Making an offer / Prana

In an email to clients on the threshold of making an offer (which was the culmination of a cartoonishly fast sequence of events leading up to that point), I almost wrote: “take a deep breath”, but didn't, because:


1 - Oy, so diluted.  
Curse pop culture for co-opting this instruction. Unless the offeror of the instruction is able to emphasize this advice in some way that differs from magazine gloss, there will likely be no benefit--the recipient might take one elongated robotic inhale and exhale, wait one count, and continue with anxious monologue.  Maybe there would be two or three of such “breaths” or moments before the instructed is permitted to continue with their monologue. True, one could argue that even within the brief time that a nerve-driven human interrupts their brain activity to shift focus toward their breath, something might change in their perspective.  But I believe most of us need more than that to recalibrate energy*.


2 - That’s not actually what I meant. 
What I actually meant was “go upside-down for at least two minutes, maybe twice”.  This is what I do to jostle energetic clogs resulting from life tension.  But that didn't seem appropriate.

“Take a deep breath” is most often a well-intended reminder based on the premise that the breath will create space between tightly-knit thoughts. I think this is an intuitive human concept, as most of us have learned to some extent that when we feel frenetic, it only takes a matter of living in life other than our mindset at that given moment to gain perspective.  With the application of breath, which is often likened to the bridge between the conscious and the unconscious, and/or the bridge between the body and the mind, and/or the bridge between material experience and spirit experience, an ingredient of otherness is injected to the miasma of churnings. 

The breath is also linked to Prana.  Prana is a Sanskrit word whose soundbite definition is “life force”.  Prana can be generalized as the animating energy of life that ebbs and flows depending on various circumstances.  Prana is linked with breath, and while prana isn’t breath, it can be accessed through breath and may conversely offer access to breath. It is reflective of breath and breath reflects it. One deep breath or even 4 might fall short of altering prana, but their IS relationship.  

When prana gets stuck or arrhythmic, we might feel edgy, unsettled, obsessive, sluggish, or as though we are housing an interior runaway train. When prana flows well, we have an experience of our own individual vitality.  Words I would assign to the way well-flowing prana feels are those that describe the most heightened of our human moments such as “empowered”, or “peaceful”, but these words fall short. I believe we’ve all had a taste of it.  

Hatha Yoga suggests that energy can be recalibrated* through form while conscious engagement with breath is employed. In so doing, the state of our prana is vicariously and/or intentionally worked and reworked. There are different theories on assisting the flow of prana through choreography that involves pulsing stillness with movement--stillness within movement and movement within stillness and the way the two templates play each other while breath is at play.  But really, there is no one right way--the individual, time and circumstance should govern the method.  I like to go upside down personally.  Others might enjoy a run.

...and while we're on the subject, endorphin is a word that belongs to a different milieu, but I’m not unconvinced that flowing prana and endorphins aren’t close relatives...(if not one and the same...shshshshs).


Going on the premise that there are various ways to invoke an experience of pranic flow, excitement may instigate a push through clogs in the channels that prana travels as well. I never feel so agile, effective and artful as moments when my efforts have paid off and opened up the vistas of possibility, whether that effort is physical, mental or emotional, though physical often works the fastest. That said, excitement can work both ways--seeing the house you love while life is not forming around it well, can knot that vital flow up pretty tightly.  The first house I ever fell in love with made me hyperventilate.  It was out of our price range. It swept me out of myself in a way that I’ll never forget.  

The above mentioned clients who did not end up being the recipient of the advice to “take a deep breath”, had started out contacting me to show them around the town I live in as a potential future relocation.  They were curious. They made plans to come out on a Sunday, which is when public open houses happen to occur, so I asked if they would like to attend a few in order to see what was selling for how much. They said, “sure”.  A spark was ignited and we set out viewing more homes by appointment. Within two weeks they had found an ideal house.  What started as a casual exploration now turned towards a major and unexpected alteration of everything in their life.  I imagine their prana was quite affected by this.


The above mentioned clients didn’t buy the house.  They reported to me that they had gone home after what was to be their final viewing of the house, turned off their tech devices, and had a quiet, focused evening with each other examining the potential move from different vantage points. I wonder if during this exchange with one another, they worked through more than the physical matter of their move. They recalibrated* and made a truly intelligent decision.  I wonder if their breath feels better today than it has in a week.