• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Promotes health and healing

Increases communication between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, by stimulating both sides at the same time

Helps to harmonize the nervous system and reduce stress

Increases our fundamental vitality

Deepens meditation

Expands consciousness

Mouth Breathing versus Nose Breathing

In Chi Kung, there is a saying that “the mouth is for eating, the nose, for breathing.” This seems fairly intuitive, yet the majority of us are sucking air in through our mouths much of the time. Energetically, we are not making use of the amazing health features of the nose, which is the body’s primary defense against germs, impurities, dust, and bacteria. The nose has bacilli-fighting glands, mucous membrane passages, and thousands of filtering hairs to keep outside impurities from entering the lungs, the bloodstream, and the body. The mouth has none of these protective features, and allows a virtually undefended passage directly into the lungs.

When we breathe through the mouth, there is a tendency to fill up the chest only. When you inhale through the nose, on the other hand, your breath naturally penetrates the body more deeply. Try taking a deep breath through your mouth and notice where you feel the expansion. Now, take a slow deep breath through your nose. Did you notice how your breath is drawn more deeply into your body, expanding into your lower abdomen? Breathing through the nose uses the diaphragm, which is the most natural, healthy way to breathe. Watch the way babies and children breathe: their abdomens and rib cages naturally expand and contract.

The proper functioning of every cell in our body depends upon the quality of our breathing. Breathing is the dance of life, uniting all living things in a necessary symbiotic life-support system. We live on the exhaled oxygen of plants, and plants live on our exhaled carbon dioxide; every breath reveals interdependence with the environment. We live in an ocean of energy from which life offers each of us a full portion of vitality. Why decline this abundance of life force through shallow breathing? Why breathe just enough to get by, when you can breathe deeply enough to truly thrive?

Though the lungs have a total air capacity of about 5,000 milliliters, the average breath is only about 500 milliliters. With the proper breathing techniques, we can learn to increase our breathing capacity, taking in twice the amount of energy per breath.

Magic Breathing—The Wave Technique

Think of the tide of the ocean lapping up onto the shore. The water rolls in, pauses, then returns to the ocean. Between the incoming and outgoing tide there is a lull—a stillness before movement. This is how we should breathe, mirroring the movement of the tide.

As you will soon experience, the movement of the breath can flow through the entire torso like a wave in the ocean. It starts in the lower abdomen, then rises up through the ribs, and crests in the chest. Upon exhalation, the wave of movement descends—from the chest, through the ribs, and down into the abdomen. Try it for yourself.

Find a comfortable position, either sitting up with a straight spine or lying face up on a comfortable surface. Sitting is preferable and keeps you more alert, but lying down works well too.

Bring your right hand over your navel and place your left hand on your sternum at the center of your chest.

Take a deep breath in through your nose. Feel your lower abdomen expand first.

As you continue to inhale, let the breath rise up through your ribs.

Keep inhaling until the breath reaches your chest, beneath your left hand.

Exhale out through your nose; feel your breath relaxing and your chest descending.

Allow the breath to exhale outward through your ribs.

At the end of the exhalation, allow your abdomen to move back toward the spine as you squeeze the breath all the way out.

A pause in the breath is like the lull of the tide and creates balance in the mind and energy in the body. Allow the