Between 2007 and 2023, I taught in inner-city middle schools in New York City, working primarily with children with disabilities.
In classrooms that often carried noise, restlessness, and emotional weight, I was always searching for something that could help my students regulate themselves — something deeper than behavior charts and discipline systems.
That is how breathwork entered my classroom.
Each year I brought in the SKY Schools program, and my students learned simple pranayama and meditation practices. The changes were visible. Students who could not sit still began sitting quietly. Students who reacted impulsively began pausing. Some even began reminding me when it was time to breathe.
I also introduced them to Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.
Before the workshops, I would play a video for them on the classroom smartboard. My favorite one was part of a science lesson on heredity.
While teaching genetics and where we come from biologically, I would show them a talk called “Your Origin is Infinity.”
I expected questions about meditation.
I did not expect what happened next.
The first year, as the video played, I heard a whisper from the back of the classroom.
“It’s Jesus.”
I pretended not to hear.
The following year, it happened again — a different group of sixth graders, a different class, same reaction. Quiet murmuring, students leaning toward each other.
“Yo… that’s Jesus.”
I never told them who he was in religious terms. I never suggested anything spiritual beyond breathing and calming the mind. I simply played the video as part of a science lesson or the introduction to the YES SKY School workshops.
Then one year, two boys actually began arguing.
One insisted,
“Bro, that’s God.”
The other shook his head firmly.
“No. He is Jesus.”
They were not speaking to me.
They were not trying to impress anyone.
They were having a completely private conversation — the kind teachers are not meant to interrupt.
I stood at my desk and simply smiled.
Because what I was witnessing was not religious instruction.
It was recognition.
Children, especially around age eleven or twelve, do not yet have the filters adults build. They are not analyzing theology, culture, or philosophy. They respond directly to presence. They sense warmth, safety, calmness — and then they reach for the closest symbol they know to describe it.
For them, the language available was simple.
Peace had a face.
And the only word they knew for it was Jesus.
So I never corrected them.
I never explained.
I let them keep their own understanding — because in that moment they were not identifying a person; they were identifying a feeling.
A feeling of comfort.
A feeling of being safe.
A feeling that someone understood them without speaking to them.
Year after year, new students, same response.
I eventually realized I was not teaching them who Gurudev was.
They were telling me what compassion looks like to a child.
And every time I heard it, I just smiled.
From a Classroom to the United Nations
What began quietly inside a New York City public school classroom did not stay there.
In the spring of 2013, my middle school students had been practicing breathwork regularly through the Youth Empowerment Seminar (YES) workshops. They learned pranayama, Bhastrika breathing, and simple meditation techniques. What started as an experiment in helping children focus had turned into something much deeper — they were calmer, kinder to one another, and noticeably more confident.
One of my seventh-grade students, Yazmin Perez, absorbed it completely.
She was not the loudest student in the class, although she was the one who always raised her hand. She understood something important — that breathing gave her control over her emotions. When she spoke about it, she didn’t sound rehearsed. She sounded certain.
That year, Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar was coming to New York City for a large Non-Violence event near the United Nations. Someone suggested that a student should share what these practices were doing for young people in schools.
Yazmin volunteered.
Together we wrote and rewrote her speech.
We practiced pacing, pauses, and eye contact.
We rehearsed how to stand still when nervous.
But no rehearsal can prepare a child for five thousand people.
On the day of the event, we stood backstage at Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza, just across from the United Nations. The crowd was massive. The atmosphere carried the energy of a rally, but also the quiet anticipation of something meaningful.
Speakers went one after another.
Yazmin would speak right before Gurudev.
As we waited, Gurudev arrived backstage and stood beside us for several minutes. No grand entrance. No instructions. Just a gentle presence. Yazmin, who had been visibly nervous moments before, suddenly became calm. Her shoulders relaxed. Her breathing slowed — the same breathing she had learned in her classroom.
I realized she was no longer trying to remember her lines.
She was simply breathing.
Then they called her name.
She walked onto that stage — a seventh-grader from a New York City public school — and spoke to thousands of people about how breathing helped her manage anger, anxiety, and school stress. She spoke about peace not as an idea, but as something practical.
And she did not freeze.
She did not forget.
She did not rush.
She spoke with clarity that many adults never achieve in front of an audience.
I watched from the side of the stage, overwhelmed.
Because I suddenly understood something:
The same children who whispered “That’s Jesus” when they saw a video were now explaining inner peace to the world.
The classroom had extended beyond its walls.
The practices that helped a child sit quietly at a desk had carried her to an international platform.
Shortly before the event, the Daily News visited our school to cover the story — but what they reported as an educational success felt to me like something else entirely. It was not about a program. It was about possibility.
Children are often seen as recipients of guidance.
That day, they became messengers.
And I realized my role had never really been to teach meditation.
It had been to create the conditions where a child could discover confidence, dignity, and calm within themselves — and then share it with others.
The whispers in the classroom had become a voice on a world stage.
– Shenaz Kapasi
