Some people feel passionately that they are in search of a soul-match, a twin flame; and though I know what it feels like to connect very deeply with others, I’ve never had the feeling that I am searching for another entity with whom I would be made complete since I already feel that way in my own self.

How life loves to play with us, not least when it delivers something so very obvious and says “see what you were missing”. As I was on my yoga mat this morning, in no small amount of pain and restriction, I chose (by default) to focus on the part of my routine that always appeals to me the least – the breath. So self-sufficient do I like to think of myself that this is the one component of ‘being alive’ that I have long tried to kid myself I can manage without; is something I have almost turned into an optional extra (like teeth flossing); am always wanting to rush into the busy-ness of life without truly honouring the one thing that makes it all possible. The breath and I  have had a troublesome relationship since I was a child, I’ve never felt “good at it”; something that has helped me to pinpoint it as one of my core health challenges, a reason my body has still not recovered fully, still doesn’t function optimally or seem to know how to sustain equilibrium and energy.

On this particular morning, I woke up feeling lousy and I recognised all the signs; my body was struggling to integrate and sustain, inside its cells, what felt like an immense electrical charge ‘coming in’ from outside (we are travelling through the intense photon surge of a solar wind plus a geomagnetic storm today) and I always feel these events very strongly in my body. I felt tingly, headachey, muscle-sore, ‘high-pitched’ in all of my cells.  Normally, if in this much pain, I wouldn’t have even attempted yoga but, rather, would have concentrated on holding my body symptoms at bay by taking it easy but something made me go to my yoga mat anyway. I attempted some gentle movement – slowly, gently –  and then started my Pranayama breath.

Then something happened and – hard to describe but – my breath became the vehicle to bring all of this energy into my body in such a way that I could assimilate it without so much pain.  Suddenly, I was riding the high energy and the furtive torch-light of the migraine that had been trying to sneak up on me from the side of my vision seemed to come out of its dark corner and expand, then fragment into a zillion sparkles, an electrical firework display that seemed to envelop my entire body and settle like stardust across my whole frame of vision. I felt deeply invigorated and bathed in such a feeling of bliss, of love and, for as long as I sat there consciously breathing (though relatively short as I knew, instinctively, when I had had enough for now), there was no pain.  In its place was a sensation of completeness that went beyond words; I wanted so much to stay there but knew it was time for some gentle integration. This was all quite new to me and it told me something big.

For here was the partnering I had long shunned, the merging of the twins flames of me – the physical body that is my earth-self and the breath as its energetic counterpart – which, together, form the very essence of life because one without the other makes for no life at all; and the struggle in-between (a zone I have made my own) makes for struggle and ‘illness’. Without breath…prana…the body fails to thrive, is only ever half-hearted about being here; because life needs life-force and breath is that force, that connection with all that is. The twinning of my self – the diving into two parts – was necessary in order for me to experience life in human form yet it was only through the full reunion of them as one that I was able to know – briefly but I now have the blueprint – what it feels like to know such completeness.