Breathing Differences

Breathing, Breathing Work, Breathwork, Breathing Exercises
What’s the difference?

Pulmonary rehabilitation is what you get from the hospital.   They are masters at keeping people alive in the surgical arena. But due to their audience being largely comprised of sick people, they rarely get opportunity to work with optimal breathing techniques, exercises and nutrition.  So their clinical research is centered around illness instead of wellness.

     Breathing is hopefully just “natural” effortless breathing. Breathing work is more about  the mechanics of  the way you breathe. Breathing exercises can be both breathing work and or breathwork.  They both include specific things one does to effect specific changes.  Breathwork is more about  the Energetics as related to altered states of  consciousness, spirituality and rapid personal transformation. Each contains aspects of the other. You might say that breathing work represents the body, and breathwork the body/mind/spirit, but we know that the body and mind and spirit are not separate; to work with one is to work with the other.  It is a matter of priorities; energy creation and distribution.  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 singing, Rap, or Heavy metal shouting/screaming).  Some schools of  the breath include all these levels and often advocate their school as the superior school, i.e. Secret or Magic or the "this" breath or the "that" breath.

     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). 

The Major categories of Breathing from a volitional perspective

PASSIVE
     Passive would be walking through the forest and not doing anything 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. Totally relaxed body positions that speak to an unhindered inhale and unobstructed energy pathways. Passive exercise positions such as the Exercise 11 series in The Secrets of Optimal Natural Breathing Manual and proper chairs that facilitate a bigger, easier 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 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 The Secrets Manual under "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 way” 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.. Also techniques that press on the ribs that precipitate an exaggerated breathing reflex. Bodywork, massage, chiropractic, Acupressure Kinesthetic sensing;  how the breath feels and noticing its changes and subtleties, expansions and contractions that result from slight changes in movement or posture.  Middendorf, Speads,  Rosenwork, Dennis Lewis's Authentic Breathing and first and foremost The Breathing Development Fundamentals series and the Secrets of Optimal Natural Breathing™ manual 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. Removing the blocks in the throat caused by breath holding. 
     Most yoga including pranayama, chi kung (Qi Gong), asthma and emphysema techniques. Bioenergetics, Yoga, 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.  The breathing tests help you gauge your progress or digress. Recommended program

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. 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 the experience of  “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 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 but are a rarity. 

Western-Eastern Breathing Overview

My advice is to begin by developing your breathing. Begin here