Still, Like Air, I Rise: Breathing Hope Back Into the Body

Last week I sat in a circle of women. Eight of us, some friends for over thirty years, gathered in someone's living room to talk about hope. The host had chosen the topic. We didn't know what anyone else would bring. But one by one, around that circle, women spoke. And what I heard beneath every word was the same quiet question: How do we hold onto the light when so much feels dark?

I left that circle in a higher vibration. Not because anyone had answers, but because we had gathered, because we breathed together in the same room and reminded each other: we can get through this.

Where the Breath Goes When Hope Leaves

As an energy-medicine practitioner, I work with breath. And when I sit with someone who is struggling, I don't begin with words. I begin by noticing where the breath is not going.

Hopelessness has a physical address. It lives high in the chest. The diaphragm locks. The belly goes still. CO2 builds. The body becomes flooded with its own metabolic waste — heavy, foggy, alone.

The rib cage hardens, too. When we’re in despair, the muscles between the ribs tighten — not randomly, but protectively, bracing against the pain of being alive. The torso becomes like a suit of armor. Nothing can get in. Nothing can expand. The heart and lungs are sealed inside a chest that has decided the world is too much.

You may have felt this, or seen it in someone you love. A hopeless sigh, a long, audible exhale as the shoulders drop. This is the body releasing the energy of fighting because it has decided the fight is lost. It is surrender made visible.

And beneath all of this, there is a disconnection from the Earth. Breath that reaches the lower belly is breath that feels supported — rooted, held by the earth. When hope leaves, the breath stops before it gets there. The body feels like it is falling. And when we feel unsupported, the diaphragm cannot soften enough to draw a full breath. The whole system contracts around that feeling of being alone.

Hope, by contrast, requires reaching. It begins with a deep inhale that pushes the diaphragm down, opens the belly, and creates literal space inside the body. That expansion is not just mechanical. It is a wanting, a leaning toward life.

The Season of Softening

Spring, to me, is the season of hope made visible. The seed has been sitting underground in the dark — not dead, but resting, taking in nourishment, waiting for the warmth of the sun to call it upward.

That is what hope asks of us: a slow, faithful softening. A willingness to loosen what has been held tight. The seed doesn't push through the soil by gritting its teeth. It yields. It trusts. It allows.

I know this from my own body. When I breathe, something in me remembers that I am not alone in this. That the energy of life is not against me. That I belong to something larger than my fear.

Small Practices, Kept Faithfully

So how do we keep the light alive when the world feels heavy? I come back to small, regular practices that honor the rhythms of the body.

Breathe into your belly. Not once, but daily. Place a hand below your ribs and feel the diaphragm move. Let the exhale be a surrender — a conscious release of what you've been carrying.

Eat and move with regularity. Sleep deeply. Limit screens. Let yourself have "do nothing" time. These are not luxuries — they are the infrastructure of hope. When the body is depleted, the light dims. When we tend the body, we tend the flame.

Maya Angelou wrote: You may shoot me with your words / You may cut me with your eyes / You may kill me with your hatefulness / But still, like air, I'll rise.

The circle I sat in last week was not solving anything. But something happened in that room. We held each other's weight. We breathed the same air. And one by one, we rose a little.

“We must carve a tunnel of hope through the mountain of disappointment.” —Martin Luther King, Jr.