From  Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby:

Let’s start with some deep breathing. Give me a good deep breath and count to four with me.

Here we go. 1. 2. 3. 4. Now exhale. You can feel your eyes. Good, that’s exactly it.

Now let’s take a deep breath and, in your mind, draw a hippopotamus as fast as you can. Quick quick. His legs, his folds, his marshmallow teeth. Okay, done. Now exhale.

Take another deep breath and hold it tight. As you hold it tightly in your chest, imagine the tightness is shrinking you down into a bug. You’ve held your breath so hard that you’re an insect. And all the other bugs saw you shrink and they loved the stunt. They’re clapping and rubbing their feelers together madly. But you had an apple in your hand when you were big and it just caught up with you, crushed the whole crowd. You’re dead, too. Now exhale.

Give me a solid deep breath and imagine you live in a town where everything is made of telephone cords. The houses are all telephone cords, the shingles, the rafters. The doorways are a thick mass of telephone cords which you simply thrust yourself through. When you go to bed, the bedspread is telephone cords. And the mattress and box springs are telephone cords, too. Like I said, everything is made out of telephone cords. The telephone itself is made of telephone cords. But the telephone cord going to the telephone is made out of bread and a couple sticks. Now exhale.

Breathe in. 1. 2. 3. 4. Breathe out.

Breath in. 1. 2. Another short breath in. 3. 4. Imagine both of your hands snapping off at the wrists and flying into your computer screen and programming it from the inside. Exhale.

Big, big deep breath. Deep down inside you there is a submarine. It has a tongue. Exhale.

Breathe through your nostrils. Deep breath. Filter the air through your nostrils. Breathing through the nostrils gives you quality air. Your nostrils flare, you are taking breaths of nature’s air, the way God intended. Imagine a floppy disk drive clogged up with orphans. And while it chokes on orphans, you have good, wholesome God’s breath in your lungs. But that pleasurable, life-giving air will become a powerful toxin if held too long. Hurry, exhale God and nature’s air!

Now, you will wake up, smoothing out the creases of this page in your web browser. You will have full recollection of your whole life and not forgetting any one of the many adventures you have had in your life. You will feel rich and renewed and expert. You will have no remembrance of this short exercise, you will instead remember teaching a rabbit to use scissors from a great distance.

And as you will wake up with your eyes directed to the top of this exercise, you will begin again. But this time, try to imagine that even your shadow is a telephone cord.