The Importance of Breathing

It’s the first day of the quarter, and two of my classes have already run me into the ground. Granted, they’re both P.E. classes, and that ground is cushioned by a yoga mat during one of them.

In addition to a full course load (four classes; two for the core and two for my majors), I will be spending my Monday mornings and evenings in the Ratner Athletic Center’s dance studio, first for a yoga class and later for Modern Dance—not exactly in sync with my apparent lack of flexibility and rhythm.

Our instructor calls it Hatha yoga; my friend said it was the best nap he’s had in a long time. It’s the most common form of yoga practiced in the States, at home in health centers, hotel spas and living rooms alike. According to Wikipedia, “The 2005 "Yoga in America" survey, conducted by Yoga Journal, shows that the number of practitioners in the US increased to 16.5 million with the 18-24 age group, showing a 46% increase in one year,” and making it symptomatic of the health food and lifestyle fads popping up across the country faster than a class doing the Upward-Dog. Even our instructor said she had only been practicing for a year.

Why am I taking a yoga class? There are myriad professed health benefits, including increased flexibility and “centeredness,” which I suppose is the ability to spend longer amounts of time hunched over my computer in the Reg. But what really convinced me was the explanation our instructor had for breathing techniques. (And no, I don’t mean the part about find our “third eye,” though that sounds cool.)

“You should be inhaling and exhaling through your nose,” she said, weaving between students and their yoga mats, “not your mouth. In fact, the only person who should have to open her mouth during yoga is me.”

An hour solid of daylight with no talking, just breathing? Count me incapable. I can’t sit still, let alone lie face-up on a mat; I don’t like to relax (I am from the University of Chicago); and I love to talk. Which makes me think this is exactly the class for me.

So we practiced breathing. Breathing with our hands on our stomachs; breathing with our knees raised; breathing with our pelvic bones in the air. I was ready to go back to the dorm and sleep by 10:30 a.m. Anyone who has told you that UChicago will eat your soul has never been to the dance studio.

I was ready to go again by 4:00 p.m. This time, I was the yoga mat, wiggling and rolling my joints around on the floor per the teacher’s instructions until I could unfurl and contort as easily as exhaling.

Modern dance is not what happens at high school dances, for starters. It’s better, at least if the teacher’s “Your body is perfect just the way it is” mantra holds any relevance to the act of throwing your limbs into space to the beat of a live drummer sitting the studio’s corner for 45 minutes.

I almost felt like a real dancer—until my cell phone went off, filling the studio with my generic, vaguely hip-hop/techno ringtone.