Cleansing Breath

Cleansing Breath can be useful when you’ve been breathing dry or dirty air, when you have been sleeping with your mouth open, when you have just a touch of asthma. It does not cover major chest infections or more serious problems.

The mucous blanket that lines your breathing tunnels and tubes MUST REMAIN FLUID enough to be pushed along easily by your cilia but sticky enough to grab airborne garbage. Occasionally mucous gets too thick and polluted and begins to clog things up. Often a few Cleansing Breaths will kick out a little mucous plug before you get into more serious blockage.

1. Keep your mouth CLOSED during the entire exercise. You will be inhaling SLOWLY and QUIETLY through your nose to avoid pushing the offending mucous deeper down into your chest.
2. Empty first, as always. Then fill quietly through your nose. Exhale as much air as seems natural and comfortable.
3. WHEN YOU ARE ALMOST EMPTY, add two or three small coughs (mouth still closed).
4. Continue to breathe in gently and add a couple tiny coughs at the tail end of each exhalation.

These small orchestrated coughs usually trigger a deep efficient cough that grabs and expels the offending mucous.

Be well. Breathe beautifully.

The Worst of Times. The Best of Times

We are sinking into a bad-news swamp - Bernie Madoff, Robert Stanford, Citicorp, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Freddie and Fannie. Vital rain forests vanish, icebergs melt, toxic waste oozes, oceans turn into dead zones, and our kids look like the Pillsbury Dough Boy . . .

On the bright side we are gaining new and extraordinary personal power.

We are learning that our brains can be improved until the day we die. Previously it was assumed that the human brain slides steadily downhill into the age pit, can’t be retrained and is about as malleable as a doorstop.

We are learning how to PREVENT disease instead of waiting for those terrible telltale symptoms. We finally understand how to improve our odds against type II diabetes, lung cancer, heart disease, stroke, osteoporosis.

Thanks to the Internet you can become a smart partner with your personal medical team. YOUR REACH IS GLOBAL AND AFFORDABLE.

Today we can PREVENT countless cases of lung cancer. We have the capability to spot the disease early. We have access to extraordinary medical treatment and surgical talent. At last we have the power to hold corporations accountable for the harm they do. Our parents and grandparents never dreamed of such possibilities.

The Market will rise and fall. It always does. Institutions will rise and crumble. They always do. But today you have greater power than ever over your physical, intellectual and spiritual evolution. That power will only get better.

Be well. Breathe beautifully.

Budget Your Body

How would you spend your money if you knew, once it was gone, there would never be one more penny coming in, ever? Would you budget more carefully?

How carefully would you pick a hairdresser if you knew that after your next haircut your hair would never grow another inch?

How well would you care for your shoes if you knew you could never buy another pair?

That’s rather the way things are with your lungs. Remove lung tissue and it cannot grow back. Not ever. Dump garbage into your lungs and some of the garbage just sits there. Expose your lungs to toxins and the delicate tissues will eventually break down and scar. Keep on smoking and very soon your beautiful pink lungs will turn into a blackened, torn useless mess.

You can survive with not very much money if you budget carefully. You can go bald as a squash without serious harm. Countless people in this world have only one pair of shoes, or none. Unfortunately for us, having diminished lung capacity means not enough fuel and too much garbage in the bloodstream. Damaged lungs leave you with less energy, less healing capacity, less strength and a lot less fun. Life will leave you in its wake.

Your best insurance is PREVENTION. You will quickly discover that you cannot do a “my bad” to Mother Nature and expect to have your lungs restored. Gone forever.

Suggested Review & Link: Hill and Valley Breathing.

Be well. Be wise. Breathe beautifully.

The Magic Bone Suit

The zillions of microscopic air sacs that comprise your lungs are as delicate as soap bubbles. Your heart is an extraordinary pump that must continue to drum away with no outside interference or disruption. Heart and lungs would be mush if they weren’t protected from daily assaults.

Because Mother Nature, in her usual infinite wisdom, wrapped you in a magic bone suit, you can almost always survive being tackled in the end-zone or rear-ended by an SUV or sent flying by the proverbial banana peel.

Your skull is the armored cage that protects soft brain tissue. Your pelvic cage is, among other things, a bumper car for your kidneys, pancreas, liver and many yards of guts (and sometimes a fetus). But most important, the ribcage protects the acquisition and delivery of oxygen. Without that, all else is lost.

The ribcage must be rigid enough to shield you, yet flexible enough for reasonable “give” when you take a deep breath. It must be self-healing, preferably stronger than it was before a bone break. It must be extraordinarily tough, yet lightweight. It must accommodate the arm and shoulder attachments. It has to last at least four score and seven.

In return, all that is expected of you is to keep the cage properly aligned for efficient breathing and to keep the related muscles in and around the ribs strong and flexible and to maintain bone health.

Be well. Breathe beautifully.

Expelling Bacteria, Viruses and Other Nasty Stuff

Mother Nature built extra protection into your body to defend you from assaults too dramatic for your basic daily respiration to handle. Nature, in effect, sends in the cavalry to be your back-up when you are about to be overrun.

Your GAG REFLEX makes a mighty grab-and-shove at anything your throat finds threatening and at anything that begins to slide down the wrong chute toward your delicate lungs.

Your SNEEZE explodes irritants, germs and viruses out of your nasal passages with extraordinary force and speed.

Your COUGH forces your breath out at several hundred miles per hour in a valiant effort to evict irritants from your throat, bronchial tubes and lungs.

Your YAWN (while not quite so dramatic but helpful none the less) is your body’s effort to break a shallow breathing pattern and to quickly beef up your oxygen supply.

Your SNIFF has probably lost much of its sensitivity over the centuries but remains a valuable system that can still save your life. A sniff (located close to the entrance to your respiration) allows you to test your environment just a little without taking a deep, full breath that could, under certain conditions, be deadly.

These protective systems are designed for occasional use only. If any one of them becomes chronic, it is time to re-examine your environment and to seek expert advice.

Be well. Breathe beautifully.

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Be well. Breathe beautifully.

Practice Yawn

A yawn is Nature’s way of correcting your shallow breathing and giving you a quick boost of energy. Remember that breathing is both voluntary and involuntary. If we depended on having to think about each and every breath, we never would have made it to kindergarten.

You have the power to shift into “manual” mode when it’s suitable (as with breathing exercises) but you remain in “automatic” most of the time. Sometimes because you are bored or tired, your meter drops into a “low fuel” range and you yawn to establish a more suitable oxygen/carbon dioxide level.

A yawn also invigorates face and speech muscles. Thinking about a yawn (or trying not to) is usually enough to trigger the process.

A typical yawn shapes your mouth into a vertical oval. Once you have an oval in place, expand on this by stretching that oval outward into a circle. Use a mirror at first if you need visual feedback. This practice yawn may trigger an authentic deep yawn and watering eyes. If so, well done.

One great big yawn is probably more useful than a lot of little stifled ones.

Be well. Breathe beautifully.