“This September, 61 years after the Supreme Court banned school prayer, New York City public school students will once again open each school day with an ancient invocation. For two to five minutes a day, children across the city will practice, with trained educators, the art of breathing. New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced the initiative at P.S. 5 in Bedford-Stuyvesant Brooklyn, where three elementary school students led elected officials, journalists, and their principal in six deep breaths of the ocean-sound variety. First, the students explained, you breathe in through your nose; then, you breathe out through your mouth to create a prolonged whisper.

While much of the press has maligned Adams for introducing this respiratory ritual into the education system, the mayor is revisiting an essential question: How should students start a day of school?”