One Breath at a Time ~ Poem by Tomomi Kojima

One breath at a time

I hold onto a glimpse of everything in this world

All the smell, all the tastes, all the touch

Wetness of fog

How oddly green the grass looks

Sound of the air

Roughness of rocks

Because my time is limited

I may have another day, or another moment.

I don’t know how long it lasts

When I feel how hard and lonely this journey is

I remember we are all on our little boats

Dimly lit by our little lamp

We can only see a foot ahead

But I see many dimly lit boats a foot around me

We’re all heading towards the same direction

But we don’t know where it’s heading

All I know is that we need to keep rowing

Because we need to keep growing

This world, they say it’s an illusion

Maybe it is, maybe it ain’t

But I can feel content either way if I know this moment is all I’ve got

I’ve decided to live with this totally raw way of living

One breath at a time

Until my breath runs out.

Tomomi Kojima is a registered yoga teacher and poet. See her website to

find out more about Tomomi:
www.tomomi.ca

Triggering Mindfulness

...Part 2 in a series on Meditation, Yoga and Triggers. See #1 here.


Sometimes we get triggered by something that sends us into an emotional upheaval of anger, passion, fear or any other conflicting emotion. You might be in a yoga pose that taps into some buried memories that are stored in the body and you have an emotional release, or you are in a grocery store line-up someone says or does something that triggers a reaction of anger. You can probably think of some of your own personal examples. It's good to have compassion for ourselves and others when these things happen because we are all vulnerable to being triggered by situations and memories. There are many teachings on the mind of compassion that help us take advantage of these experiences and make use of them. Yet, this in only half of the picture.

"...we are all vulnerable to being triggered by situations and memories. There are many teachings on the mind of compassion that help us take advantage of these experiences and make use of them. Yet, this in only half of the picture."

The other side of this picture has to do with the positive qualities of mind and the deeper capacity we have for mindfulness and awareness. As human beings we have many positive potentials that can be triggered besides our memories and habitual tendencies. Some of these positive potentials can be triggered suddenly and to develop them we must apply ourselves, to recognize them and stabilize our ability tap into their presence.

For example, an intense experience that triggers our anger or passion can equally trigger our mindfulness, awareness and compassion. When someone we are attached to moves away, or dies, then this experience of loss can awaken us to our vulnerability and also to our deeper potentials of love, compassion and wisdom. When we discover that we can be mindful and aware in the moment, through meditation, then we also discover that we can be mindful and aware in daily life with positive, neutral and also negative experiences. Rather than reacting unconsciously to situations, we can tap into our awareness and see our reactions clearly. When this happens, then our experience becomes an opportunity for waking up rather than another painful reaction that feeds into itself and causes further suffering.

Yes, we can have many reactions to life, people and situations that throw up a lot of negative emotions. Its important to realize too, that we can also trigger our deeper strengths. If we are habituated to thinking negatively, then we may need to do a little bit of "self-hypnosis" in order to look at things differently and see what we may have been missing. Simply studying about mind and practicing meditation can be helpful. In practice we can look at triggers as something that can go either way, and that we are the ones who are in control of how it plays out. Is our trigger going to trigger a defensive reaction of anger or is it going to arise as an opportunity for us to see more clearly and to better understand ourselves? The choice is up to us, especially once you have the skills and knowledge about how to do so. This requires both study and sitting meditation. We need to know how mind works and how to tap into its potential and then we can actually do it.