Pug Hill - Alison Pace [48]
Beth Anne bares her teeth and begins breathing in and out through her nose really quickly. I can see her stomach pumping through the thin material of her caftan.
“Now everyone try,” she says, and obediently, we all do. Everyone bares their teeth and snorts in and out. “Remember your abdominals, pull in your abdominals with every short, sharp intake of breath,” she explains, beginning to clap softly, rhythmically, along with our very overheated—very puglike, come to think of it—breathing. Lawrence jumps up from his chair and fans his hands out to the side: jazz hands. He stays there and continues his Kalabati, waving his jazz hands around. The rest of us continue practicing from our seats, nudged along by Beth Anne’s clapping, encouraged to continue via her enthusiastic nods. I look over at Lawrence—how can I not?—and I have to admit that I see his point.
The happy-hubris-inner-me, the one who proudly wears her own orange caftan and waves her own hands in the air, and shouts ecstatically, I am one step ahead! is back. It’s been a big night for her. As you might guess, I don’t let her out very often. But here she is again, standing right next to Lawrence with her own jazz hands, exclaiming, I know Kalabati, too!
Then of course, the part of me for whom every moment is not a celebration of self, the part of me that would never be caught dead in an orange caftan, the part of me who I imagine prefers black clothing and moody vintage overcoats, puts down one of the cigarettes she’s always smoking. She exhales and reminds me what a big loser I have the propensity to be. I actually see that the dark brooding cigarette-smoking inner me might have just made a valid point, so I try to temper the excitement. I’m actually pretty successful at chilling myself out, vanquishing the orange caftan version of my inner self away again, but still, I am nothing if not relieved that I have mastery of all these techniques. I can relax, I think, I really can.
“Great, class,” Beth Anne announces the end of our breathing. Lawrence takes his seat. “Try to practice these breathing exercises right before any presentations. They’ll truly help you to relax.”
I think about my speech: my speech will be made at a party, most likely somewhat spontaneously. It will be delivered, I imagine, from the middle of a dance floor. I think how very likely I won’t even know when it is ten, or even five, minutes before it is time to make my speech. I think how, as is so characteristic of all big scary things, I won’t have any warning at all. I picture some clearly nefarious DJ/wedding singer/leader-of-the-band-type holding his microphone. He has a mullet. He’s taken the microphone off the stand and is walking around with a swagger, holding the mike in one hand, holding the wire to the mike in the other, twirling it, trailing it along with him, like a hideous pet snake.
“And now Caroline and Henry’s daughter, Hope, would like to make a speech,” he will say. I think about how that will happen and how everyone, all the people, will turn to look at me and I’ll have to get right up from whatever chair I’ve been sitting in, holding onto white-knuckled. There won’t be any time, any place, to practice One Nostril Breathing, and certainly not Kalabati breathing, unless of course I want to have another reason to be embarrassed in front of people. And again, so quickly, all is lost.
“The Lion is another technique that’s wonderful, just wonderful for relaxation,” Beth Anne says, signaling that we’re moving on from the breathing exercises, and I think how this is a good thing, as clearly the breathing has really done nothing to relax me so much as it has brought me to the bad place. I’m ready to move on.
“First, close your eyes tightly, tightly, tightly,” she says, closing her eyes, as you can probably guess, tightly. “And scrunch your face up tightly, tightly, tightly, too,” she says and follows suit, both puckering her lips and raising them up to touch her nose while keeping her eyes still tightly shut. We wait.
It