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Images by/of:
Vida Midgelow
Jane Bacon
Joanne 'Bob' Whalley
Participants in CAP, Weld, Stockholm and Dance4, Nottingham
Audio Visual editing, Naomi Midgelow

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Day Five: One hundred breaths - extending and elaborating

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Day Five: One hundred breaths - extending and elaborating

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Day Four: Breath becomes word - a letter to my breath

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Day Four: Breath becomes word - a letter to my breath

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Our interest this week is on 'breath'.

There is nothing more essential than breathing: take air in, let it out, repeat 25,000 times a day. Yet, the repeated ubiquity of breathing doesn't mean that the breath always comes easily to us, nor is breathing something we often dwell upon.

The tasks we offer this week bring focus to the process of breathing. We invite you to steady and slow your breathing, as well as using the breath as an opening for your imagination.

Attending to the breath is central to many mindful practices, and here we bring such awareness into our daily lives and encourage you to reflect on your breathing as a way through which you can change (if only for a moment) your way of being and perhaps feel more grounded.

We also extend breath awareness into creative spaces. Using the breath and its movement in the body and connection to the world around us, as a place for investigation, a place from which sensations might be noted and stories found.

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Day Six: Breath stories - breathing into words

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Day Six: Breath stories - breathing into words

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We invite you to feel the story of your breath as a physical and imagined process.

A story in which, perhaps the
breath is too commonplace to be seen

or
breath is visible in the cold night air
or

breath is transforming and transformed

Spend 5 minutes writing or drawing your story of the breath - be that the story of a sigh, a gasp, this breath right now, a last breath, a first breath.

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If you were to write a letter to your breath, what might you want to tell your breath?

You might want to say how you feel, or perhaps describe to your breath a moment when breathing was hard or imperceptible.

These are just ideas.

Start your letter 'Dear Breath'.

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We have been focused on the breath as a physical process and as a way to become quieter in ourselves. Here we are going to explore what happens if we start to imagine the breath as a seed that can move and grow in many ways.

Sit or stand and imagine your breath has a colour, imagine this coloured breath reaches beyond your body and to the far reaches of the space you are in, then circling back to you.

Perhaps you can try to describe this journey - writing the story of the breath as it brushes over surfaces, weaves through crevices, swoops around or drifts out into spaces and times.

As you describe this story of breath it might change in the very telling. Transforming in many directions in the manner of a daydream.

Let your daydreams create themselves. Follow them for as long as you remain interested. You might drift in and out of the dream. Remember you can always start again.

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You are busy with your day. Or maybe you are working on a new creative project.
Stop and take a moment. Take a breath. Notice the feelings and sensations in your body as you take a minute to notice how you are about what you are doing right now.
Don't judge yourself, just notice and attend to your breath.

Now continue with your task with a renewed attention to the thing you are doing. Really notice everything as though everything is happening in slow motion and you are able to both do your task and attend to yourself as you gently breathe and move doing your task.

You could repeat this task throughout your day, week, life. Just taking time to stop, breathe and notice.

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Gather up a pencil and pen
Find a comfortable place to sit or lie

Count your breath cycles from 1 to 10.
Breath in as steadily as is comfortable.
Breath out for as long and gently as is comfortable.

Just notice. No pressure to extend.
Just breathe and notice as you count.

Now write or draw anything that arises.

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Settling into a time-place that you can be comfortable

Gradually noticing your breath.
Perhaps changing the rhythm, depth or quality of your breath

Add your voice - letting the breath become sound, or words.

What do you notice? What (if anything) changes? What becomes visible?

Then staying with this breath awareness, we invite you in writing, drawing or speaking the breath, in any way that arises for you.