There's not many things ...

There's not many things I remember from my high school teachers, certainly not a single major advice I was expected to take and follow through the years to come. Yet, for some strange reason I do remember a petty remark one of my physical education teachers once said - when relaxing from your exercising you must take a few deep breaths. I remember the place where he said those words - a large inner courtyard in my high school building - and the offhand way he employed to convey that bit of information. You breathe in the air to the point when you think you cannot get any more of it in your lungs. Then you go and inspire some more, deeper. And the same goes for the expelling of the air, you force some more out when your lungs feel real empty. That was something a long-forgotten instructor told me more than thirty years ago, something I can still recall vividly today. Sometimes, for no apparent reason, I find myself pushing my breathing to those limits, lifting the scale a notch higher. I think of my teacher then.