Maria Kannon Zen Center

Editor’s Note: Excerpted from Healing Breath (Orbis Books). A dimension of our existence that depth psychologists have called to our attention is that of our shadow. This refers to that “dark” side of our being buried in our unconscious that we would rather not see, that aspect which we would describe as negative, destructive, violent, chaotic, evil. As we look around and within ourselves, we can see an interplay of opposites that make up our concrete existence in this world

Excerpted from Healing Breath (Orbis Books) It seems that most of us living in this fast-paced contemporary society have actually forgotten how to breathe. Not that we have ceased to perform the biological function whereby we inhale this invisible mixture of gases, including oxygen, that we need for sustaining life, and exhale what we don’t need, including carbon dioxide, which plants in turn need for their biological life. We do this largely unconsciously, and so we maintain