Bel Respiro

Last week I was in an early morning yoga class when the teacher asked us what we, her students, had spent the previous day doing.

“Working,” the girl sitting next to me on her yoga mat said.

“Gardening,” said the man across the room.

“Worrying,” I said to broad laughter - although I had certainly not meant to be amusing. 

“No no no,” said our instructor. “What did you do all day? From the time you woke up until you went to sleep at night? What did all of you do yesterday? Every one of you? What did you do last night? What have you been doing since you woke up?” As this was a seven a.m. class there had not been that much time to “do” anything before we hustled ourselves to the yoga studio.

“I read the paper,” someone said.

“I watched the morning news,” said another.

“I drank coffee and worried,” said I.

Our teacher, whose name is probably Jane Smith but likes to go by “Saraswati” laughed and said “okay, people…I’ll give you a hint. You did this all day yesterday and if you are extremely lucky you will do it all day today. Even while you are sleeping. In fact each one of you probably did this 15,000 times yesterday. At the very least.” 

We all just sat there on our mats. Confused. And, based on Saraswati's amused expression, probably looking like big dumb farm animals. “No one?” she asked into the silence.

“Okay,” Saraswati smiled. “I’ll tell you what you did. You spent all of yesterday breathing. You inhaled and exhaled all day long. Thousands and thousands of times. Did any of you notice that? Were you even aware that you were breathing?”

This was not said in a chastising, school marm-y way. She said it in a gentle voice, full of knowledge and compassion. Saraswati then told us that she wanted us to really focus on our breath during the hour long class. She wanted us to work with our breath. To feel it flowing through our bodies, strengthening us, calming us, guiding us. “Our breath is what gives us life. Without our breath we cannot live.”

I realized then that I do take breathing for granted. I think I always have. I inhale and exhale all day every day, all night every night, and never even give it a second thought. Just like I take my four strong and working limbs for granted. And my passably able brain. And my eyes. And my ears. And the fact that all of my senses are intact and going strong. I just take it all for granted. As if I simply deserve all these blessings. As if they are my right.

As I relaxed into a warm-up forward bend I focused on about five deep breaths and then I got lost. As usual. And what I focused on, instead of my bend or my breath, was the Mafia.

Occasionally at my house we have what we like to call “family movie night”. During these evenings my husband and I choose a movie from a list that we have compiled of films our children “must” see.

The Shining is on the list. As is the Polish film Ida and The Lives of Others out of Germany. Drive, directed by Nicolas Winding Refn is on there as are The Buena Vista Social Club and Searching for Sugarman, both wonderful documentaries about musicians. We have over one hundred movies on this list and are adding more each month. My kids (old enough now to watch whatever they damn well please) are patient with their old-fashioned parents and sit through all of our suggestions. But what my children seem to enjoy the most (and I can’t blame them) are the mob movies. We have watched Scorcese’s brilliant Goodfellas twice, as well as Donnie Brasco and On the Waterfront. But it is the Godfather series that really hooks us every single time we watch it. 

And that is what I started thinking about in Saraswati's class, as I moved from my bend into my downward dog, when I was supposed to be focusing on my breath.

The part that I replayed over and over in my head was the one where Carlo Rizzi gets garrotted to death while sitting in the front seat of a car. The scene is excruciatingly long and brutal. Carlo kicks and struggles violently as every last breath is squeezed slowly out of his futilely thrashing body. I worked myself into quite a state, replaying the scene over and over. “I’ll bet Carlo would have loved a few more days of focusing on his breath,” I thought to myself as I moved into child’s pose to recover from the horror of the movie playing in my head.

At this point Saraswati came over to my mat and placed her hand gently on my back. I sat up and looked at her. “Are you okay?” she asked me kindly.“What are you thinking about?”

“That scene in The Godfather where Carlo gets whacked” is what I wanted to say but instead I whispered “nothing”. Saraswati just smiled at me, patted my back, and said “why don’t you just try to focus on your breath. The inhale and exhale. Just feel it in your body. Luxuriate in your breath”.

I spent the rest of the class jumping between focusing on my inhales and exhales and replaying my favorite scenes from The Godfather. The severed horse head showing up in the bed of Jack Woltz. The murder of Michael's Italian wife Appolonia, and of course that fifteen-second long front seat garrotting scene. 

Funnily enough what I noticed was that when I was lost in my Corleone family reveries my breath became shallow, fast, frantic. I felt anxious. It was hard to concentrate on the yoga poses. And when I took the time to focus on my inhale and exhale I calmed down. Almost immediately. When I was present with my breath I could feel my muscles stretching deliciously. My heart rate lowered. I simply relaxed.

As Saraswati glided through the room, adjusting us and leading us through the asanas, she told us more about why focusing on our twenty thousand-plus breaths a day might help us. She started with the medical facts. Deep breathing calms our central nervous system. It reduces anxiety by lowering our blood pressure and heart rate which in turn can reduce stress hormones in our blood. "It is our blessing," Saraswati told us, "that we humans have the ability to reboot ourselves and the inherent glitchiness of our minds whenever and wherever we want to by simply engaging in a few minutes of deep conscious breathing. Focusing on our breath helps us to be mindful of the present moment. It allows us to stay in the now. And remember,” she said, “staying in the present moment is so important. It’s all we have, THE NOW. Everything else is just a thought. And a thought of the past or future does not exist in the material world. A thought is not real. Now is all that is real,” she said, sounding almost evangelical. “The now is all that exists and all that will ever exist. And by focusing on our breath we can stay here. In the now.” 

As the class wound down and we lay on our backs in savasana (corpse pose) Saraswati told us that being aware and grateful for each breath we take can lead us into gratitude for all that we have in our lives today. “Because without the breath, without our ability to breathe,” she reminded us, “we have nothing.”

In the last few minutes of the class I was able to fully pull my focus away from organized crime and on to my breath. It felt wonderful and I melted into the floor. Saraswati read us a poem and asked us to recall it throughout the day when we found ourselves lost in thought and taking our breath for granted.

Be still and breathe.

Your breath

Is all the magic you need.

With it you can soothe

Gather center remember.

With it you can evoke visions

That will transform this world.

Ciel Sainte-Marie