The breath? What are those mind-cracked Buddhists on about?

Hours and hours, day after day, attending to something so dull

That a white wall would probably be more fun.

Like a teenager who is tempted by the very thing he disdains,

I try it, I go into the breath,

I feel the air

Being pulled

Through the nostrils

Like a cool northern wind,

And back out, I exhale,

A languid heat,

I trace the round contour,

Left and right,

Each with its own geography,

I stay here for a while.

I venture further,

A swirling in the mouth,

Air playing between nook and cranny of teeth and tongue.

Then I peer over tongue cliff

Into the windpipe, a WIND - PIPE!

Flute where dreams and songs are made,

Snorts, guffaws, roars, falsetto,

Growls, chuckles, squeals, calypso,

They're all found here,

Oh what life!

Slow now,

Slow,

Here, in this moment,

The sound of the breath at rest,

With its hollow rhythm

And undertones of bass.

Down further I go,

The ribs, those iron bars

Puff and peter like jellyfish made of bone.

33 vertebrae,

I traverse the regions of the spinal column

As the breath gives and takes height

From the body's frame in real-time.

I dive into the belly,

Belly full, belly empty.

And the navel,

That center where we trace our mortal existence to our mother...

A thought cracks my little world,

Is my in-breath the universe's out?

Is my out-breath the universe's in?

Very soon, I find I don't know where "my" ends and "the universe" begins,

Blissfully disoriented,

The navel reminds me

I am a baby in the eternal care of The Mother.

Attention zooms out whilst remaining within,

Like an omniscient god who has eyes in every cell

And every eye sees in 360 degrees,

Flitting in and out, between the micro and macro,

The rapid fire of frames on a movie screen,

Blending shots into motion,

Born of stillness.

At every turn, lost in atomic-cosmic-breath-fractals,

Worlds upon worlds.

Pranayama is for dullards.