Breathing into the Self

Abstract

This allegorical window is the well-known injunction in airline travel to place the oxygen mask over one’s own mouth and nose before tending adjacent passengers, including impaired traveling companions and family members. I invite the reader to view the landscape of self-care as manifest in a teaching encounter in which we experienced a sudden threat to the integrity of our container and I failed to tend myself prior to tending the other, with undesirable consequences.