Your ability to breathe properly...

During Autumn our lung meridian (with the large intestine meridian) are our most prominent and vulnerable meridians. This is also the time to work on them, strengthen them and build an awareness of the functional relationships they have with the rest of our body, our emotions and our psyche.

80% of us only breathe at 30% of our capacity and if we consider that we get rid of 70% of our toxins from BREATHING, you can start to understand how important this seemingly 'natural' bodily function is.

For most of us, our breathing has become distorted and we are not even aware of it. This distortion happens over time to push down emotions, to hold the belly in tight to make ourselves look thinner, because of tight, restrictive clothing and other learned conditions. Learning to breathe freely again can be difficult because the harder you TRY to breathe, the worse it can become. It can be stressful and therefore it's best that you work with someone who is able to make sure you are doing it correctly.

Try this:

Look and the mirror and take a big breath in and notice what you body does. Mostly, I see people raise their shoulders up to their ears. Now that we've already spoilt the surprise you probably won't do this, but ask someone else and watch what happens... If you breathe properly, your chest and shoulders should stay still and your belly should push out instead.

If you noticed that you couldn't really take a big breath in, TRY THIS... Exhale. Yes, that's it. We usually can't breathe in properly because we haven't gotten rid of all our breath properly!!!! But when I say exhale, I mean, just keep breathing out more than usual and even squeeze your belly a little and keep going even AFTER you think you've breathed everything out. THEN WAIT... Wait until your body is READY to just breathe in for you. I promise this will happen. There is a natural pause between both the in breath and the out breath, however, the pause is longer after breathing out. I always say in class 'It's impossible to die from holding your own breath - otherwise euthanasia wouldn't be an issue!!' Just try this a few times, exhale lots and then wait and you WILL breathe in deeper and more naturally. Never 'try' to breathe - remember it can make it worse, but this little exercise above, will help you reset your breathing pattern so you can come to your breathing more naturally. When you do this reset exercise, only do it 1 - 3 times. Then just breathe as normally as possible. Then just when you notice you are breathing shallow, do it once and continue as normal. It's not something that you want to do lots of. It literally is just a 'reset'.

The next thing is to work on your diaphragm, which is one of the major breathing muscles. This muscle wall goes across the rib cage and separates from your lungs and heart from your digestive system. It's important it moves with your breath. You'll know it is moving when you breathe in deeply and your belly pushes forward. This means the diaphragm has pushed downward and the contents of your belly - your digestive system press outwards. This is a great massive for the digestive system by the way. It 'feels like we are breathing into the belly, though of course, we are actually obviously breathing into your lungs, which is pushing the diaphragm down and belly out.

We usually hold a breathing workshop in the Darlinghurst studio during the Autumn time where you can learn much more about this subject and learn about your own breathing. Our next one is Saturday, 13th May 2017.

See the website under 'Shop' and 'Purchase Workshops' for more details and bookings.

Coming to classes in the Autumn time will also be of great benefit. Even working your large intestine (the lung's partner) strengthens the lung's ability as the power of the intestine creates the ability for the lung to gain more suction, increasing your natural breathing capacity.

There are many other benefits to learning to breathe properly - another of which is it can assist in getting rid of back pain!!! Look out for the next post on this xxx