The Power of Conscious Breathing: Thresholds of Awareness in Music, Poetry, and Spirit
- Psykē
- Jul 6
- 5 min read
Updated: Aug 5
“You who let yourself feel, enter the breathing / that is more than your own” - Part One, Sonnet IV, from Sonnets to Orpheus, by Rainer Maria Rilke.
In This Modern Life, there seems to be a certain resistance to conscious breathing, by which I mean observing one's breath. You might know what I’m talking about—the sensation is often vaguely tinted with anxiety, as if the mind feared losing its grip, its territory. It is used to being the center of attention, in this Era perhaps more than others.
Then there are the arguments. “Watching my breath? I’m too busy for that.”
Yet when we take a few seconds to actually engage in conscious breathing, watching the breath enter and leave the body, something changes, doesn’t it?
There is a sudden and inexplicable sense of connection. Of calm. Not 100% calm, of course—the mind is not liking this at all—but of a certain softness to existence, a sort of cupping down into the Earth, of active, yet tenseless, participation in Life.
Studies demonstrate the ample benefits of the practice of observing one’s breath. What interests me here is the sense of wholeness and balance that doing so brings on the emotional-philosophical-spiritual level. How interesting that observing one’s breath, especially for more than one cycle, invites a paradigm shift for the embodied person. Many times, I cease to be the thinker and I shift into the observer.
When I am the observer, I’m less likely to take things personally; I’m also more patient, less reactive, and generally happier than when “I” am the thinker.
It is worth noting that it is very difficult to think actively and observe one’s breath at the same time. Coincidence? I think not.
This is doubtless part of the reason observing one’s breath has been the cornerstone of many ancient practices for millennia.
“That is more than your own”
I am rather obsessed with this sonnet by Rainer Maria Rilke, an Austrian-Bohemian poet who lived in the early 20th century. So obsessed am I, in fact, that I set it to music. If you would like to listen to the song, you can do so here. This post explores the deeper meaning of Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus through the lens of music, breath, and being.
The song itself is very simple: the voice (hi, me again), the harp (I originally composed it on the lyre), violin, and cello. It’s the only song in Heartsong, the EP I am currently releasing, that is composed of purely acoustic instruments.
In both the composing and the recording process of this song, I have often wondered if Rilke, in writing that one’s breath is “more than your own” was referring to our exchange of carbon dioxide with the plant kingdom first explored by Joseph Priestley in a 1774 plant/candle experiment.
This awareness is perhaps activated in conscious breathing. Doing so arguably involves a dual observation (however unconscious, given that I am supposedly just observing “my” breath): that is to say, we watch our own body and that of the plant kingdom. This, in turn, activates a deeper awareness (again perhaps unconscious), that we are not, in fact, battling Life out alone on an unfeeling planet. In a sense, it is a spiritual awakening through breath.
Taken deeper, it may also initiate a Knowing of ourselves beyond the physical body.
Later on in the same sonnet, Rilke writes the following mysterious lines:
“You are the bow that shoots the arrows / and you are the target.”
This line conjures up ideas of karma, the golden rule, the idea that what I do to others, I am in essence doing to myself. Also, perhaps, the notion that what I seek externally can ultimately be found internally. Circularity. Reflection. As it is above, so below. Everything is One. Certain aspects of Neoplatonism. The Kybalion. Miguel Ruiz’s Four Agreements. The teachings of Buddha. The exegesis of the early Christians. Karma in Hinduism. And so on.
Taken together, they build toward one essential question: is there really anyone else in the world, or am I witnessing my own consciousness unfolding over into itself through the infinite refractions that we call “other people” and “the world”? Even the greatest philosophers don’t have the answer, and…
This could be because knowing the answer (if there is one) would be relatively incidental—rather like a luxury good (perhaps a dangerous one at this stage, too potently determinative). Luckily for us, knowing the “what” is not essential to the actual act of existence. As Rilke says so pointedly here, what you do ultimately comes back to you. If you want to feel good, be whatever is good according to you. Don’t do it for applause. Do it for integrity and equanimity. Do it for yourself—which is to say, at the same time, for all.
“The trees you planted in childhood have grown / too heavy. You cannot bring them along. / Give yourselves to the air, to what you cannot hold.”
And with these radiantly pregnant lines, Rilke ends the sonnet. Every time I sing them, I am momentarily transported to the dimension they point to: beyond form, beyond words, beyond dualism, beyond grasping, beyond attachment, beyond my idea of who “I” am, beyond death, beyond life.
It is a place of purity. I am blessed to evoke it through the art form that, to me, most effectively transcends duality—music (in my case, music for self-awareness). There is something about these lines that, especially when set to music, leave one breathless, suspended, remembering something one once knew, and had forgotten.
As Rilke wisely says, you cannot bring heavy things into a place of such lightness. Entering implies a process of detachment, a questioning of assumptions and beliefs formed in childhood, a process of revision—what in metalwork (a practice so intimately related to alchemy), they call refining.
The two go hand-in-hand. It is possible that human existence, as we know it, is in essence a refining of spirit–in which case, this sonnet takes us to a threshold of human consciousness and leaves us there, dangling.
And you, kind reader: did you become entangled with these words, or perhaps with the music, if you listened to it? What touched you about this post? Where do you see things differently, or the same? What moved in or through you? Are you aware of your breathing? Are you aware that you are reading…this…word, and yet, are not the reader?
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