When I wrote an earlier entry about the time between breaths, I was thinking only of the moment between one breath’s exhalation and the inhalation that begins a new breath.  But both moments—the fullest point of inhalation, and the fullest evacuation of the lungs—are in a sense “between breaths,” or at least between states of breathing.  And it occurred in today’s meditation that I came to a new concrete understanding of yin, yang and breathing.  The moment of complete inhalation—when we might choose to “hold our breath” for a few seconds—I understand now as an expression of yang: of potential, of energy, of empowerment, of expansion and strength.  And the moment when I have expelled all my breath is an experience of yin: a time of yielding, release, emptiness, passivity, silence.  We fill our lungs to take action, to speak and name things, to make demands of others, to prepare for strife.  We empty them in surrender, perhaps in understanding of our own weakness—and of our mortality, for the moment of death expels the last wind from the lungs.

I don’t much connect these thoughts to the usual gendering of yin as feminine and yang as masculine.  More significant to me is the sense I have—if I stop the rhythm of meditative breathing when my lungs are full, i.e. if I hold my breath—that the yang moment is full of effort and striving—thus, a contradiction of wu wei—whereas the seconds after a complete exhalation feel easy, calming, natural, effortless.  So I will now and then pause breathing at the yang moment only if it feels easy and natural to do so.  It’s interesting that the yang moment of the fullest lungs does not enjoy being held back.

These interactions of yin, yang and breathing make sense to me because they help me to understand meditation itself as a kind of microcosm of the whole of life.  Sitting meditation we encompass the cycles of renewal and retreat that reveal, in nature, the workings of the Tao.  Perhaps, too, they help me to make sense of the cycle that my own life pursues, expanding to the point of maximum fullness before a necessary release into darkness and silence.  For now, though, for a while only, another breath follows that release.

9 September, 2025.