Fire Breath

There is warmth in you already. Breathe, and make it grow.

Not fire in the destructive sense. Fire in the original sense. The fire that has been lit in every cold season by every human who needed warmth. The fire that is in you, already. The metabolic heat. The life processes happening in every cell, the chemical reactions that produce warmth as a by-product of being alive.

Place a hand on the centre of the chest. Feel the warmth there. Real warmth. Your body is warm at its core, always, maintaining its temperature independent of the ambient world. You carry your own fire. You were born with it.

Now breathe toward it. An in-breath that is intentional, directed, aimed at the warmth under your hand. Down into the belly, into the solar plexus, the hot centre of the body where the digestive fire lives, where the ancient physiological warmth is generated and distributed.

Feel the warmth respond. This is real. Conscious deep breathing increases circulation. The blood moves. The warmth distributes. The places that have been cold, the extremities, the fingers and the toes, begin to receive it as the breath sends more circulation toward the edges.

Hold, briefly. At the top of the breath, the fire has what it needs. The oxygen that fuels every chemical reaction. The warmth has been fed.

Out. The breath sustains the fire on the exhale. Like a bellows, carefully, steadily, giving the fire the air it needs not to be extinguished but to hold its steady burn.

Again. In. Deep. Toward the warmth. The belly expands with it. The fire has more to work with.

Out. Steady. The exhale is not cooling. The breathing is sustaining.

Feel the warmth move. It goes where the blood goes. Into the arms, tracing the arteries. Into the hands, which were cold perhaps, but are warming. Into the face, which flushes slightly with increased circulation. Warmth finding the cold places and arriving there with the ordinary miracle of circulation: the heart sending warmth to everything it serves.

You are lighting your own fire. Not from outside. From inside. The breath as the bellows, the intention as the fuel, the body's own chemistry as the flame.

Breathe. In. Deep. Feed the fire.

Hold. The warmth at its peak.

Out. Slow. Sustain it.

The fire is lit. The warmth is real. The body has done what it was built to do: maintain its warmth through the breath.

In. Feel it.

Out. Keep it.

You are your own warmth. You carry your own fire.

Let it burn.

...