LET’S LEARN TO BREATHE
It’s even too evident the connection between mind, nervous system and breathing. Tensions, worries, anxiety and fears unfortunately do have influence on its rhythm. Anyway, we don’t have to feel discouraged because it’s also true the opposite: we can start from the breathing to resolve lots of things.
At the Yoga school, when I start a serious training of breathing, I take a tape measure and I start to measure the difference between expansion and contraction of the thorax of my students, both at an abdominal and at a thoracic and at a clavicular level. In this way I can understand where they are weaker and more attackable by the disease, and where the energy that is moved by the breath is directed into their bodies.
The health of the lower part of the body and the instinctual life corresponds to the abdominal breathing, the health of the middle part of the body and the emotional constitution to the thoracic breathing, then the higher part of the body and the intellectual aspect to the clavicular one.
To let you better understand the way we work, I remember you that the woman, for herself nature, has a good high-thoracic breathing and she’s normally deficient in the low or abdominal one. The man, on the contrary, is born with a good bent for the abdominal breathing but is deficient in the other ones.
The woman’s problems, in fact, are especially in the low part of the body, where she is easily attackable by diseases (varicose veins, slow intestine, ovary inflammations, painful period, etc.) while the cardiac diseases have always been a man prerogative (it’s always been the man to die because of heart attack, at least until this change of roles in the society).
A perfect breathing, that is a breathing active on all the levels of the breathing apparatus, creates the presuppositions for a good health and makes people less attackable from the evil. I suggest you a couple of very easy exercises; you can teach them even to children, and that can awaken both the awareness and the good functioning of all the three levels of the breathing apparatus.
Sit down with crossed legs or on the heels, comfortably…put the left hand on the stomach entrance and keep it still…go down with the right hand in front of the belly button at 2-3 centimeters from the body. Close your eyes and start breathing calmly, visualizing the air that goes down, at first into the abdominal part, and in the same time start to slowly move up the right hand, that grazes the body by going up as if it follows the progressive refilling of the lungs from the bottom to the top, to the chest. Then bring the hand to the throat to obtain a complete saturation.
Hold your breath full-throated, letting the hand going back to the starting point during the apnea and slowly start to breathe out with your hand still moving from the bottom to the top, remembering to empty first the abdomen, then the thorax and, in the end, the upper part. When the right hand reaches the throat again, hold your breath, this time at empty lungs, and during the apnea move the hand down, in front of the belly button, to start again breathing in… Keep on with this exercise for at least 10 minutes…then stand up gradually.
Take a comfortable position, lightly straddle to get a stable equilibrium. Turn the back of the hands one against the other to favor, in this position, the total emptying of the breathing apparatus. Lightly strive to get it. Keep in mind that emptying the lungs is not easy.
The unconscious anxiety, linked to the survival, makes us being afraid and always holding a bit of air, but the one that remains into the lungs is foul air and to have a total change we have to completely get rid of it, otherwise it is as if we go to drink some pure spring water using a glass that is already full and polluted. After the emptying, start moving the arms bottom-up, bringing the hands to the heart and, in the same time, favor, thanks to the awareness, the abdominal breathing.
Concentrate on the thorax and move your arms outwards with an ample gesture, almost theatrical, promoting the filling up of the breathing apparatus at the thoracic level. At last, bring the arms up to join the hands over your head with the arms completely outstretched, improving the high or clavicular breathing.
Now start breathing out with the abdomen while you bring your joined hands to your forehead, and then turn your head as an open book as if you want to read… Put the elbows closer so that the arms, going down, apply a light pressure on the thorax to favor the emptying… At last, when the hands are in front of the heart, turn them inward with the fingertips down. Move the elbows outwards and let the arms going down until you find the starting position to favor the emptying of the upper part.
These movements of the arms, as you can deduce, make the emptying and the filling of the different parts of the breathing apparatus easier and the restoration of a more complete breathing.
Do also this exercise for at least 10 minutes, at the end lay down on the floor in the Yoga position of the Savasana.
Relax all your body…let the tiptoes falling outwards and turn the hands palms up. While you’re relaxing, visualize the flux of breathing in that, starting from a point 10-15 centimeters over your head, goes through the body, both inside and on the surface, and goes down under your feet.
On the contrary, the breathing out goes from 10-15 centimeters under your feet to over your head. With this last practice you have a rest and in the same time distribute homogeneously the energy in the whole body and equilibrate yourselves.
These exercises can be performed in every condition and place. Obviously, to do it outside brings the maximum benefit.
by Amadio Bianchi