some other side.

We store so much old shit in our bodies. Old sadness, old anger, old insecurity. It turns to rot in there and the aches and pains we start to feel in the middle of our lives are just the first resonances of that old shit. All the words we wish we had said, all the times our hearts were broken or betrayed, our bodies respond with tension, stress hormones or just plain heartaching, and those responses, those stress hormones, if left untended, if left alone.... they ferment in our bodies like sour milk. They become those little knots of lactic acid inbetween the shoulder blades.

I'm starting to feel something palpating. It happens every spring. Every spring some of that old stored up baggage gets shed, like skin, making way for the new. It happens with the first calls of geese overhead in the morning, with the robins sprinkling their song in the bush elm outside the house. It happens when the sun starts to make a wider ring around the day and the snow starts to melt wider rings around the trees.

Exercise isn't such a chore when the days get longer. There's more time for it. Breathing and stretching releases all those old fermenting aches and pains. Clearing out the body seems possible. Almost as possible as clearing out the heart.