Lessons in Breathing

My first night in a writing class I’m taking, I noticed my teacher drinking from a Mason jar. (At work, we joked that drinking from Mason jars leads to dreadlocks, walking barefoot all the time, and of course, a lifetime membership to Greenpeace.)

When she responded to her neurotic students’ pleas for information about assignments not due until November with, “We’ll see how we feel when we get there,” I relaxed. I realized that we had a free spirit in our presence, someone that I secretly longed to be, but could never actually reach because I’m not fully-evolved or not quite self-actualized to show up to yoga at my gym or read the meditation book that I bought on Amazon after reading Eat, Pray, Love.

The professor walked in tonight, Mason jar in hand, and proclaimed that tonight’s class would take place in the sculpture garden. Half of the class looked puzzled because they had no idea that said sculpture garden existed on our middle-of-town campus. I fit in with the other half of the class that wondered, after being chased to class by bees, why we needed to have class in the sculpture garden when we were already sitting in a perfectly good classroom.

Proudly, our teacher stated, “We’re going to learn how to breathe!”

The sixty-something Bronx-raised Irish Catholic was the only person gutsy enough to laugh on our otherwise silent walk across campus.

Ahead of us sat our yogi teacher who’d been asked to teach us serenity in our two-hour-and-forty-five-minute-long class. Naturally, he was barefoot and sitting cross-legged on an environmentally-friendly canvas mat. Beside him sat his Mason jar. (Folks, they’re stereotypes because they’re true.) He motioned that we join him on the stone risers.

We spaced ourselves evenly, setting down everything we brought with us. Instantly, I felt materialistic. Instead of being Julia Roberts minimizing her life in an ashram in India, I was carrying my noisy cowgirl purse, a bag of “goodies” from my alma mater, and my backpack holding my wasteful plastic water bottles. My environmental irresponsibility was sure to earn me some bad karma points.

The yogi suggested that we spread out more. I moved down to a lower level. Without thinking, I’d moved right beside the yogi.

Way to go, Karly. Right up front. We better damn well have to close our eyes for this.

“Close your eyes,” said the yogi.

Yes! I thought. Eyes closed.

The yogi taught us belly breathing, “Release your belly,” he said. Even the impossibly slender volleyball player beside me chuckled.

Yeah, that’s not happening.

He explained that babies breathe to their bellies naturally, but as we age, our natural breathing gravitates upward, to our chest and throat. He coached breathing and I pondered, remembering to Friday night.

I’d babysat a friend’s infant. Did the baby’s belly rise and fall as she breathed?

The baby's little tummy protruded from her elastic pink pants, but I didn’t remember the baby doing any belly breathing.

Back to the yogi’s soothing voice. We were up to ribcage and throat breathing. We were to think of our body as a bowl and fill it from the bottom, our belly, to the top, our throat.

Filling the bowl, I thought. A cicada dive-bombed me.

Focus, I thought. Visualization. Blue air, filling…my…body— yellow, I want the air to be yellow; it’s more enlightened than blue. Sky— blue. Sunshine— yellow. I chose yellow air, filling a bowl from bottom to top.

The yogi was ready to move on to a kind of breathing that began with a word that sounded like “naughty” but probably wasn’t spelled the same.

We were told to make a gun with our pointer and middle fingers.

I wonder if this is in my Meditation for Dummies book. Oh my Dog, did I put that on my living room bookshelf? No, I think it’s with my writing books.

We put the barrels of our finger guns to our foreheads. This was to practice closing a nostril at a time with our non-barrel fingers. The yogi demonstrated what could be best described as a graceful farmers’ blow.

Ew.

Others around me were equally shocked at what we were supposed to do.

Then it was our turn. Breathe in one nostril, out the other. A woman sneezed.

I decided to fake it. My fingertips barely touched my forehead so as to avoid the breathing class equivalent of chemistry goggle imprints. I breathed through my nose, but I sneaked the breath out through my mouth.

The yogi concluded our breathing crash course and everyone clapped. As much as I joke, I’ll be Googling nature sounds and trying to memorize my silly Meditation for Dummies when I get home. Maybe some of it will stick.

For a week or two, at least.