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Articles: Breathing Differences
Breathing, Breathing Work, Breathwork, Breathing Exercises
What’s the difference?

You can learn to positively effect every aspect of your life and transform your way of  being into an increasingly joyful and nurturing existence in space and time. The foundation for this is in your habits, thoughts, attitudes, intentions, commitments, how you exercise, what you eat, and the way you breathe.

It is helpful to think of basically three schools of breathing: 
1. breath work (cathartic), 2. breathing/pulmonary/rehabilitation -hospitals and satellite modalities..3. breathing work (optimal breathing development) 

Breathing is hopefully “natural” well developed balanced  breathing. But few know what "natural " breathing looks, feels, sounds and acts like.  Because breathing drives the autonomic nervous system like the lead horse in a team of horses, balanced breathing is indispensable to health, wholeness and mind body spirit integrity. Pulmonary rehabilitation is what you get from the hospital and satellite services including respiration & physical therapy.   They are masters at keeping people alive in the surgical arena. But due to their audience being largely comprised of emergencies and or sick people, they rarely get opportunity to work with optimal breathing techniques.  Most of their clinical research is centered primarily around illness instead of wellness.

Breathwork is more about  strong energetics, altered states of  consciousness, spirituality and rapid personal transformation with little or no regard to optimal function.  Breathwork seeks to explore the awesome expansiveness of the heaven on earth, plus the occasionally confusing,  and sometimes terrifying  inner spaces of our deepest, darkest consciousness.

Resolution of emotional trauma occurs with both modality. Because it seeks to restore normal equilibrium,  I believe, because of its balancing natures,  trauma is more dependably and permanently resolved with breathing work.  Breathing work seeks to restore peace and personal power; being the way you want to be. Breathwork seeks to explore one's psychic interior.  Freedom of spontaneous expression is encouraged in both breathwork and breathing work.  In its desire to restore balance, Optimal Breathing Work can enhance breathwork.  

Breathwork can hinder breathing work by challenging one's homeostasis. And sometimes this is good as in the case of opening up to new ways of thinking and feeling, more enlightened ways of seeing our inner and outer world.   Breathing work makes change more safe and gives the person a grounded home base to return to after the heavenward journey of spontaneous altered states of consciousness of breathwork.  They are quite compatible but rarely  interchangeable. Breathworkers should know all about breathing work.  Breathing workers should respect the power, dangers and boundaries of breath work.  

Because of their power and intensity and due to the huge amount of non professionals trained in breath work techniques I caution everyone to make sure they choose an accountable  certified or licensed health professional to facilitate breath work  Both breathing work and breath work are aided by the skills and experience of a person who understands deeper aspects of transference, trauma resolution, personal boundaries and our societies legal considerations for touching another human being.  

Optimal Breathing Work includes diet, cleansing, ergonomics, environment clothing, exercise, breathing exercises, rapid breathing development techniques and is meant to be dependable, grounding, peace producing, energy increasing, sleep deepening, nervous system balancing, oxygen increasing - even during sleep, CO2 balancing; it is reliable, replicated, and measurable.  Pulmonary rehab is more about restoring basic functionality up to accepted levels of "norm," for the medical industry. .Optimal Breathing Work integrates voice production as  the voice is an integral part of the upper respiratory system and necessary part of the whole.  Breath work is for opening the doors of inner exploration often in a sometimes, fast, furious and ecstatic fashion.  Each modality contains aspects of the other. Key criteria for implementation are: what are the goals and needs of the breathing person?  

I classify the breath in five major categories. There may be many more levels or sub-levels but this is as far as I have gotten at present..

Passive; Semi active; Active; Extra-active; and Super-active. There is something of an energetic hierarchy to this. From receiving passively (Reiki) to actively doing it by oneself (Opera, Gospel singing, Rap, or Heavy metal shouting/screaming).  

The Major categories of Breathing from a volitional perspective

PASSIVE
Sleeping is passive. Passive would also be walking through the level forest and not doing anything consciously with the breath whatsoever. The trees breathe. The plants breathe.  Everything in life has a pulsation, an expansion and contraction. Even the entire earth expands and contracts approximately  two feet each day.  Walking down the beach with the ebb and flow of the surf and all those wonderful negative ions. Specific postures and relaxed body positions  speak to an unhindered inhale and unobstructed energy pathways. Special positions for quick energy recovery as well as sleeping such shown with Better Breathing Exercises 1 & 2  a well as in the Video 176  & Secrets manual facilitate a bigger, easier passive breath.

SEMI-PASSIVE
Imagine the breath as it ebbs and flows like the ocean surf.  Watch the body breathe as in a breathing meditation. You do influence the breath just by watching it as in Vipasana™, or even keeping your eyes open.   .  That’s why it is more accurate to measure someone’s breathing than to have them do it themselves – this is  a good way of  exercising for focusing and concentration.  My favorite breath observing exercise/meditation is click here for The Watching Breath™.  A four thousand year old Himalayan practice.

SEMI-ACTIVE
Here we consciously trick the body to create a  natural breathing reflex that allows the rib cage to open more readily than it would by trying to effort the response. This technique is extremely calming and can rehabilitate a non existing pause (inhale, exhale and pause is the natural breath cycle). This has tremendous implications in health and longevity matters as it actually increases breathing volume and ease and the “breathers” can be easily trained to do it; providing they are flexible enough in the rib cage.  It is the type of exercise that needs to be introduced into the hospital pre surgical and recovery wards.  See Video 176 "Reflexive breathing".

Hatha yoga may be included here depending on the stretch. Actually Yoga is probably represented in all the levels though I am not familiar with any in the semi active category. Weight trainers, some “hard style” martial artists and barrel chested public speakers and emphysema victims  may have difficulty with breathing reflexes but they are well worth the extra time needed to develop them and let them guide the workouts and Katas. Techniques & Exercises on the 176 video  often speak to this level.

ACTIVE
Conscious control of  the breath to create and direct mostly gentle and manageable energy for self  healing or specific methods of communication as with regular speaking. Extending the exhale, extending the inhale, holding the breath, and breathing coordination. Breathing pattern disorder elimination. Removing the blocks in the throat caused by breath holding. 

Most yoga including some aspects of pranayama, chi kung (Qi Gong), some asthma and emphysema techniques. Bioenergetics, Tai Chi and Chi Kung.
NOTE: When you try to take a deep breath as with many breathing “exercises” you actually tighten the rib cage a little or a lot and restrict the easy in-breath.  This can create breathing problems over weeks and months of repetition.  Our assessments in the Video 176 help you gauge your progress or digress.

EXTRA ACTIVE
Some Chi Kung and pranayama techniques such as chanting and breath of  fire for high energy creation, experience,  containment and guided or controlled expression. Singing, both classical and popular as with the Bel Canto school; voice coaching and public speaking. A few special techniques for removing leg, pelvic, belly, solar plexus, chest, sides, back,  throat, and  jaw blocks or energy excesses to natural full self expression.

SUPER-ACTIVE
This involves what I call “cathartic breathwork”. High intensity breathing exercises to create radically altered states of consciousness for experiencing  “breakthroughs” of emotional stuckness and mind bending states of high intensity energy ranging from enlightenment, ecstasy and incredibly  rapid growth transitions to stark mind splitting terror.  Included here are Reichian Therapy, Rebirthing, Radiance Breathwork, Holotropic Breathwork, Radix, Shen,  Vivation, and Optimal Breathing’s “Advanced Working Breath”. 

Due to the opening up of deep emotional issues that may need professional counseling and processing, this "breath work" work necessitates a skilled facilitator and preferably one with many, many  years of training and or a professional mental health  background including working with the breath. Gifted non-academically trained facilitators exist such as with Dan Brule, but they are a rarity.

All systems I’ve come in contact with need to add key breathing reflex insights that are the basis for effortless lung volume increase and diaphragmatic rise (excursion). 
I encourage you to study the breath and discover for yourself the millions of reasons the ancient teachings tell us that "breath is life". Recommended program

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