Breath is a wonderful place to start our year of practice. For thousands of years, maybe tens of thousands, humans have learned to watch the miracle of the breath closely, as a path to self-discovery, and to greater ease and calm. It’s a prime lever, by which we can control our nervous systems, bringing them back into calm and stable states, when they’re over-activated.

One of the oldest and simplest instructions in Buddhism is: Stop and See. That’s exactly what breath awareness allows us to do.

To slow down our breath is to slow down our bodies, our minds and ourselves. To watch our breath is to see ourselves.

Developing a close and loving relationship with our breath just might be the best thing we can do for ourselves and our lives. By watching it, we develop a kind gaze, a loving awareness, so we can start to observe what’s happening in and around us in a kind, nurturing way. ,It allows us to nurture ourselves, our lives and the beings we interact with.

And it can also lead us down the “royal road to awakening”, as some early texts put it.

This course is designed to help all that happen. We will explore breath awareness from four different perspectives, and through four kinds of practice:

• breath as a basis for mindful awareness in daily life
• breath as a form of essential support given to us in every moment
• breath as a path to fulfilling states of ease and aliveness
• breath as a doorway to the boundlessness touched in awakening

It all starts with recognizing the gift of each breath as it arises, carries us, and departs.

We hope you’ll join us!