THE YOGA CHRONICLES: CONFESSIONS OF A RELUCTANT YOGI

“Breathless”

            I remember the waves crashing against me and my strength giving out. I remember my arms feeling like lead and my legs simply not working. I remember craning my neck to see how far I was from shore and the diving platform. I even remember going under and swallowing a mouthful of nasty lake water.

            But more than anything else, I remember that moment of utter panic when I realized I wasn’t going to make the swim from the boat dock to the diving platform. It was a physical shock which drove the breath from my lungs and paralyzed the rest of me.

            I was going to drown.

            I made it back up just long enough to see a red–suited lifeguard flying down the hill to the lake on the dead run and then entering the water in a full-on Mark Spitz racing dive. (Even his name was perfect: Paul Champion. It sounds like something the Southpark guys would dream up.)

The next thing I knew, I was being pulled up from under the surface and hauled ignominiously back to shore, a seven year-old weakling kid who couldn’t even make it to the diving platform.

It seems inconceivable but that was my first instinct, a wave of self–loathing that I had humiliated my brothers, my family and myself by being such a physical abortion. (The cruelty of my brothers’ teasing was often in direct proportion to whatever perceived shame I had visited upon them and, well, this was a doozy.) This was not just humiliation but a public humiliation and someone else–a lifeguard, for God’s sake- had to pull my ass out of the ditch. The taunts of their friends would burn their ears and I would pay the price in my tears and their disdain.

I know this sounds all very melodramatic.

It also happens to be true.

Not true in a sense.

True.

            There are those who would I say I am a man who cheated death that day and I should live each day as if it were my last.

Well, trust me on this one. That’s a load of shit.

            Far from acceptance of my own mortality and an invitation to embrace all the good in the world, this was an early object lesson in the assertion of my will:

This will by-God NEVER happen to me again. I will never feel this way again. I will live my life in such a way as to control each aspect of it, right down to people’s perceptions of me. No one will ever have to pull me out of the drink again. People won’t ever have to feel sorry for me again.

            Strangely, I didn’t even cry that day, even when I saw my mother’s hands pushing her not insignificant head of hair away from her forehead while bouncing on her tiptoes, a nervous gesture she generally reserves for births, surgeries, and close playoff games.

            Instead, I ran to the woods, squatted down, pulled my arms over my head in shame and held my breath, every fiber in my body tense and rigid to meet whatever blow would land on me.

Some scholars have called this the “fight or flight” instinct. Wrong. Take it from the youngest brother of three, there are times when you can’t fight or fly.

Sometimes you just curl up in a ball and take an ass-whipping.

            In those situations, you hold your breath to keep it from getting knocked out of you.

            Or you hold it so you won’t swallow lake water and drown.

 

            I smoked for twenty-seven years, which means I held my breath for about ten thousand hours between 1975 and 2002. (Do the math: a pack a day at twenty cigarettes per pack at five to six minutes per cigarette comes up to about an hour a day when accounting for inhaling and exhaling. Multiple that by 365 days a year for twenty-seven years. That’s 416 days.)

            I have also received over eighty jury verdicts in the last twenty-six years, which means I’ve heard that knock on the jury door eighty times. That too will knock the breath out of you.

            I have witnessed the birth of my son, preached in churches, stared down tavern –keepers and judges, ran a political campaign, been the victim of a violent crime, and coached in six basketball championship games.

            And I have fallen in love.

            Each one of these things will take your breath away.

            So yoga has its hands full.

 

We talk a lot about breathing in yoga, as if it is entirely new thing- which for me at least- I guess it is. We talk primarily about controlling the breath, as opposed to losing it. We talk about synchronizing our breath with our movements, trying to time our transition from one stage of a pose to the next with our breath in order to move ourselves in strong, mindful ways rather than flinging ourselves into poses.

We talk about “catching our breath,” another phrase I never truly understood until yoga.

When you are trying to move your body in syncopation with your breath, the breath can get behind movements and you try to literally catch up to your movements. I never really thought about that before yoga. It is essentially the same in running, when you speed up unmindfully to catch up with your opponent, leaving you gasping. This is why runners with a great “kick” have an advantage – they know when they are going to make their move and do so with purpose, i.e., in syncopation with their breath.

            I try to remember to breathe before I do anything now. Before I even lay down my yoga mat before class, I have to think about my breath. But like with anything else, the things you are trying not to do are generally more important than what you are actually trying to do.

            First, don’t hold your breath. Seems simple to people who didn’t smoke for twenty-seven years.

            Second, don’t breathe through your mouth. Breathe in through your nose and out through your nose as much as possible. Breathe into the diaphragm, not the lungs- much larger capacity. It will keep your heart rate from accelerating. You can control your heart rate this way rather than being reactionary.

Third, adjust your activity level to your breath. Breathe first. This is what Serena Williams is talking about when she says the tennis match looks to be “in slow motion.” What she means is that she is controlling her breathing. Her response to the pace of the action isn’t rushed or panicked. Instead, she is able to dictate it her own response and control the tempo of the match.

Also, time the length of your inhale with the length of your exhale. Try not to hesitate in between. Let it flow.

Finally, don’t beat yourself up for not breathing. You will fail.

            If your breath is regular and not panicked, your mind is clearer and you can concentrate more fully on the task at hand, like trying to figure out why you are trying to balance on one foot with your hands over your head in the first damn place.

            I breathe all the time now since starting yoga. I breathe at the grocery store, in my car, in Mass on Sunday, and sometimes I even breathe in court. I breathe on the golf course while putting, which allows me to control my heart rate. Three steady inhale and exhale breaths through my nose until my heart calms, I smile a bit to relax my face, and then I stroke the putt, which now goes only three feet past the cup as opposed to six.

            If I had known yoga at seven, I might not have almost drowned. I might not have panicked and I might have been able to roll onto my back and float until my breath regulated. I could’ve sent fresh oxygen to my lungs and to my brain, which would have relaxed me, allowed me to think clearly and then send a more soothing message onward to my flailing arms and legs.        

            If I remember to breathe now, I find myself much less likely to lash out in anger or frustration. I lean toward defensiveness in all things, whether ducking a punch and protecting myself from humiliation by adopting a cocksure, reactionary mask. The closer someone gets in discovering my disguise, the more defensive and flinty I tend to get. My reactions in those situations are rote in any event, owing less to the truth of my feelings than to the construction of a plausible public persona.

This is yet another learned behavior I often try to dismiss as an occupational hazard but the truth is this whole “never let ‘em see you sweat” thing is just another failed paradigm in my life.

The fact is there is nothing more obvious and sad than seeing a carefully crafted exterior crumble, whether it be a sweaty Wall Street –type doing the perp walk for insider –trading or a lawyer consumed by flop-sweat after making a closing argument fumble and trying to cover it up with even bigger words than the ones which failed him initially.

For me, it is as if my body has its own truth that I must accept. The moisture at my hairline tells me I was not prepared or thoughtful, a damnation of whatever petty falsity or disingenuousness I had concocted.

            I am a hare learning to be a tortoise, trying to accept that the difference between truthfulness and a brilliant disguise is often as simple as taking the time to breathe -and accepting the notion that people might actually like the person I am rather than the person I let them see.

© 2014 Thomas C. Barron

HOME: PART THREE- “THE ‘A’ PARTY LIST”

My yoga studio, Lotus Yoga, is located in the heart of East Dallas and basks in the reflected neon glow of the iconic Lakewood Theater marquee. It is a shanked nine-iron from the Lakewood Country Club and within a good spitter’s range of Whole Food’s Market, the spiritual center of the New East Side. While its property values skyrocket as young professional types flock to the area in search of cheap land and craft beer, the East Side steadfastly maintains its distinct bohemian vibe, a nurturing bosom for scholarly, creative and independent thought.

So falling out of Warrior III or Revolved Triangle would generally entail me crash –landing on some innocent history professor or creative writing instructor from one of the local colleges. I almost suffocated a blogger once falling out of Half Moon and broke three ribs on a poor graphic designer coming out of a headstand. Or I might simply flatten one of the chefs, set designers, Thai masseuses, artists, dancers, interior designers, writers, teachers or lawyers who regularly share their practice there.

The space itself is sparse and utilitarian: a tiny desk to the left of the front door and cubbies for one’s shoes, purse and handgun to the right. Beyond that is the main yoga area. It is carpeted and can comfortably accommodate about twenty–five normal size yogis who haven’t had a big dinner. In the back, there is a small room for private lessons and massage, a bathroom, changing space, water fountain and storage spot for mats and the all-important Navajo blankets.

                But the studio is just a vessel, a safe haven for the broken, the lost, the fearful, the hurt, the nerdy, and the weird.

We are all broken.

If you don’t know that, you’ve never been to a yoga class.

There will be a point in every yoga class where the realization hits you that you simply cannot do a pose because your body or mind will not let you.

There is no “powering through it” or “getting mean” or “showing it who’s boss.”

For some, it is balance poses. For them, it might be inability to focus the gaze on an immoveable object or weak ankles or poor orientation.

For others, it is forward folds, which involve a hell of a lot more than just touching your damn toes. Trust me, it is hard to breathe comfortably in that position without first knowing how to engage one’s core and orient one’s back (flat, not rounded) and align one’s head (top of the head forward, not up- too hard on the neck). Even at that, you might just have tight hamstrings, like most Olympic sprinters.

When you start combining balance poses with flow (the transitioning from one pose to the next using syncopated breathing), the fun really begins. People have been known to move far away from me when this part of the class starts, often as far as Cleveland.

In order to get a feel for what I’m talking about, let’s all try this at home.

Find an open spot away from anything expensive.

Begin in a runner’s lunge with one knee bent over the ankle while the other leg is extended as far behind you as you can comfortably get it with your back knee on the ground. Curl your back toes. Make sure your feet are wide enough apart to support you. Your hands are down flat on the floor and you are looking down.

Now lift your back knee off the ground.

Uh, huh.

Now lift your hands off the floor a bit so only the tips of your fingers are touching. For five counts.

You’re sweating some now.

Now raise both arms over your head with a straight back.

How many of you fell on your ass?

Liars.

This transition is basic but hard as hell. It requires balance between the feet -front and back and side to side. It requires great core strength to stay on ones fingertips with your body rising up. The transition to get the arms overhead seems impossible until you realize that it is harder to stay on your fingertips than to rise up.

All the teetering and sweating and falling is part of your practice. It awaits you every day. In fact, the joy and wonderment of your yoga practice is knowing and accepting that you will fail at something every class.

In the words of this generation, it is often an Epic Fail.

But for those with the stones to accept that challenge every day, there are moments of breakthrough and utter joy. After my first headstand, I was telling perfect strangers about it in line at the cleaners, my wife having vetoed the full–page ad.

There is also a childlike wonder in every class as someone does something really cool. Today, my buddy Damien did this transition from Plow where he pulled his legs over his head and flipped over, landing in a perfect pushup position.

(Alright, smartasses, in case you don’t believe me, look at the video below.)

It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.

I am fifty-three years old. I don’t get to feel like I’m eight very often.

I strongly recommend it.

Now Damien is in his mid-twenties and could go bear hunting with a switch. He has a rangy, muscular frame like the soccer player he used to be. But even he has trouble with certain alignments, which produces not Schadenfreude but an even better understanding that we all struggle.

We have the CFO of a huge investment concern who had a heart attack before he was forty and who jokes this “hippie shit” not only has healed him physically but has helped his professional career, as well.

We have former ballerinas who have trouble standing on one foot.

            There are former high school football players who have trouble with pushups.

            We have a high school middle-distance runner who could run to Tibet and back but who forgets to breathe during poses.

But there is also the professional writer–a former rakehell whose demons she routinely revisits in her monthly column-who could hold a plank pose in a typhoon.

We have a high-powered fifty-something corporate litigator who drops his suspenders and contorts his large frame into Mermaid pose, an impossible affair which requires twisting back with his right hand to grasp his right foot while keeping his chest open to the sky.

While balancing on one knee.

We have Damien’s pregnant wife who can do Warrior III with a baby on board, standing on one straight leg with both arms outstretched in front of her and her opposite leg kicked back in line with her arms, like a “T.”

Yep- got a picture of that, too. See below.

I’ve seen seventy- year old women do headstands and stocky rugby players reach back to grab their feet in Bow pose.

This is my new “A-Party List,” the people who I see every day aspiring to make themselves whole again, even if it means staring directly at their own demons.

Through our movements in class, we step forward into our futures without fear and into our pasts without judgment or attachment. New poses are attained through discipline and patience while we learn from the failures of our past.

We all come to the room with different gifts, different inadequacies and different fears, yet we come mostly without ego or pretense or even expectation.

But mainly, we just come. We each decide for ourselves that the journey lasts at least one more day. As the Swami says, the hardest part is getting to your mat, making the decision to confront both the best and worst parts of yourself one more time.

We aren’t just broken.

We are also whole.

NEXT TIME: Breathing is very important.

© (2014) Thomas C. Barron