Barely Breathing

The last item on the itinerary for the day was breath work. We’d spent the day hiking and indulging in locally made Bison burgers. It was a nice break from the day long teachings and sitting still in the barn. Plus nature is meditative for me, and it helped me to relax. I felt at home climbing through the aspens, and the sun in Santa Fe made it warm enough to trek through the snow without the fear of frostbite. 

Breath work, okay, sure. I’d been meditating for months and had a pretty decent yoga practice. This will be relaxing, I thought. I’m just breathing, aren’t I? I imagined Jana guiding me through a tranquil scenario with soothing breathing techniques. I was so naive.

The instructions were simple: breath as deeply as you can and exhale until your core is tight and empty. I did it a few times easily. Then she demoed the pace.  It was rapid and mimicked hyperventiation. Quick and deep at the same time? “Okay, I could do it,” I thought with hesitation. I didn’t have a choice.

I laid long ways on the couch, with a blind fold on and a fleece blanket covering me from my chest to my toes. Jana and Jen turned the music on so that it surrounded me like a cushion. The music felt tribal, and upbeat, then soft and soothing. I heard their voices coaching me through the music. They were yelling over banging drums, but it reached me like a whisper. “Breathe deep, keep going.”

I breathed deep and quick, feeling the air pulse in and out of my body. My skin started to tingle, like ants rummaging over me. I felt it on my face, my arms, and hands, and only a little reached my toes. In, out, in out, so quickly my mind couldn't keep up. The tingle subsided and I felt my body vibrating. My hands and arms tightened. “Move your hands,” I heard. But I couldn’t. They were fixed, concrete, and I was paralyzed in pain. My neck was stiff and pulled my head back as if a hand had gripped it from behind. It was like a charlie horse on my whole body that I couldn’t escape from.

I sucked in desperately, as if drowning in oxygen. “You’re barely breathing, and you call that a life?” I heard Jana say in the distance. Okay, breathe through it, breathe through it, I thought. I was on the verge of giving up. I listened to the air channel through my throat, and release as if through a loosened pressure cooker. It was loud when I listened to it. I let it fill my mind, and suddenly I disconnected from the pain, from the trap that was my body, and from everything I knew.

Kasi flashed in my mind, kneeling over from a stomach ache and trying not to cry. I was watching this scene like a movie. We were about 5 years old and having our first sleep over. It was late, and we had just settled into our spots in my room. My mom made her chicken and spaghetti that night, which was to die for, and we had snuck in a second late night serving. Maybe it was too much for her. ’I want to go home,” she said. Her face was so little when it was scrunched in pain. I got my mom and she called her parents. We only lived about 5 houses away, but it felt like a road trip when we loaded up the car to deliver her back home.

An image came to me of Kasi lurking around our house. “Go home, Kasi.” My mom had said it so many times, it felt like a reflex to spit out. She tilted her head down, and stared away. But she asked again. “Can I join you? Can I play?” She’d ask again and again and again. And the more she asked to be close, the harder I pushed away. I saw her turn around and walk away, dragging her bare feet slowly on the grass. My chest was tight now. I loved her, but I had been so cruel.

In a flash, I saw myself, about 6 years old, standing in the studio where I’d taken violin lessons. It was an upstairs studio, lined with cherry wood book cases. Every week my dad, Albert, and I were guided through the basics of the violin. Notes, finger placement, bow movement, etc. I was so small, I barely took up space in the vast room around me. My instructor, frustrated in his own helplessness, waved his arms and blurted out, “I can’t teach you.” His eyes moved from me to my dad, “I can’t teach her.” He looked relieved after expressing this, as if it had been building slowly inside him. I looked at this small child, a smaller me, and she stood perfectly motionless. Her face didn’t move or change. It was flat, only her eyes shifted to the floor, dark and tired.

“I’ll teach you,” I thought, looking down at her. “I can teach you!” There was a sense of urgency in my voice, as if the words could shake her from her hopelessness. Then it grew soft as this new revelation sunk into my mind. “ I can teach you.” 

The image dissolved and was replaced with flashes of different colored light. They came in small orbs and expanded around my field of view. Yellows, orange, and purple covered my sight in a sheet of warmth. Then, as if hit by a direct beam to the chest, I felt flooded with a wave of euphoria. It was real, pure love, piercing through me. Streams of water slid down from my eyes, pooling in my ears, and slowly curling my hair. My body couldn’t contain the joy; I hadn’t felt anything like it in my life. 

My breathe slowed to normal, I don’t even think Jana and Jen were even there anymore. I came back to the pain until my arms relaxed, and my body shifted back from vibrations, tingling, then returned to stillness. I was alone in the barn now, humming in this unexpected elation. I sat up and felt dizzy and unbalanced. I was intoxicated on air, and love, and the soothing music that danced around me. I was still crying. I cried while laughing through the ecstasy, and I cried knowing I’d never truly felt this love before. I had shut the door on it myself before I could even remember, but now it was swinging wide open.