Have you noticed how beautiful things need effort to be created and maintained? From nurturing roses in the garden to a healthy body, there is no escaping the effort. Even in the wild, a tree must grow taller than the rest to get enough sunlight. An old zebra succumbs to predators just because it can’t put enough effort. Effort differentiates the alive from the lost.

The ocean of our existence is full of chaotic storms, from personal shocks like losing a job or a loved one to broader ones like the oppression of a race or gender. This can make one wonder if keeping order is a constant fight against chaos. Chaos appears to be the default state of life. As we go on, we will explore the calm underlying the surface of this ocean, but to get there, we need to cross the chaotic surface first.

If you extend the perspective above to daily life, how deliberate effort do you put to keep your peace? Do you let every thought influence you, someone’s actions trouble you, or their opinions bias you? Is there a better way?

A Breath in the Storm

Let’s go back in time…

A young prince is caught in a storm when he sees the suffering of his people. Frequent sights of poverty, disease, death, and helplessness pierce his heart. Troubled, he sets out in the search of truth, the meaning of life, leaving all his riches and kingdom behind. For years, he travels to distant places and meditates upon life’s experiences. As his wisdom grows, he realizes a truth, the interconnection of everything. But this interconnection is not just about how one life-form depends on another but also how within an individual, the physical and mental states are connected. This prince was Siddhartha, popularly known as Buddha. And the truth? He called it Nirvana.

What comes to your mind when you think of Nirvana? If you have come across it earlier, chances are you are thinking of a rock band, meditation, enlightenment, or just a bunch of hippies hanging around. Regardless of its cultural associations, the word “Nirvana” represents a very simple truth.

Literally, Nirvana means “breathing out.” That’s all! And one might argue that this cannot be all if Nirvana is the final goal of Buddhism. Well, that depends on one’s perspective, but at least for this mission, we request you to drop any existing notions. Just remember your breath as the axis of existence. As you breathe in, you breathe life in, and as you breathe out, you become life.

A Two-Way Highway

We live in a world where the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared stress as the “Health Epidemic of the 21st Century.” It is estimated that American businesses lose $300 billion to stress every year. No wonder that meditation is on the rise but sadly, be it due to loss in translation or vested interests, this simple practice has been made too complex. So complex that many people do not even get it, let alone practice it every day.

What if we told you to just breathe? And not even as per some complex technique, but a simple breath. To make it even simpler, just focus on breathing out slowly and let your following inhale be a natural response to it, filling the lungs at a normal pace.

Have you noticed how a state of fear, fight-or-flight, or stress, in general, makes your breath shallow? At the same time, when you’re relaxed, in love, or at peace, your breath becomes deep. Now here’s the best part: you can reverse engineer these states by controlling your breath. So, in a state of panic as you are running out of breath, if you start taking deep breaths you can calm yourself down. In fact, research shows that a deep breath clears our mind, regardless of whether we are stressed or not. Like a two-way highway, not only do our thoughts affect our actions but also our actions influence our thoughts. And this brings us to our mission.