I am the ocean.

“Inhale deeply through your nose. This time, seal your lips for the exhale.

Constrict the back of your throat, like you’re fogging up a mirror.

Keep your lips sealed for the remainder of the practice.

Activate your ujjayi breath.”

The edges of my cork yoga mat blur ever so slightly as I drop into the breathing pattern called ujjayi breathing.

The first time I heard the term was in this room two years prior. That instructor used Sanskrit names instead of our Westernized yoga lingo, something I had come to appreciate. She no longer teaches at this studio and so it has been a few months since I’ve heard the Sanskrit—forgetting that Utkatasana is chair pose and Adho Mukha Svanasana is downward dog.

I didn’t forget ujjayi, though. The first time she used that term, something about her description—like fogging up a mirror with your lips closed—just clicked. As someone who has struggled with asthma and problems breathing through my nose for all my life (thanks, allergies and a deviated septum!), I thought that I was just doomed to never breathe the proper way in yoga and other movement classes.

But something about this way of breathing actually worked. I could sync my movements to it. I could control the cadence of it. Sometimes I could keep it going for an entire class.

I smile when I hear this new instructor say it now, reminding me of its power.

I fall into the Sun Salutation A pattern, becoming more body than mind.

“Inhale, arms overhead high mountain,

exhale, release and fold,

through your nose, rise halfway lift,

keeping the constriction, release and fold,

ujjayi breath, Chaturanga Dandasana or find your way back to downward dog,”

My never-ending, spiral-inducing to-do list shortens:

Breathe in,

breathe out.

The movements are basically on autopilot, making it possible to sync them with my oxygen taking and releasing.

the world within my mind falls away.

Momentary relief.

No longer am I a human with failures and shortcomings and unachievable dreams and feelings of despair and despondence and overwhelm.

No longer am I just my spiraling mind, panicking that we should be working and not at this class right now.

No,

I am a drop of water,

and I am the waves.

I am the stream forward,

I am the eddy backward.

I am everything,

I am nothing.

I am the ocean.

My breath itself mimics this.

Inhale, waves receding,

exhale, waves crashing.

Inhale, waves receding,

exhale, waves crashing.

It ebbs and flows, as my own life ebbs and flows.

I am controlling this breath, this ocean inside.

I wonder if the people around me can feel how powerful I am in this very moment. If they know that they are next to the ocean; that they themselves are the ocean, too.

I am fully present with my body and my heart and my lungs.

I am reminded that presence is the most important thing we can give someone,

including ourselves.

In this very yoga studio, months ago, the owner told me that my very presence had such an impact on her. Immediately calmed her. That she was happy our paths crossed.

I feel the power of my presence now, in my ujjayi breath.

Immediately calmed.

It has an impact on me.

I am on a journey to build trust with my body. To connect with it on a deeper level—one that defaults to innate wisdom first, instead of doctors and medicine.

One that asks, what are you feeling? What do you need? and trusts that it will answer.

That’s what ujjayi breath is,

at least for these sixty minutes of yoga class.

Me and my body, healing.