Inhale. Exhale.:Breathing Exercises From Death Row

Inhale. Exhale.:Breathing Exercises from Death Row

*Steven Nelson is a prisoner on death row in Texas. The Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood serves as his spiritual advisor. This piece flows out of a conversation that Dr. Hood had with Nelson on breathing.

Close your eyes. Breathe. Invite God in. Exhale. Breathe. Imagine love. Exhale love. Breathe. Really meditate on what love looks like. Exhale. Breathe. Really meditate on giving love away. Exhale. Breathe. Imagine love. Exhale love. Breathe. In your breathing, invite God to exist with you. Exhale. Open your eyes.

How should we breathe? It’s a basic question with profound implications. The way that we breathe determines our existence. If we stop breathing, we can’t survive. Each breath that we take means something.

Love. The greatest of all constructs. How does one breathe it in? How does one breathe it out? Love is not a substance you can physically breathe. It is more of a construct to describe a state of being. Then again, when we breathe, we are taking our place in the universe. We are inhaling and exhaling life. What do we want our life to be about? How can we make each breath that we take in to be about love…each breath that we breath out to be about love?

God breathed life into existence. How do we breathe life into others? Lives that matter are the ones that exist to give life to others. Love is about sharing life. We cultivate love of self so that we might give such love away. Each breathe strengthens one to exhale…to exhale life. One cannot love somebody else until they figure out how to love their self.

The problems with our society originate from the fundamental inability of humanity to breathe right. Everybody walks around hating their self and can’t figure out why they can’t love someone else or why can’t nobody else love them. Fix yourself first. Get your breathing right. God breathed live. We can too.

We are surrounded by people desperate to find their next breath. We can be the source. We can breathe on others. We can breathe for others. God loves us. Such love teaches us how to share love….how to share breath.

Too often we think that the point of life is to get as far as you can as fast as you can. God is telling us to look back. We were made in the image of God. We are to do as God has done…exhale.

Inner peace comes from the daily practice of breathing right. We close our eyes to push out distractions. We invite God in to remind us that God is the one who gave us breath. We breathe to remind us of our need to breathe…and our desire to be conscience of each breath. We imagine what we want our breaths to be for. We imagine giving our self to others. We draw back to imagining the very definition of what love is. We breath life. We exhale life. In our inhaling and exhaling, we ask God to make all that we do to be about love. Conscious of how our breathing can change the world, we open our eyes to proceed out into the world.