As I sit on my purple couch, not really progressing on reading the book I need to finish before I go on my Amsterdam trip, my dog gets up from where he’s sitting next to me on the couch and he gets down on the floor, flops down on his left side and issues for a really heavy sigh. After all, he had a busy day.

This reminded me a lot of a boat trip to Alaska I took with my mom several years ago and I remember being so floored … stunned, impressed when an orca whale came up alongside our boat -and we were not a small boat (97 of us on it)- we heard the animal open up its blow hole and let out, and then bring in, a breath of air. That, I thought, was amazingly precious.

Tonight, I think that this sigh, this breath of my dog is just precious and it is maybe more precious that I get to listen to it. I take care of this animal; we chose to bring him into our lives and have him disrupt them so much, so wonderfully much.

And then I think it’s also precious to be in a yoga class with other people, maybe my students, or maybe they are fellow students taking a class with me, and to breathe with them and to listen to them, breathing is special, not because it’s rare at all but because we … be. We are here, together. Noticing.