Lunch & Learners Close Eyes, Take Breath

Professor Donna Oropall

Close your eyes.  Take a breath.

No, really.

Do it right now. 

Stop looking at the computer screen for a second. 

Close your eyes.

And take a breath.

Are you done?  Did you do it?

If so, you are probably feeling slightly better.

Slightly refreshed.

You may have experienced a decrease in your cortisol level.

You may feel that obsessional thoughts and anxieties that had been closing in on you a few seconds ago suddenly seem less ominous, less formidable.

You may feel that the world seems clearer somehow, like in those Windex ads where what you thought was a normal view turns out to have been a view through a dirty window, and that the process of closing your eyes was like a squirt of Windex to the windowpane of your soul, and the breath was the paper towel wiping away the grimy film of habitual half-awareness.

Studies may show that you have suddenly become more creative, your sense of wellbeing has increased, your blood pressure has gone down, your neural plaques have deliquesced, your sense of gratitude has swollen, your soul has become approximately 10 to 15 percent more luminous.

And all you did was literally the two simplest things that the human body is capable of doing.

Indeed, the two inevitable things that it can’t not do.

But you did them on purpose.

You closed your eyes.

You took a breath.

In.  Out.

Like you’ve been doing all your life.

And that’s all you had to do.

No drugs, no superfoods, no cleanses, no indoctrination, no ideologies, no sacrifices, no conflict, no drama, no bestseller self-help workbooks, 7-minute abs routines, subscription fees, or things you wear that beep at you.

Your eyes.  Your breath.

Open.  Closed.  In.  Out.

And you transformed your consciousness.  Your perception.  Your life.

You became conscious.  You achieved an act of perception.  You found your life.

It’s pretty amazing. 

You would think that with this simple mind-bending consciousness-altering potential instantaneously available to all human beings, we would all become closing-our-eyes-and-breathing junkies, a species perpetually zonked out on the perfect bliss of the simplest things.

One of the supreme mysteries of human reality is that exactly the opposite is the case.

We don't close our eyes. We don't breathe. Not really.

At a recent Lunch & Learn hosted by the University of Bridgeport’s College of Science and Society, Associate Professor of Human Services Donna Oropall described an exercise known as “raisin meditation.”

You eat a raisin in slow motion.  You hold it in your mouth.  You feel its texture with your tongue, you bite slowly and let the disgusting flavor diffuse through your mouth (I hate raisins).  And you realize that you have never actually eaten a raisin before (lucky you).

It’s the same with closing your eyes and taking breaths.

You’ve never closed your eyes before.

You’ve never taken a breath before.

No, you haven’t, in any meaningful sense.

Today, I did.

I closed my eyes.

I did it on purpose, and I saw for the first time what it is that one sees when one’s eyes are closed.

I took a breath.  In.

I felt the room’s atmosphere of comingled particles gather itself into my nose, my throat, my body.  I may have felt some alveolar shuffling as my lungs determined according to their inscrutable algorithms what in that miasma was good food for my cells.

And then out.

My own bio-exhaust billowing from the tailpipe of my face, mixing in atmospheric rivulets with that of my fellow lunch-&-learners.

I took my first breath.

So much better than a raisin.

Thank you, Associate Professor of Human Services Donna Oropall, for teaching us how to close our eyes and breathe.

Thank you, College of Science and Society, for facilitating opportunities for people to share their expertise and purvey dope inspo.

Thank you, universe, for making wisdom, serenity, and enlightenment so bafflingly accessible.

Mindfulness, the disgusting way