Just breathe

Are government programs interfering with our natural abilities?

My words are not a call for no government. It is a call for far, far, far less government than the ones we have now, and for reasons that go beyond the usual musings about what a government’s proper role is or what happens when power is handed to a group of people who then can use force on the masses.

I suspect that we humans capable of more than we give ourselves credit. When government does for us the things that we could do for ourselves, it prevents us from using our own powerful God-given tools to create and control, grow and transform.

Let us look, for example, at breath.

Photo by Jared Rice on Unsplash

We all breathe. But as ubiquitous as is the breath, its power is often understated, underestimated, and underutilized. A government program cannot or will not prescribe breath as a solution for a person who believes she has anxiety, depression, or some other disorder. The politician will not advise her to try meditation.

So, armed with a medical welfare card, she goes to a doctor who is then able to prescribe pharmaceuticals to help her mitigate the symptoms. She no longer needs to rely on her own tools to shape her own mind. She doesn’t resolve the problem. She merely masks it.

But could it be that, left to her own devices, that she could be her own medicine? Starting with breath? Many practices surround the breath that are proven to help quell depression and anxiety. Do we deny her and others this gift when government programs are created as alternative to breath that is baked into the fabric of humanity?

Many religious and spiritual traditions give great reverence to breath. The Bible describes God breathing life into Adam. In Hinduism, prana is energy carried by breath. In Hebrew, the word ruach (breath) translates to spirit and wind. In Latin, the word spiritus also translates to breath.

Breath is a significant part of the spiritual practice in Buddhist meditation. Some Christians use breath to connect to God inhaling and exhaling short phrases that are based in scripture.

Breath reminds us of our connection to all living things — other humans, animals, and plants — and such stretches beyond the moment. It is a continuous and not-yet fully understood part of our relationship with the past, present, and future. As we breathe in, we take in the exhalations of the plants, people, and animals that have preceded us by hundreds and thousands of years. And we connect to the plants, people, and animals yet to come. Is that not just one of most magical things?!

But the practice of breath has been substituted with medical interventions, which are underpinned chiefly by government medical welfare programs which are exceptionally good at writing prescriptions. That’s not to say that there is no advantage or benefit in medical science, just that there one modality has taken precedence over another, driven by government, much to the determent of human potential.

And so now, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, more than 40 million adult Americans suffer from an anxiety disorder. A 2024 poll by the American Psychiatric Association found 43% of adults reported feeling more anxious than the previous year. Recent data also showed that as many as 29% of Americans reported having been diagnosed with depression at some point in their lifetime.

Humans remain as mysterious as the farthest stars. Despite all of our advanced technology and innovative thinking, there is still so much about ourselves do not know.

We all sleep but still do not fully understand the function of sleep. Most of us have a dominant hand, but no one can say why we do. We all yawn but the purpose of the yawn is much a mystery. We do not know what is consciousness, how the brain turns patterns of electrical impulses and chemical activity into thought, emotion, memories, and perception.

We use the scientific method to explain the world and the universe around us, and that method is then used to format polices that drive the direction of humanity.

But the scientific method, by its nature, allows our understanding of truth to be one thing unless and until we prove it to be something else. In our system of understanding, we are not content with “I do not know” for an answer. Everything has an answer, a theory, that may or may not one day be disproven.

We want so much to know the unknown, that we have developed sciences that say what is and what is not. We make so much effort to figure stuff out that we ignore the possibility that it is just OK to be amazed at the intricacies of the universe and not know everything or to know nothing at all. And so the breath is discounted in favor of the seeming provability of a pill.

It may be that an answer that satisfies a question is only applicable to an individual and only in that particular moment. But one must then wonder, when we race to uniformity of judgement through the application of rules and laws to direct the course of humanity, are we then disallowing other powerful, and equally meaningful solutions to come into being simply because we have not yet been made aware of a different answer?

Many times in my political career I have heard people speak of “data driven decisions” and “evidence-based approaches” or similar devices used to determine a course of action. I would offer that the answers can come more simply when we allow our own nature to unfold.

Lao Tzu offers some guidance in Chapter 10 of the Tao Te Ching. The first part of the chapter offers advice to the individual, an encouragement to settle into breath and observe reality as it unfolds around you. You don’t have to do anything with it but rather use your senses to inform your awareness. Return to childlike wonder and amazement. Breathe. Exist. Suspend the mind. Do nothing more.

The second part advises politicians and leaders. Let nature take its course. Let the people find their way. Let vital matters unfold without interference. The politician need not solve anything, need not direct anything, need not force an outcome. This is the most nourishing and most virtuous existence.

Can you coax your mind from its wandering
and keep to the original oneness?
Can you let your body become
supple as a newborn child's?
Can you cleanse your inner vision
until you see nothing but the light?

Can you care for the people and rule the country
without imposing your will?
Can you deal with the most vital matters
by letting events take their course?
Can you step back from you own mind
and thus understand all things?

To give birth to them and nourish them,
Carry them without taking possession of them,
Care for them without subduing them,
Raise them without steering them.
That is the greatest virtue.

Chapter 10, Tao Te Ching, translation adapted from Stephen Miller and Steffan Stenudd