Detecting Breathing Issues that Support Potential for Illness, Longevity and Peak Performance
The 1981 Framingham 30 year 5,200 person clinical study proved that quality of life, and longevity are dependant upon the quality of one's breathing. Carl Stough proved that diaphragm development could be replicated and peak performance was ALSO dependant upon extra special breathing. When he worked with 14 Olympic Athletes in Mexico City in the 1968 Olympics, eleven of them took Gold medals and the United States team was the only team at the Olympics not to use bottled oxygen. He is gone now but his legacy lives on.
Sub-optimal breathing compromises every healthy bodily function until often the breath itself is weakened to the point that traditional allopathic medicine believes is beyond repair. But it IS greatly reparable. For more about this.
Though many receive welcome benefits from certain breathing exercises, and certainly they can be an excellent beginning, don't expect just reading about and practicing breathing exercises to be the all to be all when it comes to optimal breathing. To develop optimal breathing abilities it is best to work directly with someone who is intimately familiar with the inner sensing of the breath and breathing: a breathing coach for instance.
Optimal breathing is beyond exercises and involves many factors, but first and foremost is simple, easy optimal, mechanical function. Think of a society that had never experienced stress and you get a better picture about how breathing can and I believe should be. Is this an unreachable Utopia? Perhaps not unless we think it so.
Due to the awesome stress levels of today's living, the longer it takes for progress, the more opportunities
there are for things getting in the way of that progress. Stough's breathing coordination, Carola Spead's
breathing work, Ilsa Middendorf's Perceptable Breath, insights from
Rebirthing, Radiance Breathwork, Reichian Therapy, classical/operatic voice production, nutrition, meditation,
Rolfing, myofacial release, pranayama, Chi Kung, even insights about why
people stutter or have spasmodic
dysphonia, ALL need be combined into a synergy that invites
accelerated progress towards cohesiveness and internal
integrity; the primary elements of wholeness. Quantum leaps can and
should occur. That is why I created Optimal Breathing.
For many, breathing exercises can be very helpful.
But how do you tell if they are helping you long term or giving you short
term benefits with long term trouble? This is where our
video and manual are a great help.
Breathing should, at will, have a deep feeling of physical well being and calm without having to force or actively draw in air. It should be easy and smooth, free and effortlessly deep.
When it changes, because it is the lead horse in the team of horses called your autonomic nervous system, your perspective on conflict and stress will change as you feel more deep, grounded peace within. Increased energy plus an increased strength to confront adversity will naturally follow. Your creativity often blossoms with possibilities. You will have additional energy to help bring those possibilities to reality. You will become better equipped to handle whatever difficulties may surface and achieve whatever joys, goals, purposes and prosperity you desire.
If this all sounds too far fetched you must remember that real personal growth is going beyond where we were before, to completely new ways of thinking, feeling and being.
Many breathing exercises actually take you away from internalizing maximum breathing ease, volume and coordination; Their negative influence can be extremely subtle and almost undetectable, even when the the damage is being done. They can even give you more energy all the while they are restricting future breathing ease and volume. Key breathing blocks need to be assessed, then addressed. An expanded, strengthened and coordinated breathing freedom and ease then becomes accessible and maintainable on a moment to moment basis.
During Optimal Breathing workshops, teacher trainings and private sessions participants learn assessment-specific exercises for breathing maintenance, ease, depth, expansion and strengthening. We also train in relevant exercises to help maintain and expand this new way of being. Plus how to accelerate progress with those having difficulty or lagging.
To detect key hidden signs of potential illness or wellness, if you haven't already, go now to the tests page and spend 10 minutes taking these simple, safe ways of measuring what I believe to be a very easy and dependable way of assessing how good your breathing really is.
To me, breath REALLY IS life; the only questions are
1. Why?
2. How?
Blessings,
mike
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