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Thread: Breathing

  1. #1

    Question Breathing

    Hi,

    Breathing is a important for martial art like Qi Gong and Taijiquan am I right? I would like to know which is the best breathing method as normal people inhale through nose and exhale through mouth right, those who learn internal art will inhale and exhale through nose right.

    I have research on that normal healthy breathing method is inhale through nose for 5 secs and exhale through mouth for 5 secs, maybe thats western way, but I search on Yoga type, there is a lot of breathing method, eg. inhale and exhale through nose, inhale through mouth exhale through nose and other mixture.

    So please share which is the correct breathing method for eg. normal human, ppl who is martial artist, yoga etc. that you guys use. Sorry for my poor english. Thanks in advanced

  2. #2
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    Greetings..

    Nature has equiped us nicely to both inhale and exhale through the nose.. inhaling, the mucous and hairs filter the air.. exhaling, the moisture rehydrates the mucous to maintain its stickiness.. this is in accord with Tao (nature's way)..

    Other, more studied methods, such as Normal Abdominal Breathing or Reverse Abdominal Breathing, should be considered..

    Be well..
    TaiChiBob.. "the teacher that is not also a student is neither"

  3. #3
    oh, Thanks for the reply

  4. #4
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    I was taught that breathing out through the mouth lets chi escape. Total nose breathing circulates the energy within. In through the nose out through the mouth for stress release or getting rid of bad chi. But total nose breathing is supposed to be the norm.
    Give me immortality or give me death!

  5. #5
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    just breathe
    Originally Posted by Lee Chiang Po
    You then walk backwards, forcing him off his feet and then drag him by the eye socket and lips. You can pull so hard that the lips tear away. You will never hear such screaming.

  6. #6
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    Greetings..

    just breathe
    Is that like "just fight"? There are specific techniques for fighting just like there are for breathing.. optimizing one's overall abilities includes breathing in harmony with the situation.. breathing disciplines practiced at every level of training will increase the odds that you will breathe correctly and in harmony with a real situation..

    Be well...
    TaiChiBob.. "the teacher that is not also a student is neither"

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by qiphlow
    just breathe
    I thought this was a reference to Faith Hill. Ahhhh Faith...I can hear her singing Juuuuust Breath.....wearing just a sheet.
    Give me immortality or give me death!

  8. #8
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    i said "just breathe" because too often folks will get caught up in the "proper"way to breathe and start obsessing about how many breaths thru each nostril on a tuesday when the moon is a a 30 degree tilt......you get the picture.
    just remebering to breathe at all dut=ring taiji/qigong is a big deal, as alot of beginners (me included!) find themselves unconsciously holding the breath in an effort to concentrate on the mechanics of the movement theyhappen to be doing.
    so--
    when one can say that you are actually breathing naturally during your forms/qigong/whatever practice, then one can start practicing specific breathing techniques.
    Originally Posted by Lee Chiang Po
    You then walk backwards, forcing him off his feet and then drag him by the eye socket and lips. You can pull so hard that the lips tear away. You will never hear such screaming.

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by abc
    Hi,

    Breathing is a important for martial art like Qi Gong and Taijiquan am I right? I would like to know which is the best breathing method as normal people inhale through nose and exhale through mouth right, those who learn internal art will inhale and exhale through nose right.

    I have research on that normal healthy breathing method is inhale through nose for 5 secs and exhale through mouth for 5 secs, maybe thats western way, but I search on Yoga type, there is a lot of breathing method, eg. inhale and exhale through nose, inhale through mouth exhale through nose and other mixture.

    So please share which is the correct breathing method for eg. normal human, ppl who is martial artist, yoga etc. that you guys use. Sorry for my poor english. Thanks in advanced
    You need to be careful. Breathing exercises like you are reading about can be detrimental to your health if you do not know what you are doing. Anxiety and mental problems are some of the more common effects.

    These breathing exercises have different goals or effects in my experience. Some of them are meant to make your belly very strong. A good example would be your belly is made of something relatively weak like plastic sandwich wrap. The breathing exercises are designed to make your belly turn into something more like the rubber on a car tire. They increase the ability of your body to withstand pressure.


    Other breathing exercises are for power generation. These are rare and.....wonderful? They are also very dangerous. These breathing exercises can turn you into a "megalomaniac" I think is the word. A person who feel very powerful like they can take on anyone.

    Part of the problem is that the exercise really does make them powerful enough to take on most anyone. They have a reason to be a megalomaniac.

    The energy produced by these kinds of breathing is so intense it will feel like your brain is on fire. You will have a hard time sleeping. You will be full of energy and running all the time. You could literally start sleeping maybe 4 or 6 hours a day and work hard all day without even noticing it if you do these kinds of breathing exercises.

    These exercises are so intriguing because you are not breathing with your lungs. You are of course. Oxygen is entering your lungs and being transferred to the blood normally. There is more to it than your lungs. The sensations do not feel like they should be physically possible. But they are there and impossible to ignore.


    Kung Fu really is a wondrous thing.

  10. #10
    Please offer more in depth....
    "The moon is not affected by the baying of wolves" - TenTigers 6/29/06
    佛山

  11. #11
    About what?

    Honestly. Kung fu is like anything else. There are levels of attainment. You can go get a book and read about the highest level of attainment. But if you are only a beginner, you should not be trying the highest level of attainment. You should be doing beginner stuff.

    In my opinion, it is better to be in the martial arts for some time, years, before becoming concerned with breathing. A person needs a certain level of familiarity with their body before they can understand the sensations that the breathing exercises produce.

    If a beginner is doing breathing exercises wrong, they will not see any of the warning signs because they do not understand their body enough to know what is good or bad, healthy or unhealthy.

  12. #12
    Look into basic Chi Kung exercises.. especially "Lifting The Sky" which will set you on the beginning of your journey.

    There is also a technique which invloves pressing two points, above and below your navel when you breathe out to train your abdomen to fake the breathing and the real breathing will naturally follow these trained muscles.

    It is possible to mistrain your abdomen though and if it is not caught and repaired (with the "lifting the sky" exercise is ideal) it can lead to horrible consequences. Imagine your arm, you have a tricep that pushes and a bicep that pulls. If one is out of synch with the other everything you try to do will be laboured and energy will be wasted. Apply that to your abdomen and waist and imagine the pressure being put on your back over time; your back links everything so you are potentially causing problems in every part of your body simultaenously. The principle of water eroding a mountain applies here, you wont notice the effects at first but over time they will become more pronounced until eventually there will be little you can do to repair the damage.

    My point: It may seem an insignificant thing; but time itself makes the smallest force incredibly powerful.

  13. #13
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    ttt for 2018

    Breath work like this is pretty basic but I'm always astonished how many people don't know how to use it.

    This Breathing Exercise Can Calm You Down in a Few Minutes
    “It’s totally private. Nobody knows you’re doing it.”
    Meryl Davids Landau Mar 15 2018, 2:47pm


    Alex J. Reyes

    Although venture capitalist and author Scott Amyx has given speeches before thousands of people at companies and organizations around the world, he's often filled with anxiety before he goes onstage. To calm himself but also keep his mind clear, he regularly turns to a breathing practice he learned several years ago from a sports psychologist.

    By doing this practice for up to 30 minutes every morning, plus one more time before he goes onstage, Amyx says, “I’m able to manage my anxiety and turn that nervous energy into a powerful presentation.”

    Anyone who's been to a yoga class knows that breathwork is common at the beginning or ending of a class. That’s because the ancient yogis recognized that we can either calm or arouse ourselves by changing the depth and pacing of our breath. Over the past few years, though, mental-health professionals have begun to discover this as well. Some have begun recommending breathing techniques to their patients with anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and depression.

    Cynthia Stonnington, chair of the department of psychiatry and psychology at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, Arizona, says she often introduces clients to breathwork because “many people find benefit, no one reports side effects, and it’s something that engages the patient in their recovery with actively doing something.”

    The type of breathwork emerging as one of the most beneficial is so simple you can learn it in minutes. You’ll have learned it, actually, by the time you’re done reading this article. Called resonant breathing or Coherent Breathing (a trademarked term) it’s been promoted by a pair of psychiatrists in New York City who found it to be so valuable for even severe mental conditions that they’ve used it with survivors of genocides, earthquakes, tsunamis, and other global disasters. The breath technique is also being used by veterans in at least two Veterans Administration Hospitals in the US.

    This form of breathwork emerged after years of studying the ancient breathing practices of indigenous people around the world, from yoga and qi gong to African, Hawaiian, and Native American traditions, explains Patricia Gerbarg, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at New York Medical College, who studies the technique along with her husband Richard Brown, associate professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.

    “We wanted to identify a short program that could be quickly given to people, that they would have immediate relief within five or ten minutes, and that over time would produce long-term changes,” Gerbarg says. Small but important studies are documenting the value of this technique. One study published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine in 2017, led by researchers at Boston University, asked 30 patients with major depression to regularly practice the breathing method, along with Iyengar yoga. After three months, depressive symptoms had significantly declined, as measured by a standard depression inventory test.

    A key benefit of this breathing is that you can do it anywhere. It simply involves taking regular breaths in and out the nose, at a pace of five breaths per minute. (This translates into a count of six—one per second—for each inhalation and exhalation.) Initially, it helps to do the breath with your eyes closed, but once you become experienced, you can keep them open. That way, if you find yourself anxious, depressed, or stressed at any time during the day, you can sit at your desk or in a meeting and do a few rounds. “It’s totally private. Nobody knows you’re doing it,” Gerbarg says.

    The breath should be gentle, Gerbarg explains, because the aim is to balance the sympathetic (“fight or flight”) with the parasympathic (“rest and digest”) branches of the nervous system. When they first started looking into the restorative power of the breath, the prevailing rationale was that it sent extra oxygen to the brain. But the couple knew that explanation couldn’t justify the profound effects they were observing in people who did breathing practices. What’s more, some types of breathwork actually decrease oxygenation.

    The real reason it works, Gerbarg and Brown now believe, is because the vagal nerves—which connect the brain to the body, telling organs when to beat, breathe, digest, and the like—have been found in recent years to actually send even more messages in the other direction: from the body to the brain. “These ascending messages strongly influence stress response, emotion, and neurohormonal regulatory networks,” they wrote in a chapter on resonant breathing in the 2015 book, Yoga Therapy: Theory and Practice.

    “Respiration is the only autonomic function we can voluntarily control,” Gerbarg says, so it makes sense to change the pattern of breath in order to shift the messages the brain receives. The equal pacing of this balanced breathing tells the brain to simultaneously relax and stay alert, allowing you to remain calm but still socialize or get your work done—or, in Amyx’s case, to give a big speech.

    The calm, even breaths send messages of safety, Gerbarg says, which reduces anxious or depressive thoughts, and allows more loving and sociable emotions to emerge. Adverse reactions from this breathing are rare. However, people with severe asthma may find that at first, the breathwork may narrow their airways a bit, which can exacerbate breathing problems. For this reason, it's best for them to try this practice only under the supervision of an expert.

    To keep track of the timing, it’s best not to count aloud, or even to use a visual cue like a blinking light, because those put too much gas into the sympathetic side of the equation. Stephen Elliott, a biofeedback practitioner who trademarked the term Coherent Breathing, has created a timekeeping app, called “two bells” (download from the website Coherence.com), which features distinct Tibetan bells alternating every six seconds to alert you that it’s time to inhale or exhale.

    Gerbarg and Brown also teach periodic weekend workshops around the country called Breath-Body-Mind, which include repeated rounds of resonant breathing along with simple qi gong movements and meditations.

    Stonnington believes more psychiatrists should embrace this breathwork. “It could entice more patients to seek care because the option of using a variety of modalities, not all involving medications, is appealing to many people,” she says.

    Of course, the biggest challenge for someone with depression is motivating themselves to do it in the first place, especially if other techniques have failed them. While Gerbarg recommends sessions of 15 or 20 minutes or even longer as the ideal, any amount is valuable. If you can only get yourself to take two or three breaths, that’s enough to start moving in a healthier direction.

    Correction: A previous version of this article failed to attribute the trademarked term Coherent Breathing to Stephen Elliot.
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

  14. #14


    This interesting and practical video may start off a bit corporate-hypey sounding but it gets into some very interesting related content including about breathing.

    One take-home is that when people say "take a deep breath" that's a mistake (usually). The thing to do acc to the presenter here is make your breathing even and smooth.

    In the video you can watch what this does to a person's heart in terms of making the ekg signal more healthy and that's just one biofeedback response among many.

    Filling your lungs to overcapacity can actually cause you to feel short of breath and stressed. Good forms of crosstraining for qigong breathwork I believe are singing or playing wind instruments. Pro singers and winds players often have a centered quality about them resembling meditators imo... well, kind of guessing here... ymmv.

    Perhaps training both in and outbreath through nose during exertion is more about fighting than qigong. For if you want to be able to keep your mouth clenched shut during fighting in case there are impacts to the jaw. At least partly.
    Last edited by rett2; 04-15-2018 at 01:03 AM.

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