A breath is not something we have to think about. You’ve been breathing as long as you’ve been living. It’s quite organic. And necessary. You either do, or you don’t.

Through the day your breath is constant (as it is through the night), but for the sake of sleep and in the interest of dreams, now is a time for a think about how we breathe.
 
In yoga terms, this is your prana, and in so many ways your sleep is like a long savasana (corpse pose). The body is still and you set your intentions for what lies ahead. The first breaths of this period should guide you to your dreams.
 
Eyes shut, arms and legs fully extended in a comfortable, non-static position, breathe in deeply, filling your lungs with fresh night air and hold it in for four to six seconds. Then release, a full exhale. Let out more air than you take in, and with that exhale, release any nervous energy, negative thoughts, and compromising emotions. Empty your lungs entirely. Pause. Then inhale again; this time deeper, more, fully expanding your lungs, and another pause. Exhale.
 
This is not how you will breathe through the night, but the pattern should be repeated several times. It is fully conscious breathing, a complete inhale and full exhale, five to 10 times, or more. You will feel what works for you, and you will feel it fully.
 
These should be the final steps in ridding yourself of the day. Think of this as filling a paper bag with the stray thoughts. No, it’s not hyperventilating, but you can visualize, if you must, a balloon increasing in size. Then release.

Let everything out to make room for what will arrive through the night.
 
Your next set of breaths is still focused, but not nearly as deep. Chose a mental focal point, as simple as a colour, to train the mind to one place. Increasing the intensity of the colour as you inhale, deflating to the lightest shade possible on the exhale. Repeat, steadily, setting a rhythm from light to vivid, brightness to dark, and back again.
 
In a short time after a precise, pre-sleep breathing regime your body will begin to do what comes naturally. Your pulse will lessen, your blood pressure will drop, each cell of the body will react to this restful state. Slowly you will succumb to this drowsiness. Let everything go. Allow each part of your body to slacken; your jaw will drop, eyes slip further back in the sockets, and the muscles release any tension. You’ll feel the meat falling off the bone.

The lungs will continue to fill, but the chest will not rise and fall, as you enter a halcyonic state. The brain appreciates the dose of fresh oxygen, free of negative ions, and full of purpose.

You may remain in this neutral, seemingly motionless stage, or you may slip into the sleeping position that has served you well in the past. Stillness. The mind will remain active through several documented sleep stages, including REM, where the dreams (the major ones any way) mainly take place.

Like your breath, dreams can become a life force that pulls you through the day. Research indicates the mind is more active during the nocturnal state. By setting yourself up with a mindful breathing practice, without all the decisions and diplomacy that have dogged you through the day, you are better able to rejuvenate the body, activate the brain, and then wake up to the new day and do it all again.

deep breath
deep sleep
deep thoughts
deep peace

© 2017 j.g. lewis

A sleepless summer night. No dreams to placate an unsettled mind, yet, off in the distance, there was a train.

I’m young, I know. I’ve never been anywhere, not on a train, but nowhere even seemed significant. On a train. Lying in bed. The window wide-open, curtains pulled back, allowing any available breeze to circulate through the house. My door is not closed, everyone else is asleep. There are no middle-of-the-night sounds in this little city, except the train.

Night moves, along with the train, and I with it. Each click-clack, click-clack, of the track takes me further along. I am not alone. My eyes might be open as I take in a world streaming by this place I call home. An Imagination stoked by Hardy Boys books and The Wonderful World of Disney, the swoon of the train took me places, long before I even understood the concept of romanticism. Or surrealism.

I travelled the train many times, sitting up with the conductor or hopping a freight car with an errant hobo or two. Occasionally one or two of my friends would be along for the ride as we’d move from city to town; the thrill of travel to a young boy growing up in a city surrounded by wheat and silence.

There were always trains in my dreams, in my life, and near each home in every city I have lived. Until recently. Trains, off in the distance, signaling their place in our world. In one small town the tracks ran straight down the middle. At night you would hear the whistle as the engine approached, or wake to the rumble of the house as it passed through. It never frightened me. I’ve always been comforted, or grounded, by the sounds of a train.

Was it the train stories of Jack Kerouac that pulled me into his prose, or was it reading and knowing that adventure is the foundation for any dreamer’s life?

Trains have a purpose, connecting the country, bringing people together, and moving freight from wherever to destinations unknown. In daylight I would marvel at the layers of cars rolling down the tracks, or wonder what could be contained in the big box cars, or try to make sense of the graffiti sprayed on to the surface. I still do. I still wonder where the train is going. Trains are always on the move.

A train is more than transportation to a young boy, is it more than a toy or electric trainset you would set up in the living room to bide time. A train is adventure.

Adventure is something worthy for a boy to be dreaming about. It is something that boy still does now, as a man. Endless dreams, without notice I will wake from adventures on a train. I meet people and see places. I can be places, on a train, in my dreams.

I may never get back to those faraway places, but finding a train in your dreams indicates you are on the right track of your life’s journey. I’m uncertain whether I am headed in the right direction, and there have been a few significant stops along the way, but, like the train, I continue moving forward.

What made my dreams so hollow was standing at the depot
With a steeple full of swallows that could never ring the bell
And I’ve come ten thousand miles away, not one thing to show
It was a train that took me away from here
But a train can’t bring me home
Tom Waits
Train Song

You’ve been dreaming as long as you’ve been living. Restful or restless, the visions, images, thoughts and ideas that come to you at night play a major role in how we function during our waking hours.

Dreams are a part of living and, for many of us, a reason to live.
 
We all know what it is like to dream — a natural function, all done during the tranquil hours where the body is immobile — but few take the time to capitalize on the train of thought that flows through the mind while the rest of you is motionless.
 
Your mind is a flurry while sleeping, recounting people; places, scenes and faces; deep thought and deeper fears are all a part of your dreaming state. Whether frustration-fuelled or alcohol-kissed, thoughts travel far and wide throughout the mist. Never is the mind still. Research indicates the mind may be more active, and more powerful, during sleep than it is while you are awake.

We are always thinking while we dream, but how often do we take the time to consider how we dream, or why? Although it is an activity we partake in for more than a third of our lives, do we ever give sleep (or the act or art of sleeping) our undivided attention?

Through the month of March (with its longer, cooler nights and shorter winter days), Mythos & Marginalia will take a closer look at both sleep and dreams. We are flying by the seat of our pyjamas, essentially, taking our pulse, letting thoughts flow and dreams escape, and trying to uncover what happens while we are, literally, tucked under the covers.

I’ve invited submissions from friends, interested to see what they are dreaming on, or about. . . or of. Panels of this page will open up for discussion, analysis, or whatever comes to life. Please check back daily, or chip in if you are moved. Click the mail icon on the right side and tell me something.

I am not an expert, but I do have a lot of experience both sleeping and dreaming. I have been (or maybe still am) a night owl, and know the creativity inspired by darkness, but also while you sleep.

I’m also not here to tell you how to dream, or what to dream about, but if living your dreams is a destination, you need a road map to get there. DreamEscapes may help you set your path. Pack lightly and leave plenty of room for recovery and discovery.

Tell me your sleepless thoughts, darkest dreams, or the wonder (or what you wonder) of the night.
j.g.lewis@mythosandmarginal.com

j.g. lewis

I’m back on the mat. It’s been too long.
After a few years of dedication, my practice became sporadic, or inconsistent, then somehow inconsequential. I’d sweated out hundreds of classes, then became shamefully absent from the hot room. There was no particular reason, or no real good excuse, but last week I felt it was time to get back. Again.
I wrote this piece in 2013, eight months into my yoga experience. I didn’t even call it a practice then,
I just kept showing up day after day after day. I had questions, and I needed answers.
Today I’m in a different place. The past week has reminded me where I’ve been and much work is required to get even close to where I was. I’m still curious, and I have more questions, but that will surely keep me coming back to where I need to be . . .

Can you find salvation on a yoga mat?
  Can you strengthen the body while loosening the mind and arrive at this place of freedom everyone talks about? Well not everyone, not the doubtful or the disbelievers (as I was, and perhaps still am) but someone, somewhere (in fact, a lot of someones) said it was an option.
  An option was all I could afford. There was little left of me, and even less of what I could believe in. I had placed my faith in the unknown before, and every time I had come back raw.
  I was searching for salvation, or redemption. I was looking for a path, any path, away from the deceit and self-deprecation I had settled into. I wanted to believe in something. I wanted to, again, believe in myself; if that basic tenet is not there, is there anything at all?
  Could yoga be that one thing that could lead me away, or take me further, from just existing to a place of existence? Could I be enlightened?
  Could yoga heal the heart, can it take away the shackles, could it make me complete? Would it better prepare me for this race we call human? Could I even qualify for the race if I didn’t feel I fit into the category?
  I was scarred, I was scared, and, more than that, I was skeptical. How could a discipline that required no ego deal with one as tarnished as mine? How could I commit to daily practice when it was a fear of commitment that led to my unraveling? (Did I just say that?)
  So I didn’t commit, I just went. I didn’t ask. I didn’t question my undetermined ulterior motives and I ignored my emotional consolidation. I just went; it was better that way. If you fill your head with expectations, it leaves room for little else.
  I went and I kept going. Repetition, the same 26 postures every class. The aches and pains outside began to equal those I held within. How could I say I liked it when it changed daily, as did I? Sometimes the dialogue sounded like nagging, other days it was poetry. It spoke to me. I heard more, and listened more. I could feel something (a lot of things), I could breathe, I could bend, and I could suddenly find stillness. A wandering mind is not easy to tame.
  Or had I been fooled? Now eight months in, have I been trapped? Was I beginning to believe in something I could not believe in? How could I so easily be convinced this was the hardest thing I had ever done? Were these even changes, or was I just delusional? Yoga could do that. Yoga could make you dizzy. Yoga could play with your emotions (whether you wanted it to or not) as endorphins engaged and oxygen began to reach memories and mayhem in unused corners of the mind.
  Coming out of Camel, was that sweat in my eyes, or were those tears? Had my sweat become blood? Had my blood turned from rust, as my heart, as my soul, as my entire being, drained its toxins and spewed out the negative thoughts? Yoga indeed removed your ego, silenced your id and seduced your entire ethos as if to remind you how powerless you were. In so many ways Yoga was like life itself; it comes at you hard, it devours your mind, body, and spirit until there’s nothing left. Then it truly begins.
  Yoga uncovered my faults. What else could spill from this body?
  I was beginning to feel my body was now what I owned. Before it only seemed leased. It was a place that took in anything: bad food, good wine, misused words and misplaced love. I soaked it up. I held onto anything, clung to the anger, the unrest and torrential anguish until it made me a person even I didn’t want to be with.
  All I had left were years of words and emotions I could not deal with, and decades of strife, and hurt, and confusion. It covered up anything worthwhile and would continue to eat away at all I had become until I could let it go. All I wanted was to be a better person.
  Some find alcohol, or religion, or any other pay-as-you-go vice. I chose hot yoga or rather it chose me. I still don’t know why. Nor could I label it a calling, for you have to be weak to be called, and I (not then, not now) could ever admit to being weak.
  I could never admit the truth, but I could seek it. I could search for some sort of salvation, even absolution. Yoga seemed easier than religion. It was cheaper than therapy. It seemed available, in the now.
  Yoga was a match, for me. It made no promises and there were no guarantees.
  I could give even less.
  Still yoga for all it is worth became a solution to most of what I had been dealing with, a cure for issues I didn’t even know I had, and protection against future troubles certain to slip under my door.
  So did I need salvation and did I find it, if that’s what this is? Could I render myself powerless to something where only you have the power to transform? Was giving in to yourself, the same thing as giving up completely? Is it truly spiritual when your spirit was not always there?
  If yoga is salvation then it is also a contradiction. To be saved you must have beliefs, and to believe in yoga is to believe in oneself. Can you find salvation on a yoga mat? If you can come to find yourself when nothing was there, how could you reply to that question honestly?
  As much as yoga may be the answer, it remains very much a question.
© 2013 j.g. lewis

“Where something becomes extremely difficult and unbearable,
there we also stand already quite near its transformation.”
                                                                   – Rainer Maria Rilke

Yoga: A Quest Of Questions originally appeared in Rebelle Society

Dear Canada Post,

I am a stamp collector. No, I don’t keep albums of stamps sorted by date, or tuck away mint issues in crisp little envelopes by tweezers or gloved hands, and I certainly don’t keep up with all the literature. I’m not what you’d label a philatelist.

I’m more of a casual collector: I simply tear used stamps off an envelope and glue them (lightly) into my journal. The stamps, like the notations, are a record of where I am or what is happening in this country.

I’ve always enjoyed the art and the imagery of the postage stamp. I get excited about new issues, but only, really, when I’m in need of stamps. Yes, I am amongst the dwindling number of people who still send letters and, when selecting stamps, I make sure I use the latest offerings.

There have been some great stamps issued over the years. The recent Canadian Opera series pays tribute to the art form in such a fitting dramatic fashion. I’m still raving about the Jean-Paul Riopelle series from 2003 (possibly the largest postage stamps ever issued), and I was fond of the icons of Canadian music immortalized on a postage stamp (a personal favourite was Rush). Who can deny the universal (or intergalactic) appeal of the 50th Anniversary Star Trek Series, complete with Dr. Spock!

I also like old stamps and will occasionally pop into Toronto’s first Post Office (still serviceable, but also a museum, at 260 Adelaide St E.) to pick up some of the vintage stamps it sells.

It’s nice to use nice stamps, often for letters or cards to my daughter who also collects in pretty much the same manner. It’s something we do, and have done since she was a kid away at ballet camp. Decades later we still write letters back and forth. It is something we share even though we are separated by all those miles. I’m certain you can say Canada Post keeps us closer.

However I was upset recently when, in January, a letter arrived with the beautiful Year of the Rooster issue. Don’t get me wrong, the deep red stamp with stylized rooster is beautiful, but someone had taken a ballpoint pen and scratched three lines across the image. It was much like a vandal marring a bus shelter or bridge with useless and senseless markings (I hesitate in calling it graffiti because I have witnessed some wonderful street art).

It has been explained to me that this is the way “someone” in the postal system will cancel a stamp which has made it thorough the journey from there to here undetected, escaping the expensive sorting automation or Canada Post employees along the way. I’m told that “someone” noticed this letter had not been stamped with an destination or postmark — cancelled out, as they say — so they have taken a pen and deliberately marked it up so it cannot be used again.

I’m writing to ask if this is so?

If a letter is to make it through the postal system and the stamp does not receive a postmark, is it company practice to take a pen and scratch a few lines across said stamp? Is this official policy?

Canada Post, being a long-time government corporation (arm’s length or otherwise), is a unionized shop. I’m most sure that every step of a letter’s travel is covered under some sort of procedure or policy that ensures both privacy and security in the duties it is charged with. I’d like to know how it is written that a stamp, having avoided the postmark machine or post master’s stamp, should be marked up correctly to show it has officially been delivered through the mail service.

I’ve attached a photo of the stamp in question; is this the correct corporate code, or cancellation mark prescribed when manually rendering a stamp unusable? It appears to be two diagonal stripes and sort of a squiggly hook leading off the envelope’s right edge. Is this the correct manual cancellation mark that should appear on a stamp that has travelled though the system?

It seems a bit too, I don’t know, random to me. In fact, it looks careless. Actually I would think an employee manually cancelling stamps would have been provided with one of the many rubber stamps you often see at post offices or contracted service outlets.

Or am I wrong?

Does the Canada Post act allow for this sort of vandalism to exist within its process? Is this right and proper? Would this suffice on a tax return, or contest entry, or rebate offer that must be postmarked by a certain date?

As you can see from the supplied photograph, I was fortunate to receive another Year of the Rooster stamps a few days following receipt of the disfigured one. It has been stamped plainly and deliberately with a postmark, and it is the one I shall include in my casual collection. I consider myself fortunate to receive the second stamp, for in the day of declining letters, I wasn’t sure if I would ever receive a stamp of this particular issue.

A stamp has a purpose, and a value, even after it has gone through the system. There are people like me, and plenty far more serious, who enjoy the practice of philately as a pastime. Your corporation already knows this and spends a lot of money trying to attract people into collecting. You even have a seasonal magazine, Details, advancing upcoming issues (and trying to sell us something else).

And yes, a stamp is only a dollar (85 cents+ applicable taxes), but it is a collectable and a piece of our evolving history. In my case, it has been defaced, essentially rendered useless in this form. Again I ask if the use of a ball point pen to scratch diagonal lines and a bent squiggly is the official practice of your corporation, and if it is, I would ask you to continue.

Not only are there seasoned collectors out there, but somewhere there is also a kid who, once like me, became fascinated by the handwritten letter and the stamp which brought communication to the door. Can you imagine the disappointment when a letter arrives with a stamp that has been treated less than fairly? I should hope you’ll do you best to keep that sort of magic alive and start ensuring stamps are cancelled properly.

You will notice I’m not sending this through the postal service. I will admit being a person who uses, or relies, on email a great deal. I do embrace electronic communication, and will also post this on my website and on your FaceBook page (and mine). It is direct and effective, as we all seem to know.

I also know this could also have been done by regular mail but, in this case, I’m not just sending a letter, I’m sending a message.