Living artfully

Last week, every single day for six days, I spent 2-4 hours taking part in a course called, "The Art of Living." With a title like that, a whole lot could happen. It could be a Martha Stewart course on making vegetable cupcakes. But no, it's the first sorta spiritual Indian "thing" I've done since arriving. . . though I didn't know that when it started.

It seemed like a good idea when I signed up - the first week of the new semester, a new year, new page, new leaf, get rid of the detritus of the past and take a step into my exciting future. "What is the course about?" I asked the friends who had taken it. "Oh, a bunch of breathing techniques kind of like yoga."

So how did I end up dancing around a room with my eyes closed, ardently hoping that no one else was cheating and opening up his or her eyes. . . or, later, staring into other participants' eyes "like a child," to find "God's love" there. Talk about uncomfortable. Or telling your life's story in 9 minutes (why 9, I wonder?) to a group of five people (while unofficially trying to listen to other life stories being told in the classroom). Just try it. You'll be amazed at what comes out.

Did they say anything about bowing down to "the angels of lust and obsession," as we were directed to do two days in a row? We were supposed to get down on our knees in four directions. The angels of greed, anger, and other things that are bad were all around us, apparently, and bowing to them meant that they would take care of these things for you. But I couldn't get used to the idea of "angels of lust" - the image just didn't work for me. Angels are supposed to be angelic, not lustful, angry, and obsessed, right? So once again, I wasn't thinking about the right things. Plus I did not want to get down on my knees with my eyes closed, then stand up, turn 90 degrees, and do the same thing again. All that space around me where I could hit unseen objects? Obviously I will have a lot of adjusting to do if I lose my eyesight. So I settled for just being able to turn 90 degrees with my eyes closed, then pretending to say "Namaste" to anyone, angel or demon or just regular person, in that direction. Don't laugh; try turning 90 degrees four times with your eyes closed, and see if you end up facing where you started - it's not easy!

I did find an image of an "angel of lust" on the net; actually, since it was part of the "Gallery Girls" book collection at amazon.com, they now have added this to my amazon.com database, so every time I log on to amazon in the future, they will probably recommend some strange dark lustful teenage fantasy novel, along with the "Garfield" recommendations I get due to previous purchases for my nephew.

Bowing to the wrong type of angels was only one of the activities that I NEVER would have thought I would be doing last week. Now, I'm not saying that I did anything wild and crazy, like engaging in some ancient disgusting Masonic ritual - yeah, I've read The Da Vinci Code and seen Sherlock Holmes (the movie), and I know how to be careful.

The main activity, designed to put our bodies in touch with our minds, or vice versa, was breathing "artfully." Every day we had to do a breathing routine. First, we learned how to do "throat breathing." I'm still not sure what it is, but when I heard people making snoring sounds, I did that too, so at least I sounded ok. Then we had to do a routine, sitting on our heels, that was like doing the "Funky Chicken" in three parts, while our feet went to sleep.

Here's a picture from the course website of some soldiers doing this, in case you don't believe me.


Next we did three sets of rapid hand-raising and dropping and shouting "Huh." After that we had to sit cross-legged and breathe 20 long breaths, 40 medium breaths, and 40 short breaths; all of this, three times in a row. Then we lay down for awhile in "corpse pose" and had out-of-body experiences from all of that hyperventilation. Do I sound skeptical? All of the poses had Hindi? Sanskrit? names that reminded me of IKEA product names. Not having seen any of the words, I can only tell you what they sounded like:
throat breathing was "ujai" breathing
sitting cross-legged was "sonasam"
Sitting on your heels was "arvaan"
doing the funky chicken was "prayana"
raising our hands and dropping them was "pastreeka," a word that made me hungry every time I heard it.
the whole breathing thing was called "kreeya"
and so on and so on. After awhile the string of commands sounds like reading the IKEA catalog aloud.

Here I should tell you that this course, although "different" by Minnesota standards, definitely does good things for many people. The sponsoring foundation has sessions for helping opposing groups to come together, it brings the program to prisons, etc. And there's no question but that it's a positive approach. As the instructor said before our first "big" breathing exercise, "Keep going, NO MATTER WHAT." Then he paused. "No one has ever died of breathing," he added. That provided a modicum of reassurance. Though I did spend the next few minutes trying to decide whether there were exceptions. What about carbon monoxide, for example? But that was just the angel of skepticism interfering with my positive thoughts.

One thing I wondered was why the relaxation tape included the narrator's cough and subsequent silence, which kind of spoiled the rhythm of his instructions. And the part where he said, "Relax your thigh and hip. Your WHOLE leg. now your janitors. What did he say? Relax your "janitors?" "janitals?" What are those? . . . oh. I wondered what people's faces looked like at that moment.

At the end of the relaxation instructions the voice started to sing somewhat tunelessly, like someone talking to himself. The first time we heard the tape, I thought it was our instructor, as we had our eyes closed, and I was embarrassed for him when the singing started, because it sounded so pathetic. But then when the cough came at exactly the same point the second time, I realized it was a tape. But it wasn't our instructor, it was "Guru-ji," or Shree Shree whatever (again, that's what it sounded like - the truth is irrelevant here). The same guy whose picture sat grinning at us flirtatiously throughout the course. The same picture that we were asked to bow down and thank on the last day. That is the last time, I swear it, that anyone gets me to thank a picture.

Speaking of closing our eyes, I became increasingly suspicious of exactly what was going on when we had our eyes closed, doing our breathing or meditation or relaxation or just sitting with eyes closed. It was like a surprise party that never stopped, except that there weren't any presents. At first when I heard whispering and commotion I assumed that the instructor was taking breaks.


Later I started to imagine that he was trying to stifle laughter.



Every day that we did the breathing we would debrief afterwards. I felt like a failure (though now I know that the cause of feeling like a failure is pure EGO) because other people were having great highs, or at least crying uncontrollably, when I was lying there thinking about how, by the time we got out that night, the stores would be closed and I was out of toilet paper.

We did journaling, too. We had to write down some questions and then discuss the answers the next day. I loved the discussions, because we had to "come close," just like kindergarten circle time, and I couldn't wait to sit in a semi-circle around at the instructor's knee. Kind of like my joy when I sit in a chair and my feet don't touch the ground, which doesn't happen much when you're 5'8". Unfortunately (don't tell my students), I consistently forgot a pencil, so I just tried to look reflective while others wrote, and then I forgot the questions by the time I got home. The one day I brought a pen was the last day, when I planned to catch up on all of my missing entries. During the first few minutes of writing down new mantras, such as "The present moment is inevitable," I noticed that my hand was covered with dark blue ink. So much for notetaking. At least it looked like I was having a special moment of healing when I rushed to the sink to wash my hands.

One of the other class participants asked me today, a week after the course, "Did you cry?" and I would have felt like a failure again, except that I now know that is ego and I don't have to do that because, no matter what, the present moment is inevitable. I realized that the bottom line of the course was just that, "Did you cry?" Without that, it meant nothing. Crying was the badge of accomplishment. Even my purchase of the "Cosmic Celebrations" CD, with hip jazzy spiritual vibes, couldn't make up for the lack of tears. I wish now that I had bought the CD with the gangsta rap spiritual songs, created for their courses for 14-18 year olds. Maybe I didn't cry, but my dancing could bring tears (oh, there goes that ego again).

The instructor told us that if we continued the breathing exercises for 40 days, we would be hooked and do them for life. What is it about 40 days? walking in the desert, floods - that time period sounds like bad news. Since the course, I have done the breathing exercises . . . well, actually, I haven't done them once, although I have continued breathing on a routine basis. I haven't even listened to the Cosmic Celebrations CD at home yet.

And I also received a CD of the relaxation narrated by Guru-ji, so if any of you want to relax your "janitors," I'll be happy to lend you the CD. Or we can dance to "Cosmic Celebrations."