I recently got to know the humanist and existentialist psychologist Rollo May (1909 – 1994) in a post by Brain Pickings. Rollo May was especially interested in the themes of freedom, courage and creativity. “Freedom”, he said, “is the capacity to pause in the face of stimuli from many directions at once and, in this pause, to throw one’s weight toward this response rather than that one. The person becomes able to say, “I can” or “I will”.”
The pause also plays a major part in breathing. It’s one of the three breath phases: inhale – exhale – pause. The pause occurs naturally, at rest, when air has left the body with an exhale and before air comes back into the body with an inhale. This is not the same as conscious or unconscious breath holding. The natural pause at the end of an exhale is a transition phase, an intermediate state that can last a second, several seconds or longer. Breathing does not stop, it rests. It’s a phase of regeneration, of processing, adapting and tuning into the unknown. If we give into the natural pause in breathing and become conscious of it, we can perceive what Rollo May calls „essential freedom“. „For it is in the pause that we experience the context out of which freedom comes. In the pause we wonder, reflect, sense awe, and conceive of eternity. The pause is when we open ourselves for the moment to the concepts of both freedom and destiny.“
Further Reading: Rollo May, Freedom and Destiny, WW Norton, 1999