Six years ago, Leslye was in charge of a large, dysfunctional office in Miami, questioning life. Stressed and needing to redeem her health, she took a workshop called Art of Living. It taught her, among other things, to breathe. The specific technique is called the Sudarshan Kriya, part of the rhythmic breathing pattern in her morning ritual. " 'Su' is proper; 'darshan' is vision; 'kriya' is a purifying action. "(An analogy is) if you look at us like houses that haven't been cleaned for 30 years and have been collecting dust and garbage of emotional and environmental toxins. All of these things go into our system and we hold onto it. We haven't had the tools to release it.
Congo Kinshasa RPCV Leslye Moore practices and teaches a specific kind of breathing that not only relieves stress in her life, but has given it purpose
She breathes in again, breathes out.
Caption: “So much can’t be expressed through words,” says Leslye Moore, who practices and teaches a specific kind of breathing that not only relieves stress in her life, but has given it purpose. “So much of the inner being is between sounds. Silence is where peace is found.” Photo: Katherine Jones/Idaho Statesman
She places her hands on her waist to remind her to breathe deeply.
In, pause, out. In, pause, out.
Hands move under armpits; the breath moves there. And a third place, high behind her shoulder blades.
"The first thing we do when we're born is breathe in; the last thing we do when we die is breathe out. In between is the thing we call life."
Every morning, Leslye Moore begins her day in silence. Her breath changes: in - out; in - out; in/out/in/out/in/out. Twice more she repeats the pattern and settles into still meditation.
"We pay so little attention to the breath, but it is so critical to our emotionÉ"
In this calm, she prepares herself for whatever chaos the day might bring. The sky lightens.
"The craziest situation may be presenting itself to me - but emotions flow over me, not through me. I'm not absorbed into the trauma, I can focus on (the person in front of me), I can be present. It helps them - Then (we can make) not a reaction, but a right action."
Six years ago, Leslye was in charge of a large, dysfunctional office in Miami, questioning life. Stressed and needing to redeem her health, she took a workshop called Art of Living. It taught her, among other things, to breathe. The specific technique is called the Sudarshan Kriya, part of the rhythmic breathing pattern in her morning ritual.
" 'Su' is proper; 'darshan' is vision; 'kriya' is a purifying action.
"(An analogy is) if you look at us like houses that haven't been cleaned for 30 years and have been collecting dust and garbage of emotional and environmental toxins. All of these things go into our system and we hold onto it. We haven't had the tools to release it.
"The Sudarshan KriyaÉdeeply cleanses cells of the bodyÉIt is a really precious gift to clean this stuff out, just by breathing."
Today, Leslye is the executive director of International Rescue Committee, a world-wide humanitarian relief agency that brings refugees to the United States. Before she took the Art of Living course, she had been questioning her work because, while important, it seemed endless and nearly impossible.
"Everything in my life leading up to this point was helping people overcome obstacles - they didn't have enough food, if they didn't have shelter É or emotional or medical care. But what I've been finding all along is those are Band-aid approaches.
"What I've come to find is that if individuals don't have centeredness and peace in themselvesÉthe trauma just spreads to the (people) around them; it just dominoes.
This is where the breath helps her and, by extension, anyone she meets.
"Working with some of the more traumatized, tormented, tortured people in the world, I feel what I have to offer them is my own peaceful centeredness. I bring that to my work and hopefully help them find some of that in themselves - to recover from what they've been suffering for so long."
If she can find a home, a job and food for refugees, they can survive. Thriving, on the other hand, is a whole different thing. But it is possible.
"Giving this knowledge and the tools (to others) is a gift for me."
Because of her own experiences and the healing she's seen in other people as they take the Art of Living course, she is now a teacher, Idaho's only one.
"As a teacher, my mission is to bring peace to individuals - to refugees or mainstream Americans - (so) they can then bring peace to their family and community."
Leslye's early work experiences were the antithesis of peaceful. She worked in Zaire during the civil war (in the Peace Corps) and afterward in Rwanda until just before the genocide.
"I was in despair being there (in Rwanda) because it just felt so hopeless É A lot of soul-searching was happening for me then, thinking what it was to be human, what it was to be on this planet when people are taking machetes - even children had machetes in their hand, killing other children.
"By all stretches of the imagination, I should have given up on humanity a long time ago. I've seen genocide, I've seen torture first-person ... For me to be able to walk out of that and to smile today É to still have the desire to uplift others - to me, that's the remarkable gift I've gotten: that I haven't given up.
That, she says, is because of breathing. Conscious breathing. It's that easy, she says: Try a deep breath, and then maybe another.
"We are interdependent in so many ways - on very practical terms, but also a spiritual level as well. (In meditation and breathing) you feel the interconnectedness of everyone around you. You realize you're not alone in this, an isolated being on this planetÉ
"When the energy level is high in the body - with prana or chi or life-force, which is what the breath brings into the body through breath and meditation - you see the world in a different way. You can't be negativeÉWhen the energy is there, you want to serve others and help othersÉ
"ÉThere's no words; it's a feeling. It's a being."
kjones@idahostatesman.com.
