When you have the opportunity to watch a small child sleeping, it’s impossible to miss how peacefully they breathe. When my little ones are sleeping I will often gently place my hand on their back or kiss their cheek and smile if they softly exhale with a gentle sigh. Most children are lucky to have bodies that are still open and soft enough to feel the breath to move easily in and out of the body, bellies rising and falling like an ocean wave.

The breath is a metaphor that we can use to better understand the ebb and flow of life, just as Donna Farhi notes in Yoga Mind, Body and Spirit: “The oscillation of breathing is a perfect mirror of the fluctuations of life…When we hold the breath and try to control life or stop changes from happening, we are saying that we do not want to be moved.” (30)