Zowie! Here comes that enlivening coastal spring wind - some days frigid and others warm – the gift of the season. April is a time of aspiration – both definitions apply: to draw a breath and the hope or ambition of achieving something. You can stand on the edge of the headlands watching whale trails, while taking deep breaths to clear out your lungs in an act of spring cleansing. The inside of your lungs look essentially like the reflection of a large tree in still water. The little avioli air sacs (the ‘leaves’) are thin-skinned, inflatable and infused with tiny one-celled thick capillaries that are busy exchanging the spent contents of your out-breath with a newly oxygenated in-breath. The surface area of these sacs is about a big as a tennis court – a vast frontier for securing our greatest physiological need, oxygen.
Standing by the sea we are literally exchanging air with the greatest forest of oxygen on the planet – sea vegetation in the form of phyto-plankton, algae and kelp. We breathe back to them carbon dioxide and waste from the body. Our out-breath releases what our blood is holding in evaporative chemical load: drug residue, smoke particles, alcohol, toxic gases from petroleum products and the like. The deeper the breath of fresh air, the more we detox while also nourishing our tissues with the energy they crave. On the coast, we receive so much more than oxygen in the form of sea mist suspended in the air – each breath is a dose of essential minerals and microscopic chlorophyll from salts and seaweeds that goes directly into our bloodstream.
As you gaze out into the blue beyond and are sung to by the chorus of crashing waves, it is also a chance to connect with your deepest intentions and the aspirations that evolve from them. Nature begins in spring again and so do we with projects for our communities, travel, studies and joys that enrich our spirits. We can support those aspirations by visualizing the release of old stale energies while exhaling and the infusion of fresh energies and new possibilities on the inhale. May the aspirations of April add vibrancy to your life.
