Breathe.
Breathe into every space.
Feel every sensation.

The joyful warmth
of shared love
and the vast emptiness
that sometimes echoes around our hearts.

The excited clarity
of inspired thought
as well as that clustered maze
inside our heads.

That deep spread of satisfaction
at the end of a good day
and the tight knots
that curl into the pit of our belly.

Breathe.
It’s your body.
This is the field of your experience.
This your true home.
This is where you belong.

by Jane O’Shea

A simple but powerful poem by the New Zealander word lover and conversations facilitator Jane O’Shea. It looks like she’s got a few beautiful looking book offerings (as well as a generous offering of other poems) on her website here.

I can really relate to the contrasting experiences that live in this body, often at the same time. And staying in touch with those multilayered truths feels like an important thing in the practice of equanimity and keeping an even keel in the face of ups and downs, sensations I enjoy and those I’d rather get rid of, preferences met and not met.

The way the poem ends with appreciating the body as ‘the field of your experience’, reminds me of a conversation I recently had about the difference between focussing either on our half full/half empty cup, or the possibilities that come with having a cup in the first place which can be experienced as half full or half empty. I find this way of relating really helpful in navigating the mixed bag of experience: simply coming back to gratitude for this cup, this vessel that carries me through life while allowing me to experience the whole range of sorrows and joys… ‘this is your true home, this is where you belong’!

Photo by Kamal Rajit on Unsplash