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| Yoga, I love you, but we need to talk... |
“Focus on your breath.”
“Relax and breathe.”
“Inhale. Exhale.”
“Let your breath flow naturally.”
“Exhale slowly as you fold to the
floor.”
Yoga, as both a spiritual and physical
practice, asks folks to reconnect to their breath. In fact, most yoga
books and websites open with a long description of how stressed out,
unhealthy modern people breathe incorrectly. We breathe, the story
goes, too quickly, too shallowly, and too high in our lungs. As a
result, our stress levels increase and our wellness decreases in an
endless feedback loop. Yoga offers a solution: focus on your breath.
Think about your breath. Learn to breathe better.
Breathe better? What's wrong with my
breath? Is something wrong with my breath? I thought my breath was
fine a moment ago. It carried me through my day. But, no. There is
something wrong.
Now
I'm thinking my breath and
that makes it impossible to breathe.
This isn't a criticism of nonsense
along the lines of, “Breathe through your toes.” We all know
that's ridiculous. I'm proposing a yogic revolt lead by all us folks
who grew up with nervous ticks, by all the folks who struggle with
compulsion, and those who spend their lives thinking, thinking, thinking.
For us, thinking about breath
leads to the rabbit-hole we're probably practicing yoga to escape.
Breath is a function of the autonomous
nervous system. While it can be subtly altered through yoga, breath,
for the most part, goes about it's own business of sustaining life
without any input from the conscious mind. I personally believe
well-meaning yogis should leave it at that.
I grew up struggling with nervous
ticks. One of my clearest childhood memories is the day I discovered
swallowing. It came up as the answer to a riddle, something about a
bird who lives in a barn and an automatic bodily function. As the
conversation ranged, it occurred to me that my mouth was indeed full
of saliva which needed swallowing at internals. However, having
discovered this amazing automatic response, I couldn't stop thinking
about it. My compulsion (de)evolved over the next week into a nervous
swallowing-click in the back of my throat. Think Gollum, my precious.
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| Expectation: I am cleansed and healed by aligning my breath with the breath of the planet. |
Fast-forward
a decade to a teenage girl discovering yoga. Imagine this girl
stretched out with her hand on her belly prepared to learn the art of
diaphragmatic breathing. You can probably imagine how it all went
wrong. My breath didn't feel easy and full. Was I doing it wrong? My
chest felt tight. My mind went panicky. I sat up and told myself,
“Stop thinking about it. You breathe all the damn-time. Your body's
got this!” Except my body didn't “have” it any more. My
compulsive brain had seized control and my body wouldn't regain
control until I moved on and redirected my meddling mind elsewhere.
Since
then, I've made an uneasy peace with breathe and yoga...the same way
I've made peace with sidewalks whose gaps must be crossed alternately
leading with the right and left foot.
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| Reality: A panic attack is crouched like an incubus on my chest. |
However,
my most miserable moments in yoga class invariably include those
minutes when the instructor asks everyone to sit quietly and
“connect” to their breath. The idea is to tune-in to the natural
rhythm of the body and subtly nudge it toward those long seamless
inhalations and exhalations of Ujjayi.
I, on
the other hand, often find myself at the edge of a panic attack.
I gain
so much from my yoga practice, but I grow increasingly uncertain that
those benefits balance out the damage of relinquishing control of my
breath from the unconscious to the conscious mind. Unconscious
breathing carries me through bicycle rides, when my lungs are pulled
open by exertion and I gasp in breaths of bright spring air.
Unconscious breathing gives voice to conversations, songs, and
whistles. I don't think about my breath when I dance or jump on the
trampoline.
So, I
ask, “Yoga Guru, why, to move through the healing, invigorating
asanas, am I required I sit through three minutes of torture while my
compulsive mind makes a muddle of a good thing?”
And
Yoga Guru replies, “Your resistance is a sign that this is the most
important practice at all.”
Fuck
that.
Sorry,
pranayama, we're breaking up
