The Tao of Natural Breathing_ For Health, Well-Being, and Inner Growth - Dennis Lewis [11]
THE HARMFUL EFFECTS OF BAD BREATHING HABITS
Breathing based on such habits—habits in which the diaphragm is unable to extend through its full range and activate and support the rhythmical movement of the abdominal muscles, organs, and tissues—has many harmful effects on the organism. It reduces the efficiency of our lungs and thus the amount of oxygen available to our cells. It necessitates that we take from two to four times as many breaths as we would with natural, abdominal breathing, and thus increases energy expenditure through higher breath and heart rates. It retards venous blood flow, which carries metabolic wastes from the cells to the kidneys and lungs where they can be excreted before they do harm to the organism. (In this regard, it is important to realize that 70 percent of the body’s waste products are eliminated through the lungs, while the rest are eliminated through the urine, feces, and skin.) It retards the functioning of the lymphatic system, whose job it is to trap and destroy viral and bacterial invaders, and thus gives these invaders more time to cause disease. It also reduces the amount of digestive juices, including the enzyme pepsin, available for the digestive process, and slows down the process of peristalsis in the small and large intestines. This causes toxins to pile up and fester throughout the digestive tract. In short, such breathing weakens and disharmonizes the functioning of almost every major system in the body and makes us more susceptible to chronic and acute illnesses and “dis-eases” of all kinds: infections, constipation, respiratory illnesses, digestive problems, ulcers, depression, sexual disorders, sleep disorders, fatigue, headaches, poor blood circulation, premature aging, and so on. Many researchers even believe that our bad breathing habits also contribute to life-threatening diseases such as cancer and heart disease.
Through the gentle, natural practices in this book, however, we can begin to discover the power of natural breathing to counteract these habits and support the overall health, vitality, and well-being that is our birthright.
PRACTICE
The first step to working with your breath is to be clear in your mind about the actual mechanics, the physiological “laws,” of natural breathing. This mental clarity will help you experience the breathing process both more directly and more accurately. The next step is to deepen your awareness of your own particular breathing patterns. For your first exercise, read this chapter again; as you read, visualize and sense in yourself the various mechanisms being discussed. Don’t try to change anything; just see what you can learn about your own particular breathing process. In the next chapter you’ll have an opportunity to go more deeply into the process of self-sensing and its relationship to your breath and health.
2
BREATH, EMOTIONS, AND THE ART OF SELF-SENSING
... the work with breathing starts
with sensing the inner atmosphere
of our organism—
the basic emotional stance we take
toward ourselves and the world.
The integration of natural breathing into our lives begins with learning how to sense ourselves more completely and accurately—to consciously occupy our bodies. It is through conscious embodiment, the whole sensation of ourselves, that we can awaken to higher levels of organic intelligence, to the “wisdom” of the body. Though we all have the potential to sense our bodies in their entirety, the sensory image we have of ourselves is generally fragmentary and filled with distortions. What’s more, the body we think we know so well is in large part a “historical” body—a body shaped by the past, by the results of our long-forgotten physical and