This article is an excerpt from Bob Weisenberg’s new ebook: Each Moment Is Like a Precious Diamond: Living Your Life to the Fullest Through Ancient Yoga Wisdom Articles, Poems, and Interviews from Elephant Journal’s Early Years. 

Available for purchase or free download on Bob’s website here.

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Don’t laugh! Think about it for a moment.

Would it make you happier if every breath was like a bite of chocolate cake, even if nothing else in your life changed?

When I first started yoga, I was confused by all the emphasis on the breath. Okay, I get it. Breathe deeply. What’s next?

The more I learned, the more it seemed like yoga had a serious breath obsession.

It’s the focus of meditation. You have to do it right when you do poses. It feeds the chakras (energy centers) in your body. There’s even a whole separate practice for advanced breathing called pranayama.

“What for?” I asked myself. Okay, we need to breathe deeply. So what?

Now I understand! It’s like this. Between a single breath or a bite of chocolate cake, which one is more amazing? (Any trouble answering that and you probably have bigger problems than I can help you with.)

The single breath is more amazing, of course, because it is the wondrous source of your very being—a precondition even to enjoying a bite of chocolate cake. You could say that the single breath is infinitely wondrous. Perhaps you might even say it is divine.

While I was writing this, I started explaining it to my wife, and she said, “That makes sense, but you couldn’t get anything done if you were eating chocolate cake all day.”

I replied, “You’re right, but wouldn’t it be nice to be able to tap into that kind of “better than chocolate cake” divine amazement any time you wanted to, just by focusing on your breath? Wouldn’t that make your life a lot happier, no matter what else was going on?”

“Yes, of course,” she replied.

“Bingo. That’s what yoga philosophy is all about.”

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Please Help: Am I Going Bonkers or Have I Reached Nirvana?

Ever since I wrote that clever little piece about chocolate cake the other day, I can’t get it off my mind.

First, I read it over and over again, the way writers do when they’re really happy with something they’ve written. (Other writers do that, too, right?)

Then I showed it to my wife who said, “That’s nice, Bob, but I was the one who came up with the idea of selectively tapping into infinite amazement.”

“Artistic license,” I replied.

Now it’s just on my mind all the time. I keep thinking, wow, each breath really is infinitely better than a bite of chocolate cake.

And it makes me smile. And I keep thinking, just breathing really is like eating chocolate cake all day. And it never stops.

And it makes me really, really happy because I really, really like chocolate cake, and every breath really is infinitely better than chocolate cake…

Please help. Have I reached Nirvana, or have I gone completely bonkers?

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See also:

Yoga Demystified: The Six Big Ideas.

Bhagavad Gita in a Nutshell: Big Ideas & Best Quotations.

Yoga Demystified: Poems & Articles.

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