This piece – written by Judith K. Morgan following an in-depth breathing workshop- reveals the magnificent gifts of mindful breathing.
THE ART OF BREATHING. We come together – strangers for the most part – to learn to breathe.How absurd! We’ve been breathing, some of us, for 60 years.Yet as the hours and days pass, we realize we have much to learn about breathing. And as we are taught these new techniques, we begin torecognize there is more to this than mere science. First it’s Ujjayi breathing, then it’s Bhostrika – a little trickybut not too hard.Then we’re told we’re going to do a Sudrashan Kruja –nothing more than normal breaths but in a rhythmicpattern from slow, to moderate, to fast and back toslow again – a piece of cake – WRONG!
Our instructors skipped telling us this would go on for 30
minutes-no stopping, no sleeping!
Are you kidding? – they should have said, no passing out!
Well, we were committed, so breathe we did-and sweat,
and ache, and tingle and go numb.
This can’t happen to a body just from breathing!!
But they swore on the altar to Ravi Shankar this was not
dangerous, would cause no harm.
And, indeed, we all survived the experience long enough
to reap the reward of total relaxation–to sleep, to
stop breathing, to leave our bodies, to weep, to return
to the womb, to know the eternal, to become steamed
spinach.
This WAS beyond science!
Moreover, as we contemplated, shared, gazed into brown eyes
and blue, took sustenance together, exposed our egos
and sat in quiet,
Our awareness grew, our prejudices dissolved, our hearts were
opened, our separateness began to blur;
And these who came as strangers, at the end, knew a new truth.
Behind the brown eyes and blue, alike, the color of our souls is the
same–it is the color of God–we really are One.
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