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8 It is interesting to note that some diseases, such as diabetes, can increase the acidity of the blood without increasing carbon dioxide. Since the respiratory center is unable to differentiate the cause of this increase in acidity, it automatically increases the breath rate.

9 Even people with severe pulmonary problems can quickly benefit from work with breathing. In experiments at Shanghai No. 2 Tuberculosis Hospital, 27 people with pulmonary emphysema were able to increase the average range of their diaphragmatic movement from 2.8 centimeters at the beginning of their treatment to 4.9 centimeters after a year of training—an increase in diaphragmatic movement of more than 57 percent. The results are reported in 300 Questions on Qigong Exercises (Guangzhou, China: Guandong Science and Technology Press, 1994), p. 257.

10 Mantak Chia, private paper.

11 See, for example, Charles Brooks, Sensory Awareness: The Rediscovery of Experiencing (New York: Viking Press, 1974).

12 Ilse Middendorf, The Perceptible Breath: A Breathing Science (Paderborn, Germany: Junfermann-Verlag, 1990).

13 Rollo May, Love and Will (New York: Dell Publishing Company, 1974), p. 237.

14 See, for example, Royce Flippin, “Slow Down, You Breathe Too Fast,” American Health: Fitness of Body and Mind, Vol. 11, No. 5 (June 1992) .

15 For a further explanation of neuropeptides, see Candace Pert, “The Chemical Communicators,” in Bill Moyers, Healing and the Mind (New York: Doubleday, 1993) pp. 177-94.

16 See, for example, Lawrence Steinman, “Autoimmune Disease,” Scientific American, September 1993 (Special Issue on “Life, Death, and the Immune System”).

17 Ernest Lawrence Rossi, The Psychobiology of Mind-Body Healing (New York: Norton, 1988), pp. 173-74.

18 Another effective way to turn on the parasympathetic nervous system is through special movement and awareness practices such as tai chi and chi kung. Among many other benefits, these practices can help release unnecessary tension in the back, especially in the spine, where the main neurons of the central nervous system reside. It is my experience that people with frequent lower back pain are often the same people who have trouble not only relaxing but even admitting that they need to relax. When carried out in the correct way, tai chi and chi kung increase relaxation not only by making the spine more flexible, but also through the deeper breathing that they promote.

19 For further information on the subject of anger, see David Sobel and Robert Ornstein, “Defusing Anger and Hostility,” Mental Medicine Update:

The Mind/Body Newsletter, Vol. 4, No. 3 (1995).

20 Moshe Feldenkrais, The Potent Self: A Guide to Spontaneity (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985), p. 95.

21 Peter Nathan, The Nervous System (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 48.

22 See James Wyckoff, Wilhelm Reich: Life Force Explorer (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications, 1973).

23 See Moyers’s book, Healing and the Mind, particularly the interview with David Eisenberg on the subject of chi (p. 255).

24 Andre van Lysebeth, Pranayama: The Yoga of Breathing (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1983), p. 28.

25 Robert Ornstein and David Sobel, The Healing Brain: Breakthrough Discoveries About How the Brain Keeps Us Healthy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), p. 207.

26 For more information on ions, see Fred Soyka with Alan Edmonds, The Ion Effect: How Air Electricity Rules Your Life and Health (New York: Bantam Books, 1977).

27 See The Primordial Breath, Volume 2, trans. Jane Huang (Torrance, Calif.: Original Books, 1990), p. 13, for a clear description of this very esoteric practice. I will not go into this practice since it is extremely advanced and I have little experience with it. I will, however, discuss in later chapters an associated practice, introduced to me by Mantak Chia, of breathing into and swallowing the saliva.

28 Mantak Chia and Maneewan Chia, Awaken Healing Light of the Tao (Huntington, N.Y.: Healing Tao Books, 1993), p. 41.

29 Awaken Healing Light, pp. 41 ff.