BREATHE

Lately, I’ve been thinking a great deal about breathing. It’s something we do every second of every minute we are alive. Breathing is something that happens without our concentration. And it is the most vital action we take. Like water, without the air we breathe, well, we just wouldn’t be. So, given that all of us breathe for all of our lives, we ought to be experts at it, right?

Actually, most of us are not. Singers, wind instrument musicians, ballet dancers, and athletes get training in breath control, but most of the rest of us are only amateurs when it comes to breathing. Many of us breathe shallowly, or forget to breathe for extended periods of time and then suddenly draw in a great gasp; some of us are troubled with sleep apnea (which is apparently often related to being overweight.) When we are under stress, we tend to hunch our shoulders up protectively around our ears. This interferes with the depth of breath we are able to take.

Funnily enough, even though I am being critical of our breathing expertise, it would be fair if you were to exclaim “But I’m still alive,” right? I mean to hear me tell it, we should all be gasping for air like fish on a dock and sick as dogs if we can’t even do the job of breathing right, right? Well, of course that’s not true. The good old human body is ever resilient to the way we treat it. It finds ways to survive even when we fill it with white flour and sugar, drugs of all descriptions, don’t give it enough O2 and H2O, or leave it awash in CO2, at least for a while, until it has just dealt with too much junk. That’s when true chronic sicknesses creep up on you insidiously. What we are talking about here, as always, is the joy of doing better than surviving, by thriving.

As a brief refresher on the mechanics of breathing, when you breathe air in you are using a large group muscles, the most important one of which is the diaphragm (if you are doing it right.) You draw air in through your nose, down your trachea, and into your lungs, where the acres of alveoli (about 800 million tiny air sacs) in your lungs transfer the gases that your body needs to function into blood in your circulatory system. Your heart pumps the blood through your arteries making oxygen available to all the cells of your body so that they may function at optimal level.

The same cells that take, also giveth away. They deposit the unwanted gases in the form of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) back into the blood stream, and veins bring them back around to the lungs where they are breathed out. Phew. It’s a long process that takes moments to happen.

So with all this partial breathing, this hunching of shoulders, this shallow stuff going on, smoking and air pollution, you can see that your body is in danger of not only not getting fresh resources with which to build and maintain cells, but that it is in danger of getting plugged up with toxic gasses. When you consider the act of breathing in this fashion, you can get the idea of why breathing thoroughly and deeply is pretty important. What’s more, breathing thoroughly can stave off loss of sight and hearing, lessen pain and lessen the hot flash effects of menopause (no, really!), and keep your brain working well.

Just as most actions requiring skill or coordination improve with measured deep breathing, so it seems to me that intellectual and spiritual activities require deep and expansive inhalation and exhalation. Whether you meditate, pray, practice yoga, or engage in proactive relaxation, the advice is always the same: breathe deep and breathe well.

One of the standard exercises for those wishing to practice deep and complete breathing is to count your breaths. Sit in a chair with your back straight, breathe in for a slow count of five (one thousand one, one thousand two, etc.) Then, hold your breath for a slow count of five, finally exhaling for a slow count of five. Repeat several times. If you couple this with using your diaphragm to control your breaths, and visualizing the complete use of your lung space, you will be making great strides towards breathing well.

As usual on our journey, this has been but a brief visit to this month’s subject. For more information on breathing properly and its benefits read Bragg’s Super Power Breathing for Super Energy High Health & Longevity, available at good book and health food stores.

Remember to do better than survive—thrive.