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Anne Landsman writes on Facebook:
In COVID times, I’ve been thinking a lot about the breath and what it means. For those afflicted with the virus, shortness of breath is often a symptom. In an online yoga workshop with Abhijata Iyengar, she had this to say:
“The breath wants to stay with you. Enjoy the relationship you’ve established with the breath. Breath is timeless. The same breath which is keeping you alive now has nourished generations and generations in the past. Such a universal force enters you, nurtures you, sustains you. So enjoy this attachment breath has developed with you. Don’t do anything. It is a natural response, just see it, observe that.”
What does it mean when you squeeze someone’s breath out of them? When they repeat “I can’t breathe” over and over again? What terrible act of violence it is to cut the bond someone has with their breath? To cut short their life? What a reversal it is of the natural order of things? To break that attachment another human being has with the timelessness of their breath?
George Floyd, we breathe and say your name.