Breath control

“ Although, as a general rule, the work of respiration goes on unconsciously and without exertion on our part, it is nevertheless under the control of the will. We can increase or diminish the frequency of its acts at pleasure, and we can "hold the breath," or arrest it altogether for a short time. From twenty to thirty seconds is ordinarily the longest period in which the breath can be held; but if we first expel all the impure air from the lungs, by taking several very deep inspirations, the time may be extended to one and a half or even two minutes. ”

“ When this is gained, there follows the right guidance of the life-currents, the control of the incoming and outgoing breath.
It is well understood to-day that most of our maladies come from impure conditions of the blood. It is coming to be understood that right breathing, right oxygenation, will do very much to keep the blood clean and pure. Therefore a right knowledge of breathing is a part of the science of life. ”

“ It is true that we are not conscious of the act of breathing. It would be an intolerable burden upon the mind if every breath required conscious attention. We could hardly attend to anything else.
That is no reason, however, why we should not regulate our breathing for our own benefit. Breathing, though an habitual organic act, is under the indirect control of the higher centers of the nervous system. ”

“ If they will seize the chance, whenever it offers, to step out-of-doors and take a dozen deep breaths, they can partly compensate for the evils of indoor living.
In ordinary breathing only about 10 per cent. of the lung contents is changed at each breath. In deep breathing a much larger percentage is changed, the whole lung is forced into action, and the circulation of the blood in the abdomen is more efficiently maintained, thus equalizing the circulation throughout the body. ”

“ The normal breathing is abdominal. Such breathing is health-imparting. It massages the liver gently with each breath and is mildly tonic to the stomach and the bowels. It truly gives internal exercise. It helps to prevent constipation.
Shallow breathing causes degeneration of lung tissue, and indirectly degeneration of every tissue in the body, for it deprives the blood of enough oxygen to maintain health. It also prevents the internal exercise of the abdominal organs, which is a necessary activity of the normal organism. Shallow breathers only use the upper parts of the lungs. ”

“ On rising, drink two glasses of water, eat a little of some juicy fruit, and devote as much time as possible to vigorous deep breathing exercises before dressing. In taking these movements, inflate the lungs to their fullest capacity, and hold the breath for half a minute while executing one or two movements. In this way the cell capacity of the lungs can, in many instances, be doubled. Large lung capacity is of primary importance in cases of nervousness. ”

“ Many of the air cells of the lungs become inactive by reason of incomplete breathing, and often become almost atrophied. One who has practised imperfect breathing for years will find it not so easy to stimulate all these ill-used air cells into activity all at once by the Complete Breath, but this exercise will do much toward bringing about the desired result, and is worth study and practice. ”

“ This is probably true of our ordinary breathing, but the renovation of the air depends upon our manner of breathing. It is possible for us to breath so that at one expiration we almost displace the air from every portion of our lungs, and then by a full, deep, prolonged inspiration, (throwing forward the chest, throwing back the shoulder, and keeping the body erect,) fill the lungs fully with air and thus not only change the air in our lungs, but change in some degree the character of our blood so as to increase its purity. ”

“ The healthy adult savage and the healthy infant of civilization both breathe in this manner, but civilized man has adopted unnatural methods of living, clothing, etc., and has lost his birthright. And we wish to remind the reader that the Complete Breath does not necessarily call for the complete filling of the lungs at every inhalation. One may inhale the average amount of air, using the Complete Breathing Method and distributing the air inhaled, be the quantity large or small, to all parts of the lungs. ”

“ If we breathe one single breath, in the entire day, of impure air, it will weaken us, deduct from our capacity to attend to our daily duties, and shorten our lives, in exact mathematical proportion to the amount of impurity in that one single breath. Now, we breathe twenty times every minute, twelve hundred times every hour, twenty-eight thousand times every day, and nothing but absolute and perfectly pure air answers the exact requirements of perfect health. ”

“ The practice of the Complete Breath will make any man or woman immune to Consumption and other pulmonary troubles, and will do away with all liability to contract "colds," as well as bronchial and similar weaknesses. Consumption is due principally to lowered vitality attributable to an insufficient amount of air being inhaled. The impairment of vitality renders the system open to attacks from disease germs. ”

“ As its pervading and soothing power has been found to ameliorate and obviate the obstruction or impeded breath, in asthmatic and other disordered states of respiration, it has become a most valuable accession to the stock of remedies entitled to confident adoption. ”

“ Vigorous respiration is as essential to good elocution as it is to good health. To secure this it is necessary, in the first place, to attend to the posture, taking care to give the utmost freedom, expansion, and capacity to the chest, and then to exercise and develop all the muscles employed in respiration, so that they may be habitually used with energy and power, both in the inhalation and expulsion of the breath. ”

“ Hygienists maintain that the regulation of breathing is largely dependent on the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air cells of the lungs. This, however, is not true since the process of respiration is not a question of chemical action nor the influence of any chemical element in the lungs or in any part of the respiratory system. The breathing, like all other functions of the body, is under the direct control of Innate Intelligence within the body. ”

“ This, however, is not absolutely necessary, as some persons breathe always through their mouths during sleep, and rest as sound as those who do not. Having taken a full inspiration, the lungs are then to be left to their own action; that is, the respiration is neither to be accelerated nor retarded. The attention must now be fixed upon the action in which the patient is engaged. He must depict to himself that he sees the breath passing from his nostrils in a continuous stream ”

“ Contrary to the appearance of things, which would indicate that the child is holding its breath out of spite, and in the hope of getting even with its parent, the cessation of breathing is largely or wholly automatic, indicating the way in which nervous and chemical influences have interacted to suspend the respiration. ”

“ If the general regimen is strictly hygienic, the position as thus described will, so far from working any harm, prove of advantage—favoring free breathing, as well as the fullest rest of the body. Where there is shortness of breath and difficulty in105 breathing, the patient is inclined to cultivate the habit of narrowing the shoulders, and so bolstering himself in bed as to still further shorten the breath, thus temporarily easing the difficulty, but finally increasing the disease. ”

“ The patient, experiencing an urgent desire for breath, instinctively places himself in the position most favorable for the ready admission of air into the lungs. If in bed he sits up, and, resting on his hands or grasping his knees with them, he so fixes the body that the muscles of respiration may work to the greatest advantage. ”

“ When the respirations are, say, 100 to the minute, and made with all the energy the patient can muster, and are kept up while the operation is going on, there can hardly be a failure in the minor operations.
It is upon this point many of you may question the facts. Before I tried it for the first time upon my own person, I arrived at the same conclusion from a course of argument, that rapid breathing would control the heart's action and pacify it, and even reduce it below the normal standard under my urgent respirations. ”

“ The breath comes and goes in gasps,—involving coughs, perhaps, if the bronchial tubes are clogged with phlegm, but at the same time the feeling of pulmonary impediments is gradually relieved. The experimenter finds that he can breathe freer and deeper than before. ”

“ Yet here the danger of bad air is intensified. The expired breath of the patient is peculiarly threatening to himself as well as to others. Nature is seeking to throw off the poison of the disease. The scavengers of the body are all at work. The breath and the insensible perspiration are loaded with impurities. ”

“ If we wish to replace bad breathing by good breathing, we must fix our attention regularly upon drawing the breath, practice the right sort of breathing, and impress upon the vital mechanism that this new order of breathing is to be adopted, for the way to be rid of a bad habit is to replace it with a good one. ”

“ We should take a breath at each stroke, inhaling though the mouth and exhaling through the nose, which is just the opposite to the hygienic method of land breathing. Whatever may be our methods, however, the main thing is not to forget to breathe, which always results in finishing our five or ten strokes out of breath and terrified. ”

“ The principles were always the same–to time the breathing regularly to fit the step, and to use not merely the upper part of the lungs, but the full capacity of the breathing apparatus, expanding and contracting not the chest only, but also the diaphragm, and this not occasionally but with every breath whenever the body was required to work at high pressure. ”

“ The organs of respiration have their only protective apparatus, filter, or dust-catcher, in the nostrils. When the breath is taken through the mouth, there is nothing from mouth to lungs to strain the air, or to catch the dust and other foreign matter in the air. ”

“ Clyde apprehensively.
“Oh, every imaginable kind. How could it be otherwise? Here’s the very first principle of life, the breath, being diverted from its proper course, in the mouth-breather; isn’t a general derangement of functions the inevitable result? The hearing is affected, as I’ve shown you already. The body doesn’t get its proper amount of oxygen, and the digestion suffers. The lungs draw their air-supply in the wrong way, and the lung capacity is diminished. The open mouth admits all kinds of dust particles which inflame the throat and make it hospitable to infection. ”

“ We must be careful after each deep, long breath to rest quietly and let our lungs do as they please. Be careful to begin the breaths delicately and gently, to inhale with the same gentleness with which we begin, and to make the change from inhaling to exhaling with the greatest delicacy possible—keeping the body loose. ”

“ “Offering inhaling breath into the outgoing breath, and offering the outgoing breath into the inhaling breath, the yogi neutralizes both these breaths; he thus releases the life force from the heart and brings it under his control.” 26-2 The interpretation is: “The yogi arrests decay in the body by an addition of life force, and arrests the mutations of growth in the body by apan (eliminating current) . Thus neutralizing decay and growth, by quieting the heart, the yogi learns life control.” ”

“ To acquire control of breathing, proper exercises must be intelligently and persistently followed. In mankind, nature seems to have been diverted from her normal course so that [Pg 28] we seldom find an individual who breathes correctly without education in the matter. What we have said on breathing is based on the premise that respiration involves coördinate action of the body from collar-bone to the base of the abdomen; that is, expanding and contracting the chest and abdomen simultaneously. ”

“ Take very shallow inspirations and continue emptying the lungs for five or ten minutes until there is a violent air hunger established; then slowly fill the lungs again to a tension capacity, inbreathing through the nostrils. Close the lips firmly, send the breath by conscious thought out through the top of the head ”

“ But we are not to forget that, like calisthenic and gymnastic exercises, the training of the breathing is really little more than a device for correcting the results of wrong living and only a substitute for right living. The man or the woman who does plenty of healthful, normal work, who often pants and gets “out of breath,” naturally expands the lungs and has as little use for breathing exercises as for tight clothing. ”

“ Many persons breathe little air at each respiration, and that rapidly. This is especially true of those suffering from pulmonary disease. The first symptom of this disease being a reduction of the breathing capacity. Breathe deeply of God's fresh air, and keep your health, those of you who are well; and for those who are sick there is nothing like light exercise; and out and in-door deep breathing exercise, to bring you back into the ranks of the well and strong. ”

“ MID BREATHING. This method of respiration is known to Western students as Rib Breathing, or Inter-Costal Breathing, and while less objectionable than High Breathing, is far inferior to either Low Breathing or to the Yogi Complete Breath. In Mid Breathing the diaphragm is pushed upward, and the abdomen drawn in. The ribs are raised somewhat, and the chest is partially expanded. It is quite common among men who have made no study of the subject. ”