Breathe Your Way to Good Health

CEBU, Philippines - In their book Healing Moves: How to Cure, Relieve and Prevent Common Ailments with Exercise, Dr. Mitchell Krucoff and Carol Krucoff emphasize correct breathing as an important part of any exercise program. They say that deep abdominal breathing, or belly breathing, is extremely helpful for attaining a state of physiological calm and neutralizing the negative effects of stress.

The Krucoffs have devised a simple technique for breathing right:

1. Lie on your back and place a book on your belly. Relax your stomach muscles and inhale deeply into your abdomen so that the book rises. When you exhale, the book should fall. You’ll still be bringing air into your upper chest, but now you’re also bringing air down into the lower portion of your lungs and expanding your entire chest cavity.

2. Sit up and place your right hand on your abdomen and your left hand on your chest. Breathe deeply so that the hand on your abdomen rises and falls with your breath, while the hand on your chest stays relatively still. Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Enjoy the pleasant feeling.

3. Place a clock with its second hand in view. Breathe in slowly, filling your abdomen through five seconds. Then breathe out slowly to the same count of five.

Perform deep abdominal breathing throughout the day; for example, when you wake up in the morning, before you go to sleep at night, and in any stressful situation.

It is common knowledge that everyone alive breathes. What is not commonly known is how to breathe in the right way. Many of us suck in our guts and puff out our chests when breathing. We are, for the most part, shallow “chest breathers,” using primarily the middle and upper portions of our lungs.

To know the right way of breathing, just watch a little baby breathe: the belly goes up and down, deep and slow. The abdomen should expand during inhalation, and shrink upon exhalation. Shallow chest breathing strains the lungs, which must move faster to ensure adequate oxygen flow; and likewise burdens the heart, forcing it to pump harder.

Deep abdominal breathing is known to bring remarkable relief to hospital patients: lowering blood pressure, improving long-standing patterns of poor digestion, decreasing anxiety, and improving sleep and energy cycles.

It has long been practiced in maternity clinics to teach pregnant women proper breathing techniques for use during childbirth. Deep abdominal breathing can likewise help reduce the frequency of hot flushes during menopause. Many hospitals have, in recent years, also begun teaching deep abdominal breathing to patients undergoing treatment of various conditions, including cancer, heart disease, cystic fibrosis and lung disorders. The results have been quite amazing.

Slow, deep breathing is probably the best anti-stress medicine there is. According to Dr. James Gordon, author of Comprehensive Cancer Care: Integrating Alternative, Complementary and Conventional Therapies, “When you bring air down into the lower part of the lungs, where oxygen exchange is very efficient, everything changes. Heart rate slows, blood pressure decreases, muscles relax, anxiety ceases and the mind calms.”

Without adequate oxygen supply in our system, the common stress from our daily grinds can accumulate and linger, keeping the body and mind continuously in an anxious state. Chronically elevated levels of stress hormones can stimulate appetite and cause fat cells deep inside the abdomen to bloat with toxic surplus.

Aside from its calming effect on the entire body-mind system, oxygen is also an efficient fat burner and a natural skin enhancer. As we can see, people who regularly perform exercises that encourage deep abdominal breathing, like yoga or tai chi, have great shapes and radiant skin. 

All told, there’s absolutely no reason why we can’t or won’t do correct breathing—it’s free and easy to do. Most of all, it’s been proven highly effective for promoting health… and, yes, beauty as well! (FREEMAN)