You can always come back to...

breathing.

My yoga practice taught me this. Indeed, when my heartbeat starts racing and I start to see black, the surrounding go out of focus, I make my breathing slower and deeper, without sound and it works! It always does. I was amused when I saw that Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) was able to contain his transformations to the green monster called The Hulk by doing breathing exercises and keeping his heartrate within normal. We were lying down in savasana when my yoga teacher pointed out that breathing was what was used to keep the transformations from coming... and she suggested that if we want, they can employ the slapping to help us learn to do proper breathing. Oops, uh uh, nope. We CAN do proper breathing, thank you very much.

praying and reflecting on The Word.

Oh dear, I always make the same mistake of getting carried away from my scheduled reading and reflections of The Word. One of my new year's resolutions was to read The Daily Bread everyday including the suggested bible passages which, if I complete, would enable me to read the entire Bible. I still stray away and get caught up with a lot of distractions when it has happened so many times that when something is bothering me, the answer is right there in the Daily Bread story or bible passage for the day. Hay naku! Anyway, I've come back to it and today, on my first day, I immediately felt the peace creeping into me. "Oh you stubborn child..." I could almost hear Him say. Reading the Bible regularly enhances discipline, my sense of commitment, and "makes the soil fertile" by seeing the Scripture come to life in my day to day experiences. How else can I see the truth in the Word if I am not learned in it?

So there, just to day, I realized that those two, are my life lines - the ones I can always come back to to make everything alright, to bring order in my life. No one can take them away from me, no matter how many times I get pierced and poked by the "triangle."