la deuxième: breath x perception x time

For the last six months - since I ended my last big ‘adult’ relationship - I’ve been transfixed more than ever on learning about the loftiness of the human experience. How are we each perceiving the world around us and how does this perception affect and influence us? 

As of late, I’ve also been reading more than ever. I just finished the book ‘Breath’ by James Nestor - a book a dear friend of mine gifted me to read after we talked about breathwork, connecting on wanting to feel more centered, and yearning to really take control of both stress and emotions. And through our conversations, really realizing that so much of our reality is in our control. 

Here are three themes I want to center on and delve into within this piece of writing:

1) breathing 2) perception and 3) time 

Through reading this book, I’ve also naturally wanted to further understand the study of time, and more so the philosophy of time.

For this piece of writing specifically, the question that became my north star was to define how are breathing and perception linked? And how do breathing and perception then potentially alter our view of time (while also realizing I am just a normal person trying to figure this all out!). These questions came about while I was reading Breath. The book made me realize that so much of your breath comes down to the manipulation of prana, or energy. Prana quite literally translates to energy, and a lot of your breathing creates physiological reactions on a molecular level within you, which in turn energetically shifts you - whether that's your emotions, stress, or perception. This shift of perception ultimately alters your state of being. 

At the core of this, ontologically, energy is matter. And if energy/matter can ‘flow’ through us via various breathing techniques (ie: meditation, Wim Hof method, etc.) - how, if at all, could this affect our perception of the world around us. If you’ve ever meditated or focused on your breathing before - it can be either a painful reckoning with a restless mind, an inward journey of depth and unlock or something in between. On a personal note, I’ve been going to the Zen Center here in Brooklyn for the last couple of months to attend their Sunday morning sessions which focus on zazen breathing (a type of meditation practice) and have loved the structured time to focus on my breath and dive inwards. At the end of the three-hour session, I come out the other end of the experience in a shifted state. And that moment - that exact moment - when you open your eyes back up into the physical world with a shifted mindset, how does that manifest as a long-term shift in your mindset/perception? 

In this book, the author talks about how with certain breathing methods, certain meditation practices, he has realized this psychological response of time slowing down, or kind of a disillusionment of time - let's just say disillusionment of his perception of time. Which I thought was really interesting. Let’s take the meditation example from above - sometimes when you sit down to meditate for 30 minutes it feels like 2 minutes and other times it feels like 30 hours. How can our mind bend or contort time, or our perception of time, so much that sitting with yourself can be either a joyful ride or torturous labor. Conscious breathing made me more aware of my perception of things, including time.

After I finished reading Breath, I lodged head-first into learning more about the philosophy of time and how we, as humans, have constructed to perceive time. The two main philosophies I’ll dive in with this writing are eternalism and presentism. At a birds eye view, here’s a breakdown of the two philosophies. 

Presentism is the view that only the present moment exists. The past and future are not real, but are merely memories and projections. 

Eternalism, on the other hand, is the view that all of time exists at once. The past, present, and future are all equally real. 

Let’s start with presentism since this is a little easier to comprehend and digest. Presentism is the idea that the current moment is real, you are experiencing it, it is happening. And the past has happened, but it is behind you, it's a chapter closed. And then in regards to the future, whatever can happen may happen, and it will unfold as it will. There are multitudes of possibilities that could happen in the future within this philosophy. Presentism is a way that most humans currently perceive time - well at least it's the easiest way for us to explain time, right? It's the concept that time is linear and what is currently in front of you is your reality. The past is real, based on facts, and the future is yet to happen. 

The other philosophy of time I want to dive into is called eternalism. This one, I think, is easiest to conceptualize as a 4-D cube. In this scenario, you are removing yourself and stepping out of time - you're looking at time and space from a third-party perspective, looking directly at this ‘block’. Many philosophers deem this concept the block theory when trying to explain eternalism. And so the idea is similar to presentism in that the present moment is real. But where it differs, is eternalism deems the past is just as real, as the present, as is as real as the future. It's this concept of what is happening in front of you is real. But at the same time, things that are happening in the past are just as real, as things that are happening in the future. This theory is obviously a little bit harder to wrap your head around, because it's just not  in our ‘normal plane of existence’ in terms of understanding time. Since, candidly, it's hard to think about how Ancient Greece is happening at the same time as the present moment as is whatever is happening in 2050 or 3050. Why do we treat the past and future with a different lens than the present? The past and future are just as realistic as the present. We think of other locations aka ‘space’ as real even if we are not in that location at the time. We might be living in NYC but thinking about our friends in San Francisco - who are living a very real reality that you personally cannot see or know is happening right now. But then why do we think of time as any different or distinct from our perception of space? And then it also begs the question of trying to understand decision making and the reality of free will (existentialism) and the idea of possibilities for the future. It begs the existential question of how much of your current choices affect the future if the future is already happening. 

Now, I want to preface that I am not an expert in these philosophies and candidly, eternalism dovetails into quantum physics (phew!) which, let’s just say, we can save for another time (ie: never). But for the purposes of this article around breathing x perception x time, this level of understanding of the two philosophies hopefully suffice to give you enough context. And it’s also the reason I'm more drawn to eternalism since it stretches my own bounds of perception, and this stretches the way that I can perceive things and I think that's much more fascinating. 

And now coming back to breathing and coming back to the book, Breath, there's plenty of research and science on the effects of breathing on the human body. Specifically, emotions and reactions, helping to prevent disease, and more physiological benefits. And if that's the case, does breathing also affect perception and affect the way that we view consciousness because so many ancient practices and Eastern scriptures also mention the mental ‘clarity’ or ‘shift’ that comes with breathing practices. The Bhagavad Gita quotes things such as pranayama (a breathing technique from ancient India) - wherein this higher level of consciousness can potentially be reached. And this is reached through breathing. This begs an even larger question about if we can achieve these ‘higher levels’ of consciousness, are there things we haven't even thought of as I'm just scratching the surface in terms of understanding time and the different philosophies of time? 

Here’s a breakdown of my current understanding and internal flowchart of how this works. 1) how does your breathing affect your level of consciousness 2) how does that then affect your perception of many things, of those that I'm interested in right now is, mainly how does that 3) affect our perception of time and how we view time. 

I’m drawn to this topic of breathing x perception x time because it allows me to think about time in a more expansive way. As I learn more about this concept, eternalism can help to understand the nature of consciousness and how it relates to time.

At the end of it all, I do think there is a link between the role of breathing in the perception of time. In a nutshell, I believe that breathing can help to ‘slow down’ time and make one more present in the moment. In my own life, I’ve found that breathing helps me connect with my intuition and to access a higher level of consciousness.

I’m interested in the philosophy of time because it helps me further understand myself and the world around me. And isn’t that what we’re all continuously working through? As I continue to dive into topics I’m energetically drawn to, I’m more inclined than ever to believe that time is not a linear progression, but rather a complex web of interconnected moments. 

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PS: if the topic of the philosophy of time resonates, check out these awesome resources I’ve really enjoyed: Podcast linked here + Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy + retro-looking video on time

PPS: if the topic of breath resonates, check out these additionally awesome resources I’ve really enjoyed: Author of Breath + Sudharshan Kriya breathing method+ Wim Hof breathing method