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THE NEED FOR CLARITY AND MINDFULNESS

What is the relationship of our breath to our experience of ourselves and to real health and well-being? What is the relationship of our breath to our quest for self-knowledge and inner growth? To begin to answer these questions in a way that can have a long-lasting, beneficial impact on our lives, it is not enough to go to a weekend rebirthing or breathing intensive, or to simply start doing exercises from a magazine or book. Because of the intimate relationship between mind and body—the many subtle yet powerful ways they influence each other—any lasting, effective work with our breath requires clear mental knowledge of the mechanics of natural breathing and its relationship to our muscles, our emotions, and our thoughts. The clarity of this picture in our mind will help us become more conscious of our own individual patterns of breathing. It is through being “mindful” of these patterns that we will begin to sense and feel the various psychophysical forces acting on our breath from both the past and the present. And it is through the actual observation of these forces in our own bodies that we will begin to see how we use our breathing to buffer ourselves from physical and psychological experiences and memories too difficult or painful to confront. And, finally, it is through this entire process—the integration of mental clarity with sensory and emotional awareness—that we will begin to experience the extraordinary power of “natural breathing” and its ability to support the process of healing and wholeness in our lives.

THE ANATOMY OF BREATHING

For most of us, our cycle of inhalation and exhalation occurs at an average resting rate of 12 to 14 times a minute when we are awake, and six to eight times a minute when we are asleep. A baby breathes at about twice these rates. Our breathing rates can change dramatically in relation to what we are doing or experiencing. Under extreme physical activity or stress, for example, the rate can go up to 100 times a minute. For those who have worked seriously with their breath, the resting rate can go down to four to eight times a minute, since they take in more oxygen and expel more carbon dioxide with each inhalation and exhalation.

The Chest Cavity and Lungs

The process of breathing takes place mainly in the chest cavity, the top and sides of which are bounded by the ribs (which slant downward and forward) and the attached intercostal muscles, and the bottom by the dome-shaped muscular partition of the diaphragm (Figure 1). Inside this cavity lie the heart and the two lungs. Shaped somewhat like pyramids, the lungs are divided into three lobes on the right and two on the left. The lobes are composed of a spongy labyrinth of sacs, which, if flattened out, would cover an area of approximately 100 square yards. The lungs are covered by the pleura, a double-layer membrane lining the inside of the ribs, and are supported by the diaphragm. Extremely elastic, the lungs are free to move in any direction except where they are attached through tubes and arteries to the trachea and heart. Though the lungs have a total air capacity of about 5,000 milliliters, the average breath is only about 500 milliliters. Though, as we shall see, we can learn to exhale much more air than we normally do, no matter how fully we may exhale, the lungs always hold a reserve of about 1,000 milliliters of air to keep them from becoming completely deflated. It is easy to see that most of us use a small percentage of our lungs’ capacity.

Figure 1

We seldom pay attention to the breathing process in the course of our daily activities, but when we do we can sense the chest cavity expanding and contracting, somewhat like a bellows. During inhalation, the rib muscles (intercostals) expand and elevate the ribs, the sternum moves slightly upward, and the diaphragm flattens downward. The expanded space creates a partial vacuum that sucks the lungs outward toward the walls of the chest and downward toward the diaphragm,