SPIRA

You breathe around twenty thousand times a day and notice perhaps three of them. The first deep one in the morning. One on the stairs when you are out of shape. One just before you say something difficult.

The rest happens on its own, which is lucky. If we had to remember to breathe, most of us would have given up by lunchtime.

Marcus Aurelius, writing in his private notes during a long war, described himself very simply: a little flesh, a little breath, and the part that rules. He wrote it as a way of putting himself back together at the end of a hard day. Body, breath, mind. Three things, and the one in the middle connects the other two.

Doctors, athletes and people who teach meditation all say the same thing in different words. When the mind runs too fast, the quickest way to slow it down goes through the breath. Longer out than in. A short pause at the bottom. Again.

It is the only part of the body you can steer, and just as easily leave alone.

That is the odd gift of breathing. It is automatic and deliberate at once, the one bridge we have between what happens to us and what we choose. For most of the day you can let it do its work. When things get loud, you can take the wheel for a minute.

Nothing about the day changes. You simply meet it with a little more air.