Gentle Exercises for Optimal Health

One of the prime reasons to pursue Qigong is to get more energy. One of the Qigong ways to get more energy is working with breathing. Qigong breathing practices could be looked at as the foundation, or the essential aspect, of Qigong.

Sudden Inhalation Syndrome

There are many aspects to becoming a better breather, and many benefits. One of the aspects is becoming aware in your daily life of how you are breathing. Lately I have been noticing how some people have a pattern of speaking that can’t be good for them. I call this pattern Sudden Inhalation Syndrome.

What people with this habit do is take a rapid, high-chest, short, intense inhale before quickly speaking. It is a quick, strong sniff followed even more quickly with talking. Most people with such patterns are not aware of them.

This is Shock Breathing

Grasping such fast, small breaths emulates the kind of inhale a person takes when they are suddenly shocked by something unexpected or fearful. It is the breath of surprise and fear. Try a few of those breaths yourself, right now. Do you feel how intense the experience is? Such a breath can immediately lead to feelings of anxiety, uncertainty, unsteadiness, and dizziness. This breath method uses only secondary or tertiary breathing muscles to pull in air, creating muscular tension in the upper chest and neck and throat. It compresses the heart, constricts the throat, and compromises the lungs.

This collection of mental, emotional and physical states is not the ideal platform for speaking.

So Many Symptoms from Shock Breathing

Other possible symptoms include headaches, jaw pain, back pain and shoulder issues. Because the heart is being compressed along with very little abdominal expansion on the inhales, high blood pressure will come. Stress, fatigue, low grade frequent illness, digestive issues and elimination issues are likely as well. Sudden inhalations into the chest before speaking is a type of stress breathing. It overstimulates the fight, flight, fright, freeze mechanisms of the Sympathetic Nervous system. (By the way, the Sympathetic Nervous system doesn’t have much sympathy; It is all about survival in the midst of danger.)

Causes of Sudden Inhalation Syndrome

There are many reasons someone might be a a quick breath speaker with Sudden Inhalation Syndrome. Most of the reasons have to do with upbringing and emotional trauma earlier in life. For most people there is a something about having to get in a word as soon as possible after someone else was speaking. Whatever the causes, becoming aware of the pattern and retraining it, will lead to much healing.

I doubt recreating the experience of shock over and over again all day long is what most people want to do.

Breathe...Then Speak

What to Do

Watch how you talk. Learn to notice when you breathe-speak this way. Give yourself reminders to check in frequently on yourself. Little stickers posted around are good for this. I like to give little green dots to my clients and students. This is a simple, cheap, and effective retraining technology.

“Ding”

Another method is to find a kind (a sympathetic) friend or coworker to help you notice. In Toastmasters, budding speakers are taught to eliminate verbal fillers like “ah,” “uhm”, and “you know” with a bell. Every time a speaker says a filler, the bellmaster rings the bell. In real time the speaker gets feedback. It takes only a few weeks to drop fillers to 5 to 10% of what they were. Have your watchful friend say “ding” or something else you choose when they catch you suddenly inhaling before speaking.

Also, when someone else is speaking, keep breathing. Don’t hold you breath.

Teach people who interrupt you to give you a chance to collect your thoughts and your oxygen when it is your turn to speak. As an adult, you don’t have to rush in to be heard, at least not in most of your life.

Awaken the Breath

When:         Saturday, June 5, 2010

Time:         10:00 to 2:00

Cost:          Only $40

Location:    Robert’s beautiful healing studio at

                  1095 East Axton Road, North of Bellingham.

Sign Up:     (360) 398-7466, or rbbatesdc@comcast.net

Breathe Bigger, Better and Easier

Breath Practices are some of the most powerful healing exercises you can do. You can insert conscious breathing into just about any part of your day and be better off for it. You can benefit from conscious breathing practices virtually your entire life. Any amount of good breathing you do adds to your health.

With These Breathing Practices You Will

•  Massage the internal organs for greater all around health
•  Keep the head clear and promote mental clarity
•  Help move the lymph throughout the body, increasing immunity function
•  Increase your energy
•  Calm your emotions
•  Increase your lifespan
•  Decrease tension
•  Sleep deeper
•  And much, much more

 What We Will Cover in This Workshop

• Qigong breathing practices, each with different health goals
• Simple tests to assess how well you are breathing
• Easy ways to integrate vastly more quality breathing into your   everyday life
• The Framingham Study: How your breath capacity can accurately predict your lifespan; and how to definitely increase your lifespan with breathing practices

 Breathing Exercises We Will Practice

Follow the Breath. Just watch. Notice how you are actually breathing. You can learn a lot about yourself this way.

Graduated Quiet Breathing Meditation. Build awareness and sink into a relaxed, healing mode of being as you activate your parasympathetic nervous system, coordinate your consciousness and balance your brain

Abdominal Breathing. The foundation of proper breathing. Breathe into and out of your abdomen, letting it expand with the inhale and flatten with exhaling.

Belly Book Breathing. Re-teach yourself how to use your diaphragm to pull air into your body by expanding your abdomen, instead of lifting your shoulders to bring air in.

Pelvic Breathing. Sometimes breathe low into your pelvis to build power and prevent many problems.

Low Back and Kidney Breathing. Drawing the air into the lower back to expand that area and fill the Kidney’s with Qi.

Filling the Vase. Fill your torso with breath like pouring water into a vase; the water fills up the lower parts first before working up. Empty your breath in reverse.

Gentle Breath Holding. Holding the breath for a short time—repeatedly—to help relax tensions in the breathing apparatus.

Plus

The Remembering Breath. Put up green dot stickers. Every time you see the dot, take a deep breath. This will give you many deep breaths each day.

10 Percent More. Add just a little to the size or seconds of each breath.

Breathing Awareness Set (to take home.) Begin to take more control of your daily breathing habits.

Qigong is slowly making inroads on the consciousness of America. An article on one of my students was recently in the local newspaper here in Bellingham, Washington, USA, North American Continent, Planet Earth.

Vitality

Lee Willis has been benefiting from Qigong for a decade or so. I find Lee to be one of the most present, friendly, happy, helpful and engaging people I know. The photo and article don’t quite show her effervescence. And she vehemently denies–as the article speaks of–that she is a sufferer or victim of any kind. In the decade plus I have known her, I agree with this self-assessment. She leads not just an active life, but a thorough life.

Lee Willis in 2007

Qigong Awareness is Growing

Anyway, read the article. The benefits and joys of Qigong (and Tai Chi) are trickling up, seeping into general consciousness. Maybe we will soon see a bigger awareness of these arts. Most individuals–and the country as a whole–would be better off practicing these internal movement arts.

Lee Willis teaches a short, gentle Tai Chi form that was designed for people with arthritis (whether or not they are victims), but the form is actually great training for anybody seeking better internal and external balance, smoother movement and less pain in their bodies.

Modify Your Movements When You Need to

Lee mentions the principle of modifying in the article, which is so key in making a practice work for whatever your current physical needs, abilities, and areas of concern. To restate the principle of modifying: Find a way to move that doesn’t hurt, whether this means using less effort, doing slightly different movements, or making the range of the motion smaller. By modifying as necessary, you engage your body in relaxation, which engenders healing responses at all levels of your being.

The Omnipresence of Limitations

Another point she touches upon is the fact that most of us have some “limitations” in our health to deal with. Actually, everyone does. Working within the boundaries of whatever your current abilities are–rather than fantasizing or blithely stepping into the dangerous water of overdoing–is so much of what Qigong is all about. When engaged in healing practices, activated movement within relaxation is necessary. Working within your limits is both wise and pleasurable. Pushing into pain is the path to problems.

Below is the second of five videos on Reducing Depression with the “Old Man” Qigong Set.

There are three movements in the Old Man exercise, beginning with the Lung Movement, as taught in this video.

Open the Lungs and Release Grief

In the Lung movement you will stretch the lungs open, massage them repeatedly with relaxed arm movements and release sadness into the earth. Each movement is accompanied by a directed healing sound, one that is specific for that area, bringing loosening vibration to the cells of the targeted area. The Lung sound is “SHHHH” or “SSSSS”.

Contraindications for Practicing Healing Sounds

According to Jerry Alan Johnson people should not practice Qigong sounds if:

• They have any bone fractures
• They are in the throes of an acute illness
• They are pregnant
• They are menstruating

I’m not sure about the last one. It seems to be more of something to be cautious about and aware of your own body’s needs. Refer back to the second principle of Qigong: Modify.

Note: The “Lung” movement is also a Kidney strengthener. Bending over while imagining your feet are in warm water is–in the Five Elemental Energy conception–nutritive for your Kidneys.

Without going into it in too much detail in this post: Full, strong Kidneys give you energy, healthy bones, mental clarity, and a sustaining connection to Nature.

Below is the first of five videos of a movement and healing sounds Set that is very effective in helping to alleviate negative emotions. The full name of this exercise Set is Old Man Searching for the Reflection of the Moon at the Bottom of the Tide Pool. That is a mouthful; I usually just called it “Old Man.”

Many People Have Benefited

I learned this set from my Medical Qigong teacher Dr. Jerry Alan Johnson. He credits Dr. Her Yue Wong with introducing it into the USA in the 1970′s. Dr. Johnson told me that he gave these exercises to more people than any other healing prescription. He often found that very sick people were holding so much armor that they were unable to relax enough to let healing enter and spread through their bodies. So he taught them the Old Man to release their holding, usually to impressive results.

Open Blocks and Release Stuck Emotions

Following a sophisticated understanding of the Five Elemental Energies system, the Old Man Set opens blockages in the body so stuck fluids, Qi, and blood can flow again, resulting in healing. By upgrading from stagnant swamp internally to flowing rivers and rivulets, health naturally re-establishes.

Since 2000, I have taught this exercise to many clients. Over and over again they have come back to me with glowing reports of how well it has helped them manage or delete unhealthy amounts of blocking, sludgifying emotions, feelings, and sensations.

Many Emotional States Helped

I’ve truncated the name of the encompassing term of the video to depression, but the Old Man exercise is great for helping with many emotional weights, including: sadness, grief, impatience, judgementalism, anxiety, worry, low energy, unprocessed emotions, indecisiveness, lack of clarity, anger, grumpiness, and rage.

Below is the Overview Video of the Old Man. In the next post I’ll add the video detailing the Lungs and sadness tomorrow; and videos 3, 4 and 5 over the next week or two.

Here is basic list of Qigong Workshops that I offer. Click the hyperlink to get the 20-page PDF document of more detailed descriptions of each workshop listed below.

• Five Flows Qigong Set: Two-hour workshop
• Qigong to Prevent Colds and Flu: Two or four-hour workshop
• The Delightful Dozen: Four-hour workshop
• Healthy Joint Qigong: Two, four, or six-hour workshop
• Empower Your Breathing: Four-hour workshop
• Six Healing Sounds with Color Radiation: Four-hour workshop
• Qigong Self-Massage: Two or four-hour workshop
• Swimming Dragon: Four-hour Workshop
• Taiji Qigong (Tai Chi Chi Kung): Four-hour workshop
• Chakra Tuning and Auric Butterfly: Four-hour workshop
• Five Animal Frolics Qigong: Two or four-hour workshop
• 36-Movement Snake Qigong Set: Taught in a pair of four-hour workshops
• Introduction to Medical Qigong Therapy: One-day or two-day workshop

In the 5:17 video below I teach three simple and relaxing exercises that can reduce high blood pressure.

Exercise 1: Belly Breathing Retraining

Breathing high and hard in the upper body can put extra pressure on the heart. Many, many people breathe this way and have for years, it having long ago become an ingrained, unconscious habit.  Breathing in this manner over and over and over, every day, for years, leads to habitual stress and underlying, unresolvable tension.

Belly breathing is the natural way to breathe; the first step for most people in retraining how they breathe.

Using a belt or flat strap, you can gently retrain your breath to become comfortable with going lower, slower and deeper. Simply wrap the belt around your abdomen–not tightly, just snug. Inhale, sending your breath deep to your belly. Such an inhale will create expansion against the strap. This teaches the muscles a better way of breathing. It shows them what to breathe against–the palpable pressure of the belt.

Exhale by relaxing the belly, allowing it to deflate.

Exercise 2: The Healing Sound “Haaaahh”

Look down and make the sighing sound “haaaahh.” Make this healing sound as the hands are expanding out and down from the heart, opening the hands forward, outward and toward the the ground.

The sound vibrations help release tension energetic stagnation in the center of the chest.

Opening and lowering the arms and hands dissipates tension out of the chest into the earth.

Looking down sends energy and consciousness downward; which is what you want for lowering your blood pressure.

Exercise 3: Rooting the Heart Energy in the Dantian

Begin with your palms facing down at the upper chest. With an exhale, press down from the upper chest to lower abdomen. Intend that excess energy in your heart to descend to your lower energy center, where it stays.

The premise of this exercise is that most people with high blood pressure have too much energy in the chest and too little in the lower energy center (the Dantian.) By redistributing the energy, a new and better balance in the body is established, leading to easier breathing, easier blood flow, and more calmness.

See a Larger Version of the Video on Youtube.

Breathe with Your Diaphragm

In the 3:42 video below on belly breathing, I talk about the importance of breathing with the diaphragm muscle inside of the body.

Instead of using the muscles of the ribs, chest, shoulders or neck to bring air into your body–an inefficient, tension-producing approach–use the muscle designed to get you lots of air: the diaphragm.

The Diaphragm is Dome-Like

The diaphragm is a thick, circular muscle that adheres to the inside of your ribcage. It is below the heart and lungs; and above the liver and organs of the abdomen. When you inhale, it expands downward, like a dome. This pulls air into your body.

The stronger and more trained it is, the better you breathe: You get more of the dome-like, downward expansion. The farther it expands downward, the more air you pull into your lungs and body.

Here is a website with some drawings and a moving animation of a diaphragm.

Relax and Expand

When you inhale with the diaphragm while relaxing everything else, two obvious results happen with your body:

1. Your belly expands.
2. Your shoulders don’t rise; and the muscles of the chest and neck stay still.

Breathing this way will give you more energy, relaxation, and happiness.

Breathing Prompts

On this video I also talk about a simple technique that easily brings many more deep breaths into your every day. The dot-reminder system gives you a free deep-breathing practice everyday.

To see a larger version of this video, go to YouTube.

On this video I include some pointers on breathing, and an overview of what a Dantian (“DAHN tee enn”) is.