World Tour of Oopsies: Chapter 8 – The Ujjayi Breath

Jul.24.2025

[The World Tour of Oopsies is an ongoing series of travel stories about my first decade of travel. During these adventures and misadventures, I had to unlearn many things I thought I knew about life. Welcome to my miseducation.]

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Catch up on the World Tour of Oopsies:

Part I / In Darjeeling

When our silent retreat ended, our group packed our bags and left Rumtek Monastery deep in the Himalayan Foothills. The Jeeps were loaded up, then sent back to Gangtok, the capital of India’s Sikkim territory.

From there, we drove south to Darjeeling. The famous tea town is situated amid steep hills, like San Francisco. It would be our group’s final hoorah in India before heading back to Kolkata and flying west to the United States.

And we had one last mission from our group leaders.

Having experienced a Hindu temple in Kolkata (see: Chapters 3 & 4) and learned about Tibetan Buddhism at Rumtek Monastery (see: Chapters 6 & 7), we were now tasked with delving into yoga.

As with many other topics in this world tour of travel stories, I’m deferring to the experts.

Like Hinduism, yoga is a vastly complex belief system. The asanas (body postures) we learn about in the West are only one tiny portion of yogic teachings—and there are dozens of branches, with smaller shoot-offs.

If you want to learn about yoga, please focus on Hindu sources—again, I can’t begin to explain how ancient, intricate, and diverse the yogic schools of thought are. On top of that, there’s also a big push to ‘take back yoga’ from teachers who aren’t qualified to teach the subject.

Now’s a good time to remind you: during this adventure, I was seventeen years old on this trip. Though I was interested in yoga and had heard and seen plenty about it in the United States, I had little to no idea what was in store for me when I signed up for a yoga class in Darjeeling.

Part II / The yoga class

Over the course of this trip, I’d gotten closer to one of my groupmates. In fact, we’re still great friends, and manage to schedule phone calls though we’re separated by a nine-hour time difference.

In Darjeeling, she and I decided to sign up for our yoga class together.

After getting lost a few times in the busy city center, we eventually found the yoga studio. It was a large, modest basement room. Around thirty adults were seated on mats spaced evenly around the room.

Everyone turned and stared when we arrived.

We explained that we didn’t speak Hindi but were interested in joining the yoga class. The seated adults were very patient and welcoming, looking surprised but accepting of our arrival. The teacher sat us at the front of the class, sensing that we’d need a bit of extra help.

In another painfully kind gesture, the teacher taught the class in both Hindi and English. And, as with every yoga class I’ve taken in India, it started off with a philosophical lecture. During this time, we learned about breathwork, which is called pranayama.

When the philosophical lesson ended, it was time to start a series of breathing exercises.

Part III / The Ujjayi breath

The first ten or twenty minutes of class went wonderfully. We learned about the foundational beliefs of pranayama, how they can be applied in daily life, and how it centers the mind and body.

Then we moved on to the breathwork exercises, which were more intense than I’d imagined.

Then came the ujjayi breath.

Ujjayi is an exercise where you breathe using your diaphragm. I remember breathing using my stomach while slightly narrowing my throat to create a slight sound when inhaling and exhaling.

It took a while to get into a rhythm, especially because my friend and I were struggling to breathe in the ujjayi form. It’s a forceful breath that you need to concentrate on during inhalations and exhalations.

Then, seeing us struggling, our instructor snuck up behind me and started doing ujjayi breaths as loudly as possible right into my ear to exemplify what I should sound like. It was one of the most unintentionally hilarious moments of my life; I was then concentrating on not laughing while also trying to do a ujjayi breath.

Eventually, my friend and I got the hang of things and began to sync up with the rest of the group. Though difficult, I was beginning to sense the mind-clearing and mind-centering effects of the intense exercises.

But the class didn’t stop; over the next twenty minutes or so, I kept opening my eyes a sliver to check on the other practitioners, wondering how long the lesson would go on.

I wish I could tell you how long the full yoga class went on—it couldn’t have been more than an hour, though it felt much longer. All I know is that, feeling exhausted and on the brink of quitting those intense ujjayi breaths, I started to transcend.

The instructor ended the ujjayi session and had the group lie on our backs, fully relaxed.

The intensity of the shift was immediately noticeable; my mind was alert but calm, while my body felt like melted butter.

At which point I had a full-on spiritual vision—it was almost like being in a trance. To this day, I remember that vision very specifically. Sometimes, it makes more sense than others.

Again, I don’t know how long I lay on the mat, but it couldn’t have been long. When it ended, my friend and I headed back to our group in a kind of stunned but content silence.