The Disasters and Delights of Pranayama
“Inhale….two, three, four. Hold to sixteen… fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. Exhale… five, six, seven, eight.”
Day three of the Anusara Immersion with Amy Ippoliti last November. We were practicing pranayama. I hated it.
Nothing was comfortable. I shifted from sitting bone to another and wiggling my shoulders around trying to find a spot in my lungs that did not hurt to pull air into. I was almost sure my throat was closing up with the Ujaayi I was employing. I started faking the breaths, lifting my chest when the instructor said to inhale and dropping it when she said to exhale – but in reality, had given up trying to keep up.
I could feel the beginnings of an anxiety attack creeping up in my veins; the sensation of losing control of the natural risings and fallings of my breath, the constant beatings of my heart. I had felt this a lot during my first few years in college, popping Xanax to keep my worry from spiraling out of control, and I was not keen on the idea of intentionally doing something to recreate that sensation. I don’t like not being in control.
Who, me? Yeah. Hard to believe, I know.
At the end of our pranayama practice, Amy interviewed the class to see what the general consensus of regarding the experience.
“That was great, I feel so relaxed!”
“Wow, that was beautiful the way my breath…” blah blah blah, yadda yadda.
Screw that, I kept thinking.
Finally, I could not believe that everyone was saying they had enjoyed it. It bothered me that I had apparently been the only one having a low-level panic attack instead of a spiritually enlightening experience. I raised my hand.
“Actually, I didn’t like that at all. Nor did I find it comforting. It hurt, and it was hard for me to sit still.” Amy asked me to show her how I sit for meditations. I scooted around, wiggling while I tried to find a comfortable way to sit. But I could not stop shifting. I closed my eyes and tried again. Shift, shift. Wiggle. Then I laughed, embarrassed that I could absolutely not sit still.
“Just show me how you sit, Elle…” Amy began, and I burst into tears.
That was it, I explained. I couldn’t sit still. I couldn’t find any way to be comfortable. I felt like I was choking when I breathed, I felt like my breath was not going to run on its own if I stopped leading it from inhale to exhale. “It’s fugging scary,” I sobbed, finally letting go of whatever it was that was keeping me from crying hysterically in front of the twenty-five fellow immersion participants.
I am not naïve. I know that there is a reason why the things in life that scare us the most, scare us the most. And I had sat with that knowledge in my yoga practice numerous times, but with the decline of my panic attacks, I figured maybe it was all over. But having to face it once again, and without hiding behind asana or a multitude of other potential distractions, I had to confront my fears of sitting still and breathing.
(What that may be symbolic of, I won’t even start going into here. That is a whole other conversation, and if you really want to hear it, I am happy to talk your ear off about it over sushi.)
Amy told me that like with any yoga pose, if it does not feel comfortable, then don’t do it. Simple as that. With that, I gave myself permission to not try so hard that I scared myself. I felt the huge weight of shame lifted off of my shoulders with the confession of my fear. What kind of a yoga teacher would I be if I admitted I was scared of breathing?, I had always wondered.
The answer? A human one. A real one.
Even with the freedom granted to me by the voiced acknowledgement of my fear and embarrassment of it, I could not stop my crying. For the next hour of our practice, I cried openly, tears streaming down my face, even as I held coherent conversations and laughed with my friends. I eventually gave up trying to stop the tears, keeping a wad of tissues in my hands to swab my dribbling nose.
The end of the day wrap-up came and I thanked everyone for being so supportive as I worked through my unexpected breakdown. A handful of others shared their insight from the day and we were about to close our day when one more person spoke up.
I turned around to respectfully watch Caleb as he spoke, but he kept his eyes fixed straight ahead on Amy. “I heard someone share a fear today that I had never heard anyone else admit to. I’ve never even admitted to it before – to anyone – and I didn’t think anyone else felt that way.”
It took me a moment before I realized he was talking about me. I naturally began crying again, moving my gaze to the floor out of embarrassment for my continued display of sobs.
I left quickly that afternoon, wanting to get somewhere where I could cry openly and messily. I pulled out my trusty journal and started writing about my experience, and when I came to write about my friend who spoke up at the end of class, I got emotional once more.
Sometimes it is easier for me to choke down my fears, worries, concerns and opinions instead of dealing with the reaction they may incite. What I learned was that my unexpected admission granted someone else the courage to come face to face with their own fears – and feel safe enough to speak up.
The second Caleb and I caught a glimpse of each other the next morning, we hugged each other – hard. I held on him as if to the lifeline that I did not know I needed, like I had found myself in the middle of the ocean and suddenly realized I could no longer swim. We both had the courage to try again, and to find new life in the midst of our breath.
These days, I have developed a fairly regular meditation practice. As a matter of fact, I have even grown to prefer it to asana, finding sanctuary, stillness and balance in it. Although there are times I stumble across a pranayama practice that invokes the whispers of anxiety, I instead let the breath fall to normal and call upon the trusted face of my pal Caleb. Then I can rest, assured in the rise and fall of my breath and the magic it creates.