Breathing

And now 'tis day two of my second 108 days. I've expanded the requirements just a bit. Three rounds of the taiji form, and one round of the sword form. The problem with the sword form is finding a place where there's room for it. My backyard works right now, but may not if I get my garden area tilled and planted. The non-garden area is unfortunately close to a rather large elm tree...

Anyway, back to the topic of the post: Breathing. Most people have no idea how to breathe and no awareness of their own breath. In my high school choir, part of our warm-up routine included breathing exercises; I consider these to be far more important than the scales we did afterwards. It's not much use to hit the note and not be able to sustain it because you have no breath support. Similarly, it's not much use to make it up the stair and then have to sit and wheeze for five minutes. Yes, physical condition plays a role in that, too, but the breath, I think, is key.


There are two types of breathing that I practice as part of my daily routine. The first is a yogic breath, variously called "fire-breathing," "triangular breathing," or "bottle breathing." For this one, first I empty my lungs as much as possible. Then I begin inhaling, pulling the air down to the bottom of the lungs first, expanding the diaphragm, and filling the lungs clear up to the top for a slow count of seven. That breath is held for another slow count of seven, and then released, emptying the top of the lungs first and the bottom last for another slow count of seven. That's the first breath of seven. It's called fire breathing because practicing it tends to make you feel warm, or even hot; bottle-breathing because you fill and empty the lungs like a bottle; triangular breathing because of the three parts of the cycle.

There are several benefits to this exercise. Most people never completely empty their lungs, so there are places with 'stale' air. This exercise clears out all of that. Most people don't use their full lung capacity. This exercise gets oxygen into all of the parts of the lung. My teacher claims that holding the breath for seven counts gives the lungs time to extract the maximum amount of oxygen from the air, but I don't know enough about breathing physiology to evaluate that claim. If it does nothing else, however, it stretches all of the muscles surrounding the lungs. The yogis would add that it 'massages the internal organs.'

The other breathing exercise I practice is most often called 'reverse breathing.' As with the first, I empty my lungs first. On the inhale, though, I pull the abdomen and diaphragm in and breathe in for a count of nine without expanding the chest or raising the shoulders. So where does the air go? Into the back part of the lungs, producing a rather nice stretch across the shoulder blades. On the exhale, I expand the abdomen and diaphragm for another slow count of nine. No holding the breath on this one. One full round is 9 of these breaths. I usually do three rounds each day.

As far as the stretching/massaging the body goes, this breath has pretty much the same benefits as the fire-breathing. It doesn't produce as much stretch in the chest, but it gets more of a stretch in the back. It also focuses on the part of the lungs that is easiest to neglect, especially for people with stiff backs and shoulders. If you try this breath and feel like you can't get enough oxygen, that's probably why: the muscles in that area are too stiff. It took me quite a while to get to the point where I could use this breath effectively. I've also found that if I'm getting exhausted while hiking, I can use this breath to give myself an energy boost.

As for the mystical side of things, both breaths are considered to be qi-builders. Which makes perfect sense. Not having enough oxygen means not having much energy, after all. If you have enough oxygen, you're more likely to feel energetic. And, yes, there are more esoteric details, and energy visualizations that go along with both of them, but I'm not going to go into those right now.