Breathless

Can the way you breathe really help you turn around your life?

As Shahnaz Minallah earnestly explains how breathing differently is sure to change my life, there is just one thought going through my mind: What have I gotten myself into?

Let me explain. Until quite recently I was faced with possibly the worst emotional crisis in my life: I felt aimless, there was a severe lack of love in my life and I had lost the will to fight for what I wanted. I was at the end of my tether when one my friends told me about this ‘magical’ new yoga therapy course. I was intrigued. Yoga might help, stranger things have happened. At worst, it would give me something to write about but it so transpired that I got more than I had bargained for.

The ‘Art of Living’ is a course in personal development and inner peace. Founded by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (not the legendary sitar player) in 1981, the Art of Living Foundation is a volunteer based non-governmental organisation that provides workshops on yoga, meditation and breathing. The Pakistani chapter of the foundation was inaugurated in 2009 by Naeem Zamindar and Shahnaz Minallah. Simply put, it’s a group therapy session where they teach you how to breathe. “Every thought and emotion has a corresponding rhythm in breath,” explains Shahnaz, “Since everything in life begins with an intention and a thought, the only way to harness your thoughts is through your breath.”

Shahnaz buttresses her argument by pointing out that one’s breathing becomes more rapid when one is angry and slow and measured when one is calm. So far, so good. Then she says, “If one can develop a hold over one’s breath they can develop a hold over their lives. If the mind is the kite, then breath is the thread, hence thought leads to action, which leads to habit, which constitutes character, which creates destiny.” Oh boy.

But there are those who sincerely believe that the philosophy can turn around their lives. Saiqa, who recently lost her 12-year-old daughter to cancer, saw the session as cathartic. “After my daughter’s death, memories of her would haunt me, but being a part of Art of Living and undergoing meditation, helped me heal,” she says. Saiqa used to feel cut off from the world in the last two years of her child’s illness but during one of the most powerful stages of meditation and cleansing of the body and soul called Sudarshan Kriya, Saiqa saw her daughter in a field on a swing in a white frock, alone but happy. “I feel that I can move on and concentrate on my husband and my other children,” says Saiqa with resolution.

Tabish was also wary of the therapeutic claims but after his relationship of five years with his partner dissolved, he tried it out. A devout Christian, Tabish saw the radiant image of Jesus during his Kriya that strengthened his resolve to move on in life. “I am a spiritual person but, because my relationship fell apart, I had become more materialistic. This course has brought spirituality back into my life. I thoroughly enjoyed Shahnaz’s engaging and motivating manner. I smile more often now and my professional life is much more organised.”

As for myself, over time I felt a certain clarity of thought and calmness as a result of these basic yogic poses, deep breathing exercises and chants. Can the way you breathe really change your life? I soon found the strength to do the things I had been too fearful to do for a long time: applying for a cultural exchange programme, trying for a scholarship and filing for divorce.

“All of this stems from the fact that if you breathe a certain way, you are able to engineer your life in the manner that you deem fit,” Qasim, an Art of Living instructor, assures me.

Mian Ahad, another attendee, however disagrees, “Although the yoga helps me stay physically fit and I am losing weight, I’ve felt none of this mental transformation that people talk about, nor has my level of concentration gone up.”

In the course of my research I had come across many claims that the organisation had freemason roots and that it was actually a cult. “It’s not a cult,” defends Shahnaz. “We are not exclusive nor do we ask people to give up their belief systems or even alter their faith. We merely want to help people smile a bit more and unite the world through positivity and health. We want to show that the human spirit is united.”

And so Shahnaz’s home in Islamabad’s stunning Bani Gala district is an open-for-all convention centre where people are free to walk in at any time and practice yoga and meditation. The ultimate mission of the art of living process is to bring communal change and Shahnaz asserts that, “Change can never come from lecturing and communal change cannot come without removing stress from each and every individual’s life.”

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, October 16^th, 2011.