Publisher's Synopsis
Breathtaking Growing up Mystic in America & Eleven Breaths for Life
I see this book as an invitation to know your life as a sacred quest. Everything, from your parents to your passions to your first love, all is given to bring you home to your Essential Self, which is already at one with the infinite, the source and birther of the universe.
"You will live the way you breathe," begins this part life-adventure story and part manual for becoming more conscious, more alive and more intuitive. As a portal to our True Self, the breath offers a key used by many yogis, and masters such as the Buddha and Jesus, mystics and just plain folk. Breath is tied to our feelings and to our deepest heart nature. Yet, as a yoga teacher, I quickly learned, that most people have breathing problems; problems which lead to imbalance in various systems including heart, lungs, and emotions.
My first master of Breath was Horse. Horse took me into rivers and up mountains, always saying, hold on, let go of fear, I have you. Horse taught me about fear as I felt him breathe deeply. It didn't last for as I grew I also learned how to hold my breath so as not to feel my anger and resentment. I held it and became invisible, which felt like a great magic trick. As I saw friends and family die, I wanted a map of meaning and the secrets of life and death.
My next master showed me how to fall off Horse and then left to find God.
Then there was Dadiji, an Indian miracle man. Jeshua Ben Joseph I first met looking out from a poster. He never stopped whispering to me to stop and listen, listen within.
After a volcano, a car crash and a flood, I knew this world was not safe. I began to follow the breath and become the breath. In this way I came to know a way of pure Presence. Finally, the breath of life ignites the heart, where all arises.
"Elizabeth Bunker's Breathtaking is a deep dive into the science-based, practical and spiritual dimensions of the breath. Drawing on her experience as a long-time yoga teacher and student of life, she lays out a practice for delving into the breath's power and using that power to live a more conscious life. Both manual and spiritual memoir, Ms. Bunker invites us to explore what it means to be both human and awake." -Mara Bright, author of The Constant Heart, and Writing Coach
Elizabeth began sharing Yoga and the breath thirty-three years ago. A Vassar College graduate with an MFA in writing, she created the Harvard University Yoga Program in 1982 and lives with her husband David, George the mule and two ponies, in the hills of New Hampshire. One thing to remember? The cosmos is not serious! And, "Breath is the body of God." - Sufi wisdom.
