Years ago — about twenty-five, I believe — I embarked on the study of Yoga. It was a time in my life fraught with children of all ages, and I needed something relaxing for myself two nights a week. So off I went to the local high school and spent a wonderful hour each time with Mrs. Hornberger, our instructor.
I learned there is a breathing facet to Yoga; and I found it difficult to master. “The breathing will come,” Mrs. Hornberger would say. “Just focus on the postures.” I did. But the breathing never came.
The children grew up and left home. I moved and joined a health club where I took swimming lessons. I had learned all the appropriate strokes as a child, but needed a refresher course. For instance, what was called the Australian Crawl in my younger day was now named the front crawl, but often referred to as freestyle swimming. No matter its name, there is a breathing component to it. One I still hadn’t mastered.
Then Earl and I moved to Michigan and gutted our bathrooms, which meant we needed a place to shower. We joined the local health club two years ago so that we wouldn’t be offensive in public, and I’ve been going there ever since. Today I do weight resistance training, swimming, and walking. In the first two of the three, breathing is as important as it was back in my Yoga days.
And the good news is, I’ve figured out how to do it. Basically, you exhale on the exertion and inhale on the rest portion of the exercise. It doesn’t matter whether you’re doing weight training or swimming. It’s the same rhythm. Of course, this is health club jargon to anybody who hasn’t been searching for the key to breathing. But I’ve been searching twenty-five years, and I only wish I knew where Mrs. Hornberger was now. She was right all along.
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