Breathing fast and slow

I first practiced yoga in college during the late 70s. It was offered as a one unit PE class, and was taught by a gentleman I will always remember, Professor Ken Ravizza. My fellow yogis and I did not see Dr. Ravizza as our professor, and, no, he was not seen as a peer. Rather, he was a beloved leader--a guru, if you will, though we did not address him as such--intent on bringing the practice of hatha yoga into our lives. And bring it, he did. Thirty-five years later, I am still practicing yoga, and, although the journey has not been one long bliss-fest, I recognize it as mine, a living, breathing human adventure that I continue to wake to. In the thirty-five years since I began to practice yoga on a mat on a concrete floor in a university gymnasium, the discipline has become practically mainstream. It took a couple of decades, but now elements of hatha yoga, which is another way of saying the postures or asanas or the physical limb of the yoga practice, show up as standard routines ...