Aug 1 • General discussion
Breath Homework
When we think about breathing, we must always remember the fundamentals of what breath is to sustain life.
Fact is we can go for a long period of time without food and even long periods of time without water, but we can only live for a few moments without air.
Even when we consider going out there for a few moments, one cannot help but think of the amazing Pearl divers off the coast of southern Japan.
The Ama 海女 can work for long periods of time collecting seaweed and shellfish, especially abalone. But they are only holding their breath for up to two minutes per dive, but in very harsh conditions. Nonetheless, the most important thing to realize is that breath can never be taken for granted and its connection to our life and overall health is not just important it is essential.
Having said this, the nutritional value of breath itself is far more vital than the life essence we receive from food or water through our digestion. What’s most important is a breathing influences the bodies bioelectric balance just his diet influences the biochemical balance
Basically our breathing apparatus is capable of dualistic function those functions are both cleansing like detoxing and literally cleaning the air as it’s breathed through the sinuses as they act as a filtration system. Then of course our inhalation is energizing by charging the body with a vital nutrients it gets from the air itself.
When our breath is used as a cleansing or detoxification element the body cycles the air out through exhalation and this is releasing into the atmosphere things like carbon dioxide. Why this is is because as we breathe oxygen in to energize the cells in our body the process that takes place creates carbon dioxide as a byproduct. This is exactly why our body exhales carbon dioxide as it is considered byproduct waste. The fact is our exhalation breath contains many volatile organic compounds as they are sometimes called VOCs.
There are more chemicals, besides carbon dioxide in these byproduct accelerations chemical such as: acetone, ethanol, and other alcohols; methanol, isoprene, ketones, water, and even hydrocarbons.
Are energizing breath during inhalation collects, and even stores vital energy that is brought into the body through inhalation as it is needed to produce many cellular responses and turn on our energy chemicals and cycles, especially important for every other reaction in the body.
It never ceases to amaze me that many people today take breathing for granted, as it is really produced through an autonomic response, and that breathing is not necessarily to most people an important apparatus to keep our health nominally balanced. Having said this, however, even those that take BREATH for granted, are unconsciously practising the two types of breath spontaneously throughout the day anyway. In fact, whenever toxins start to build up in our system, our body will automatically yawn or take a sigh of relief or a deep breath. A spontaneous sigh is actually cleaning your breath and what involves in a quick inhalation or gulp of fresh air as it were, is often followed by a long forceful exhalation. For the most part, we don’t even keep track of this occurring throughout our day. The essence of how the body works to spontaneously take care of itself Can be exaggerated and imagined in the world of greater focus around breathing as a tool for everything healthy.
So after reading these words, trying to know how your body just takes care of itself throughout most days by taking a sigh, which will spontaneously clean your breath and notice if your body follows up with a deep inhalation or a long forceful exhalation, and then try to notice around what times of the day and what things you might be going through at the time that your body starts to breathe differently.
By contrast to that imagine a yawn as being an energizing breath long slow deep inhalation that might even be retained in your lungs for a period of time and how that might be followed by a quick exhalation.
Most importantly, try to take note of how your body wants to breathe under certain circumstances throughout your day. Journal this and take note of how your body is dealing with certain things through breath. This is the first piece of homework.
The second piece of homework is to really recognize how our Taikokyu is broken into two elements and I talk about this a lot.
Tai-meaning body and Kokyu-meaning breath.
The kokyu-literally means inhalation and exhalation. The way we perform these breathing skills in our classes will make the difference between you autonomically breathing, and really taking a deep look at the: how we’re breathing, the when we breathe and in what way, the where we are breathing from and why is breath happening.
Kokyu as exercise or our energy control through breath, has been part of who we are as humans, of course from very beginning of life as a species. Breathing of course is part of our lives but intimatly in Taikokyu and Budo as it is woven into the very tapestry of the Japanese martial arts and the healing arts for thousands of years.
The main reason for this is the vital intellect and discovery of fettle, found in breathing technique.
This of course is the difference between being truly healthy or not.
Please write your discoveries out and discuss through school, I mean Skool. Ha
Také Sensei
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Breath Homework
