How do long, slow breaths affect your physical and mental makeup?

[tulku]

How do long, slow breaths affect your physical and mental makeup?

[Birch]

Well, in my case it recast my mental/physical relationship.

And how did that change anything? Tough to know what would have been an (not "the") outcome had I not taken that circuit.

Although I do feel better than I think I did before but since I didn't measure it...

And how would I know??

 

Maybe this is where the brainwave measurement stuff kicks in?

But would that be enough?

[Encephalon]

How do long, slow breaths affect your physical and mental makeup?

 

In purely biomechanical terms, this breathing deeply oxygenates your bloodstream. Over time, this causes the autonomic nervous system to switch from sympathetic (fight or flight) to parasympathetic (rest and digest) mode, a condition where your endocrine system changes your hormonal blood chemistry, causing your stress to go way down and your immune system to go way up.

 

There also appears to be some calming effect of this kind of breathing on the vagus nerve.

 

From Dan Reid - The Complete Book of Chinese Health and Healing

[ChiDragon]

How do long, slow breaths affect your physical and mental makeup?

 

tulku...

1. May I ask why did you come up with this question...???

2. What triggered you to ask such a question...???

[ChiDragon]

This is a very intelligent question. This is the golden key to open the of mystery of Chi Kung. One must understand the importance of breathing, in order, to be more meaningful in practicing Chi kung. Most people are mistakenly thought that Chi Kung was the cultivation of energy; but it was not. Actually, it was the cultivation of breathing. Before anyone gets up tight, please be patience and follow my brief explanation.

 

If one is very observant, one will notice that a Chi Kung practitioner is moving the arms and legs slowing, simultaneously, taken long and slow breaths. As a matter of fact, if this kind of breathing wasn't done, then one is not practicing Chi Kung. The long and slow breathing was considered to be deep breathing. In ancient term was called "Sunk the breath to the lower dan tian"; and the modern term is called "abdominal breathing". There was a big reason behind deep breathing or abdominal breathing(AB).

 

Why it was called abdominal breathing...??? It was because when someone breathes deeply, spontaneously, the abdomen expands which causing the diaphragm to be flattened. That will allow more room for the lung to increase its volume for air intake. The human body function requires oxygen. Therefore, the most desirable thing to do is to provide a maximum amount of oxygen, possible, to the human body as it allows. Indeed, there is a most desirable breathing method is called Chi Kung. Chi Kung is the ultimate method for breathing because its primary requirement was "abdominal breathing". The most people may not accept this unwanted truth because they are solely used to the term Chi as "energy" and neglecting the initial meaning of Chi was "breath" or "breathing".

 

Now, finally, we have someone curiously enough to ask a legitimate and proper question about breathing. IMO, I think most people had heard enough of it with a spiritual answer. How about looking at it physically and biologically this time.

Edited August 15, 2011 by ChiDragon

[ChiDragon]

How do long and slow breaths affect your physical and mental makeup...???

 

The long and slow breaths will be addressed as "abdominal breathing(AB)", hereinafter. The human body needs oxygen, the slower and longer one breathes will allow more time to absorb more oxygen for the body cells to generate the body energy. It was simple as that.

 

One will have chronic diseases and other health problems due to hypoxia, lack of oxygen. If there was a deficient of oxygen in the body, all the body cells will be fighting for oxygen. The first organ to use the oxygen are the lungs. The lungs will not breathe properly due the insufficient of oxygen. The next organ to use oxygen is the heart. The heart will not pump the oxygenated blood, properly, to provide to the rest of the body cells. As a result, all the body cells are suffocated and start fighting for oxygen among each other. However, some win and some loose. The ones are lack of oxygen will deteriorate or become malignant cells. Eventually, the body cells will die due to hypoxia. Over all speaking, the body will not function properly without a good supply of oxygen.

 

The oxygen were needed for the body to produce the energy to carry out all the biological functions of the human body. One will see and notice that the health of the body start to be changing from the worse to the best if a sufficient supply of oxygen was provided to all the body cells. Fortunately, we have Chi Kung, comes into the picture, for the rescue.

 

A person with health problems and breathe regularly was only providing enough oxygen to sustain his life. Once a person start practicing Chi Kung, more oxygen will be provided to the body. Hence, the body cells will start to function like they normally should. They will begin to repair bad body tissues by mitosis to replace old cells and generate new blood cells; and have ample of oxygen left over to generate the energy as the body needs, instantly, for external tasks. Finally, the body cells do not have to fight for oxygen among themselves anymore.

 

 

TBC for summary....

Need a break.

[lifeforce]

 .

Edited January 20, 2019 by lifeforce

[thelerner]

How slow is slow? How many breaths a minute? To some 6 breaths a minute is slow, others look at a one breath cycle a minute as still being kindergarten level. In Ki-Aikido we'd do very slow breath cycle of about a minute.

 

I think breathing slows down naturally for anyone who meditates for a while. If you 'work' it, 3 or 4 breaths a minute is relatively easy.

 

Slow breathing relaxes the body, clears the mind.

 

I bought some meditation cd's from Silent Grounds. I thought one was a rip off at first. It consisted entirely of tones. Starting with 12 (6in 6 out) seconds, then 16 seconds going up to 4 minutes. The secret of the CD was to set the player on repeat. It was an excellent way to control the breath cycle, as you felt comfortable one, you'd adjust it higher.

 

The series had in/out breath cycles as well as progressively long in/hold/out breath cycles, again allowing you to build up to it.

 

 

Doing a 3 step breath (in,hold,out) never felt natural to me, but I do enjoy very slow breathing. These days I keep it mostly natural though, and I end up w/ a 3 or 4 minute breath cycle.

[ChiDragon]

These days I keep it mostly natural though, and I end up w/ a 3 or 4 minute breath cycle.

 

Four breath cycle per minute(4bc/min) was recommend in Chi Kung which it turns out to be one cycle every 15 seconds.

[joeblast]

How do long, slow breaths affect your physical and mental makeup?

getting my breaths over a minute makes my metabolism go wild - I get ravenously hungry, burn way more calories without regard to the level of exercise I'm getting. done it 3, 4, 5...how many times have I gone into and out of that threshold over the last bunch of years I'm not talking temporary effects, I'm talking taking a few weeks, month getting deeply into the practice and often, and the effects have weeks-long lasting effects that seem to keep going even if you stop (but of course why would you...unless life interrupts enough that you find yourself not doing as much as you used to... )

 

there is an overlap between diaphragm and psoas. starting breath there allows a wave to propagate upward and forward. normally when people breathe it is with the center, which focuses more on the foramina that go in between the folds of the diaphragm, namely the aoritc, esophageal, and a few for nerves and such. when you get your breaths really long using this method, I'd say 35, 40 second long, there gets to be this hiccup that resolves the rootless motion - it happens because of the competing tensions and the different tensile strengths of the structures - you wind up not being able to transfer the breath deep into the abdomen doing it that way.

 

since the psoas is the deepest muscle in the abdomen, including that in your breath, propagating it from there, roots the breath deep into the abdomen.

 

on to the complimentary part to that - by rooting the diaphragm and thus breath, it allows you to relax the diaphragm more, especially at the foramina - the vagus passes through the esophageal foramen. by relaxing the diaphragm, then you have good basis to then relax your air passageways - the result is that you inhale and exhale just with a bit of psoas, huiyin and diaphragm motion. actually that is a good way to discover if you've really relaxed those foramina and rooted your breath - first, sequentially activate every single part of your air passageways, just for a bit of frame of reference. then sequentially let go of all of it. dont use your sinuses to inhale! just let the breath pass on by. if your breath is not rooted, if the foramina are the focus of your diaphragm motion, then you'll experience that hiccup as you lengthen your breaths.

 

mastering that takes a *lot* of the residual tension out of the area - there isnt even a competing for air pressures any longer! the diaphragm floats freely with no feelings of pressure above or below, the heart shines effervescently above.

 

the relaxation seems to produce a regulating signal that propagates up the vagus and has an end result of a measure of regulating endocrine function, but perhaps that is being a little too technical

 

slow is of course relative depending on one's level of accomplishment with the practice.

 

if doing longevity breathing as a specific aim, I would not recommend holding the breath at all. everything has its place, but when doing longevity breath you're better off aiming at smoothing those transitions between inhale and exhale and working them into a muscle memory by which it all rolls in to one - and once the threshold of turbulence is reached in your air passageways, you no longer feel yourself breathe and its just dantien motion, no idea of breath but you're not hypoxic.

[SAMANTABHADRA]

Joeblast,

 

Can you speak a little bit more about the technical aspects of doing what you're talking about? For example, sequentially activating 'every part of your air passageways' would mean what to you?

 

I have some strange breath and diaphragm (and spinal) experiences, and am wondering about this.

[Adishakti]

Hi Tulku,

 

The experience is different every time.

 

On some days slow breathing leaves me completely turned on. On other days it leaves me annoyed - maybe a long suppressed emotion has surfaced. Some days it leaves me happy. And on other days creative. Yet other days feeling useless and on some moments feeling on top of the world that I can't stop humming this:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crWGGy2oBT0

 

 

How do long, slow breaths affect your physical and mental makeup?

[tulku]

Do long, slow breaths focusing on nothing but the breath itself aid one in surrendering?

 

I have been getting this sneaky feeling that visualization including visualization of the chakras might not help too much with surrendering..

 

cos your intellectual mind is still at work and surrendering means letting go of your intellectual mind completely?

Edited August 16, 2011 by tulku

[Adishakti]

[suninmyeyes]

Do long, slow breaths focusing on nothing but the breath itself aid one in surrendering?

 

I have been getting this sneaky feeling that visualization including visualization of the chakras might not help too much with surrendering..

 

cos your intellectual mind is still at work and surrendering means letting go of your intellectual mind completely?

I feel surrendering as total relaxation and distressing my own being of which long deep breaths are results rather than a sole tool.

Surrendering is active process of being aware and awake to whatever if happening in life and not minding it. If it rains it rains , if sun shines it shines,but it does not necesarry mean loosing all personal preferances.

If intellectual mind is at work let it work but a person is not obliged to engage with it constantly.

How do I do this? By waking up to the fact that I am actually preparing a cup of tea or typing or whatever else one does throughout the day.

[C T]

I practice breathing with the 100 syllable mantra. One breath one complete recitation. Works well. Aspiring towards two beads per breath.

 

An example here - -

 

 

When a full cycle (generally 108 recitations, or one round of the Mala) is completed, for a while, there is the feeling as if there is no need to breathe at all.

 

Now, imagine one's state after doing this 10 X 500,000 times, which is roughly what a retreatant accomplishes in a 3-year retreat.

Edited August 16, 2011 by CowTao

[tulku]

[tulku]

I feel surrendering as total relaxation and distressing my own being of which long deep breaths are results rather than a sole tool.

Surrendering is active process of being aware and awake to whatever if happening in life and not minding it. If it rains it rains , if sun shines it shines,but it does not necesarry mean loosing all personal preferances.

If intellectual mind is at work let it work but a person is not obliged to engage with it constantly.

How do I do this? By waking up to the fact that I am actually preparing a cup of tea or typing or whatever else one does throughout the day.

 

so how do you "surrender" in order to lose all personal preferences?

 

how do you "surrender" in order to lose all traces of your human ego/identity..

 

this is what i am interested in..

[tulku]

I practice breathing with the 100 syllable mantra. One breath one complete recitation. Works well. Aspiring towards two beads per breath.

 

An example here - -

 

 

When a full cycle (generally 108 recitations, or one round of the Mala) is completed, for a while, there is the feeling as if there is no need to breathe at all.

 

Now, imagine one's state after doing this 10 X 500,000 times, which is roughly what a retreatant accomplishes in a 3-year retreat.

 

what else do 3-year retreat practitioners practice despite this reptitive chanting/breathing with the 100 syllable mantra?

[C T]

what else do 3-year retreat practitioners practice despite this reptitive chanting/breathing with the 100 syllable mantra?

Did you mean 'besides'?

 

Well, it all depends on which particular school or lineage organizes the retreat.

 

Are you thinking of enrolling for one?

Edited August 16, 2011 by CowTao

[joeblast]

Joeblast,

 

Can you speak a little bit more about the technical aspects of doing what you're talking about? For example, sequentially activating 'every part of your air passageways' would mean what to you?

 

I have some strange breath and diaphragm (and spinal) experiences, and am wondering about this.

With regard to "activating air passageways" I am referring to...just that. Realize the myriad ways you can change the air pressure in your air passageways by using the sinuses and other structures - like, flare your nostrils! Start there. Then try to pull in air while focusing on the crown of the nose. Maxillary, ethmoid, etc. Sphenoid right on the anterior side of the pineal. (That opens up more, naturally, later on.) Back of the throat. Larynx. Trachea. Bronchi. The lungs themselves.

 

By activating, there is intended signal. Stillness after activation, as is so often the prescription! After playing with your air passageways like that you'll have a better frame of reference to UNactivate them

 

 

 

Do long, slow breaths focusing on nothing but the breath itself aid one in surrendering?

 

I have been getting this sneaky feeling that visualization including visualization of the chakras might not help too much with surrendering..

 

cos your intellectual mind is still at work and surrendering means letting go of your intellectual mind completely?

Let go of the concept of surrender, even There is naught but basking in awareness. That's the gist of "focusing the awareness" on something - if awareness is present and focused, how can it be elsewhere? Put it into executing perfect harmonious motion and repeat a thousandfold until a very deep level of muscle memory has been established, and by virtue of doing that awareness-gong you begin to develop a new habit-energy-path, and eventually it will overtake the monkey mind as the path of least resistance - but of course, you must keep practicing otherwise the money gets a little perturbed

 

I'm uncertain how much neural 'crosstalk' there is in the body - but it has been proven time and again that purposefully calming certain systems will have the downstream effect of calming others. In that vein, inharmonious and unsmooth breath, tension, many of those things will cause neural activation - and when one area is activated, it sends a cascade out. Of course how far the propagation goes is dependent on myriad factors. So there is a constant interplay at work and the only real way to peel those layers back is to do the work, and once some results have been achieved you'll notice the landscape is definitely more serene

 

Of course there are many ways up this path, e.g. recitation and such - its just a different method of clearing the mind. I just think, will mantras make your breath disappear? They are both good tools, I absolutely recommend utilizing both, but its these differing approaches that when combined provide very fertile ground for insight and achievement.

 

So really, forget about "the intellectual mind" and dont differentiate. If you're thinking of the intellectual mind, you are going to have concepts. Not needed. Its all awareness, your consciousness - putting the energy of your conscious awareness into rote moving your innards as the Yi dictates, on a continual basis. That's the mind-gong I'm talking about - so the energy which normally spawns off thought, that energystream is tapped and redirected when you fully place your awareness on the mechanisms of breath. So its in a way the same mechanism that shuts thought up when saying a million mantras, but it is also at the same time significant muscle memory training.

 

*that* is what becomes the path of least resistance, that is when your mind begins to calm, when you have used this new habit-energy to overcome the old scatterbrained habit-energy. It needs to be greater in magnitude than the old in order to take root.

[suninmyeyes]

so how do you "surrender" in order to lose all personal preferences?

 

how do you "surrender" in order to lose all traces of your human ego/identity..

 

this is what i am interested in..

 

 

There would not be any 'you' if all the personal preferances were surrenderd, if all ego and human identity is gone. There must some trace of something left no matter how noble or small if anyone is to continue living, some desire even if it is almost transparent.

So the question is not really valuable as there is no one to answer it.

I can only tell you from my point of view.

[tulku]

Did you mean 'besides'?

 

Well, it all depends on which particular school or lineage organizes the retreat.

 

Are you thinking of enrolling for one?

 

Schools and lineages are all illusions created by our Consciousness/Creator/Dao to prevent us from realizing that we are all one.

 

I am only asking for your experiences and the techniques which you use for your 3-year-retreat.

 

I don't really care which schools or lineages which these techniques or experiences belong to.

[tulku]

With regard to "activating air passageways" I am referring to...just that. Realize the myriad ways you can change the air pressure in your air passageways by using the sinuses and other structures - like, flare your nostrils! Start there. Then try to pull in air while focusing on the crown of the nose. Maxillary, ethmoid, etc. Sphenoid right on the anterior side of the pineal. (That opens up more, naturally, later on.) Back of the throat. Larynx. Trachea. Bronchi. The lungs themselves.

 

By activating, there is intended signal. Stillness after activation, as is so often the prescription! After playing with your air passageways like that you'll have a better frame of reference to UNactivate them

 

 

 

 

Let go of the concept of surrender, even There is naught but basking in awareness. That's the gist of "focusing the awareness" on something - if awareness is present and focused, how can it be elsewhere? Put it into executing perfect harmonious motion and repeat a thousandfold until a very deep level of muscle memory has been established, and by virtue of doing that awareness-gong you begin to develop a new habit-energy-path, and eventually it will overtake the monkey mind as the path of least resistance - but of course, you must keep practicing otherwise the money gets a little perturbed

 

I'm uncertain how much neural 'crosstalk' there is in the body - but it has been proven time and again that purposefully calming certain systems will have the downstream effect of calming others. In that vein, inharmonious and unsmooth breath, tension, many of those things will cause neural activation - and when one area is activated, it sends a cascade out. Of course how far the propagation goes is dependent on myriad factors. So there is a constant interplay at work and the only real way to peel those layers back is to do the work, and once some results have been achieved you'll notice the landscape is definitely more serene

 

Of course there are many ways up this path, e.g. recitation and such - its just a different method of clearing the mind. I just think, will mantras make your breath disappear? They are both good tools, I absolutely recommend utilizing both, but its these differing approaches that when combined provide very fertile ground for insight and achievement.

 

So really, forget about "the intellectual mind" and dont differentiate. If you're thinking of the intellectual mind, you are going to have concepts. Not needed. Its all awareness, your consciousness - putting the energy of your conscious awareness into rote moving your innards as the Yi dictates, on a continual basis. That's the mind-gong I'm talking about - so the energy which normally spawns off thought, that energystream is tapped and redirected when you fully place your awareness on the mechanisms of breath. So its in a way the same mechanism that shuts thought up when saying a million mantras, but it is also at the same time significant muscle memory training.

 

*that* is what becomes the path of least resistance, that is when your mind begins to calm, when you have used this new habit-energy to overcome the old scatterbrained habit-energy. It needs to be greater in magnitude than the old in order to take root.

 

joeblast, that is good. Beginning to feel what you are talking. When i focus on awareness, I can better grasp consciousness.

 

But muscle memory. Which muscles are you specifically referring to when executing perfect harminous motion or am I differentiating again?

 

Should I just focus on the air going up to the crown of my nose.. i think that is the focusing on the awareness which you are talking about, eh? and forget about everything else..

[joeblast]

joeblast, that is good. Beginning to feel what you are talking. When i focus on awareness, I can better grasp consciousness.

 

But muscle memory. Which muscles are you specifically referring to when executing perfect harminous motion or am I differentiating again?

 

Should I just focus on the air going up to the crown of my nose.. i think that is the focusing on the awareness which you are talking about, eh? and forget about everything else..

 

muscle memory as in the constituent parts of breath; diaphragm, abdomen, huiyin; to a lesser extent, quadratus lumborum (back/kidney) and sides.

 

consider them in the context of a math equation. each constituent part will have a coefficient representing the total energy expressed by the totality of fielstructurefield.

 

combining them together would conceptually yield some benignly quantifiable energetic output, be they added, subtracted, multiplied, or, some general quantum mechanical equations also apply and give the impression that manifestations of qi seem to be following quantum mechanical laws quite nicely.

 

which reduces the combining of breath components to combining quantum mechanical amplitudes. which reduce to probabilities...which further give proof that phenomena which happen arise when the probabilities are sufficient; even then, it still may not be so.

 

an analogy for breath components, I'll reduce the number to two for simplicity's sake, correlated from particle experiments,

 

if we have two amplitudes a=3 and b=4,

 

 

-if the events happen in sequence, multiply the amplitudes: 3x4=12

 

When practicing, events not in coherence will have the lesser outcome;

 

 

 

-if the events are in coherence but can be distinguished, square the multiples then add: 9+16=25

 

In refining, one finds coherence yet events are at least partly still of the mind and thus distinguishable;

 

 

 

-if the events cannot be distinguished, add before absolute squaring - 3+4=7, ^2=49

Practice until the foreground fades away, background becomes the foreground - and certain events within will start to become indistinguishable, producing the most efficacious result.

 

my experience is generally consistent with that general statement

 

Another thing that QM tells us is that (in the famous double slit experiment) it doesnt matter which slit the photon goes through - the path is a priori deduced from the sum of all paths; in a particle or field interaction, just like the center of a black hole, we really cant see or exactly measure the interaction itself because that would be interfering with the experiment, but it is indeed a manifestation when particles or fields interact.

 

 

Inducing, propagating harmonious field interactions

 

 

 

and no, the crown of the nose was just a temporary point of activation - correlate to the entirety of the air passageways, learn to activate all of it and then you have a more solid basis for relaxing and letting go of it. the area of initiation is the psoas/diaphragm overlap.