yoga and smoking

Sometimes while lying awake for a couple hours in the middle of the night as older people often do, the desire to revisit cigarettes and feel that nicotine drug rush gets on me. Fortunately, when that happens I have the antidote. After finishing my night's sleep and upon arising the next morning, I waste no time commencing the day's yoga practice. It includes a period of pranayama, or deep, controlled breathing, and getting in touch with the breath neutralizes not only any desire for tobacco smoke, but any inclination toward depression, as well.

Depression is somewhat heretical. If we do theology the easy way and define God as simply what's real -- and I do -- then the most important and uplifting aspect of reality is life itself. By that I mean the fact that life on earth exists and that we're part of it can lead us to transcendence over small, petty, annoyed, and severely limited states of mind that are the constant companions of self-centeredness and its twin, self-pity.

Respiration is the primary indicator and first function of life. It connects the living organism with its source, and close attention to one's own respiration reminds us not only that we are in that sacred space called being alive, but also of what that means. Everyone wants to know the meaning of his or her own life, but as the abstract expressionist painter Jackson Pollock once pointed out, "Nobody ever looks at a rose garden and asks 'What does it mean?'"

The meaning of your life or mine is identical to the meaning of Pollock's rose garden: its very existence is also its meaning.

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