Breathing affects and reflects much of what we think and do. There is a direct relationship between breathing and aliveness. Hold your breath and try to feel angry or happy. You can’t. Too little breath is correlated with passivity, sadness and depression. The breath can be purposefully utilized to alter mental and emotional states. postures, tensions, environment all effect the breath.

There is a school of the breath that favors simply observing the breath or passive inquiry and not consciously manipulating the breath. Another school advocates both conscious and spontaneous training for specific results. The most significant aspect to me is the possibility of volition in breathing, or putting the individual in more control of their energy and, eventually, their so called autonomic (particularly stress) responses. Some examples are breath/voice control and strengthening for singing, public speaking, asthma, sleep apnea, reduction of stuttering and/or general stress.

I have read and heard several experts state that stress is the cause of approximately 80% of illness in our society. It even impacts grade school classrooms13.. Much of present day insight on stress and distress that I’m familiar with stems, I believe, from Hans Selye. Dr. Phil Neurnberger (1) states that Selye’s stress theory was "based on his laboratory research on sympathetic arousal (page 4 figure 3 of this paper), ignoring the less dramatic but equally powerful role of parasympathetic inhibition (page 4 figure 2). His theory cannot account for stress created by depression, passivity, or withdrawal (page 5 figure 4). Nor does it account for dietary or environmental stress". Neurenberger adds that "The fatigue you feel as you are depressed is not because of burnout. This low energy state is caused by a lack of activity, not by too much". Medical research shows that when you inhibit your internal systems, over a period of time, they begin to lose their capacity to function properly. If you don’t use it you lose it.

Dr. Andrew Weil (2) states that "Improper breathing is a common cause of ill health". Drs. Deepak Chopra (3), Erik Peper (4), Gabriel Cousens (5), Saul Hendler (6), Robert Fried (7) have all emphasized the essential relationship between breathing and health. Cases in point are rapidly growing in number.

According to Dr. L. C. Lum (8) futile breathing has profound effect on bodily functions and frequently results in chronic ill health". This includes chronic or intermittent fatigue; chest pains and palpitations suggestive of heart disease; dizziness; faintness; blackouts; visual disturbances; tingling and numbness in arms, legs, hands etc.; muscular cramps in neck, shoulders, back; stomach upsets, heartburn, gas; anxiety and panic attacks; feelings of unreality; depersonalization; hallucinations; sleep disturbances; nightmares; night sweats; even some symptoms associated with irritable bowel syndrome, as well as angina and progressive damage to the heart."

Less obvious disorders related to breathing, including menopausal hot flashes and agoraphobia are highlighted in "Psychology and Physiology of Breathing" and "The Breath Connection"; Dr. Saul Hendler’s, "The Oxygen Breakthrough", and "Psychological and Physiological Approaches to Breathing Disorders" (8). In the Breathing Assessment enclosed with this paper I have included a few additional maladies possibly related to breathing.

Faulkner discovered in 1941 that with positive suggestion the diaphragm moved up and down by more than three inches; it moved less than an inch with negative thoughts. It should be noted here that we have at least three major diaphragms that need to expand upward and downward; thoracic, pharyngeal, and perineal (half moons in figure 1 page 4). Postures, trauma and chronic tension adversely affect their function. "Emotional Anatomy" by Stanley Keleman provides additional insight about these concepts.

Dr. Gay Hendricks (9) writes that "in 1951, in one of the first major studies of breathing, a doctor named Clausen noted that the neurotic individuals he was studying tended to have a sharp transition between their inhalation and exhalation. Something about the traumas of life seems to interfere with our ability to make a smooth transition from the sympathetic to parasympathetic breath". Neurenberg refers to sympathetic as essentially "arousal" and parasympathetic as essentially "inhibition".

Magda Proskauer in1968 (8) reminds us that "our breathing patterns reflect our inner situation". "Complete chest breathing occurs only at times of maximum effort....On the other hand, those that cannot open the chest are often anxious, inhibited, self-conscious, and tend toward feelings of inferiority" (see figures 2,3,4).

Gay Hendricks (9) shares a conversation he had with Dr. Richard Alpert of Harvard in which Dr. Alpert told him about his psychotherapy treatment of anxiety. After 10 years he understood it, but he still had it. Dr. Alpert went to India and after practicing a breathing exercise for six months his anxiety was greatly reduced.

Included in studies of physiological and psychological measures of experimentally induced emotional arousal, McCaul et al (8) found in 1979 that voluntary retardation of breathing reduced physiological arousal (decreased electrodermal response and increased finger-pulse volume). Thayer et al (8) in 1984 measured Pco2, finger temperature, and anxiety prior to a brief period of voluntary hyperventilation. Post-test measurements revealed a significant drop in Pco2, a significant drop in finger temperature, and a significant increase in anxiety -- findings that demonstrate clearly the emotional arousal elicited by hyperventilation. Biofeedback can routinely confirm this phenomenon.

Dr. Alan Hymes, a thoracic surgeon and Psychologist Dr. Phil Neurnberger (10), found in 1980 that of 152 heart attack victims ALL were high chest (figure 3) breathers.

Lie detectors exploit the remarkable consistency between thoughts and breathing patterns. Breathing can also influence thoughts. Common sense tells us that if you hyperventilate you will often think less positive thoughts. "The Breath Connection" (7) sites many cases of this phenomenon. Panic attacks are controllable through the way we breathe. The "expectancy effect" in the production of panic attacks described by Ley (8) can be explained by hyperventilation theory (the "expectancy effect" correlates the expectation of a panic with its subsequent occurrence).

From Tibet comes an exercise which reveals that body posturing clearly influences how you breathe. Performing this exercise has been shown to neutralize severe panic responses, partly because it forces the breath downward and it disengages and relaxes the perineal diaphragm.

Barios, et. al. (1981) (8) sites that "test anxiety is the most pervasive complaint among school age children."

I have personally trained seven year olds to breathe and reduced their anxiety while increasing their cooperation and quality of their experience in the classroom. At recent workshops I facilitated at a local county jail, maximum security prisoners began to learn to use their breath to control their anger and drug and alcohol cravings. I showed them how to access what, I suspect, is their deep parasympathetic while increasing their energy and simultaneously balancing the two.

In a 1984 study of 1,300 college students tested for test anxiety, Cappo and Holmes (8), discovered that test anxiety was controlled by means of voluntary prolongation of the expiratory phase of the respiratory cycle relative to the inspiratory phase (brief inhalation and prolonged exhalation). This type of controlled breathing caused a reduction in physiological and psychological arousal induced by the threat of electric shock. Breathing exercises reduced 100% of the test anxiety in 75% of the studied population. The autonomic nervous system can be trained to act like a team of horses. The breath is the only portion that can be consciously controlled. Place it as the lead horse and the ANS can, in varying degrees, eventually follow.

There is a breathing exercise contained in almost every self help book. But many of the exercises focus on the belly breath which is extremely unreliable and inefficient compared to a complete breath consisting of the belly and rib breath. Most people are not inspired enough to continue the confusing variety of so called breathing experts, for long enough to benefit from them. Subventilators are often difficult to motivate, especially when they have to pay the bills for retraining.

Dr. Erik Peper of San Francisco State College has discovered that the most effective way for people to learn to breathe better is through modeling of the action by a skilled therapist or coach. (11). In the foreword (8), Chandra Patel, M.D. of the University College London states that "the two components subjects feel they have benefited from most, and that they are willing to continue using, are awareness of stress and breathing exercises. Human nature makes it unlikely that most people, except those strongly motivated, will comply with a time consuming practice in the long term".

A large aspect of feeling joy, inner strength and management of stress is about options. When the breath is inhibited or locked up our options become limited. We cannot access them if our breathing is "stuck". Anyone stuck up in a tree or against a cliff during a climb will attest to this. I submit that the breath has been greatly overlooked in its power to increase life force and aliveness, foster a positive attitude (increased endorphin production), maintain emotional balance and minimize or eliminate stress. From the very outset of a stressful situation or when we run out of all other choices, the breath can be consciously engaged. That is where the stress can and will end and pleasure and joy can appear. This can even include the peaceful transition during the experience of bodily death called co-mediation or "cross breathing". And by putting more breath into life we may well make our orgasms more intense, our food more flavorful, and our eyesight improve (If your eyesight weakens late in the day, it may well be a stress induced loss).

Reference material

1. The Quest for Personal Power" Dr. Phil Neurnberger

2. Health and Healing, Dr. Andrew Weil

3. Quantum Healing, Deepak Chopra

4. Eric Peper as quoted in "The Breathing Book", Donna Farhi

5. Dr. Gabriel Cousens, audiotape.

6. The Oxygen Breakthrough, Dr. Saul Hendler

7. The Breath Connection, 7B.The Psychology and Physiology of Breathing. Dr Robert Fried

8. Behavioral and Psychological Approaches to Breathing Disorders, Timmons and Ley

9. Conscious Breathing, Gay Hendricks

10.A study called "Breathing Patterns and Heart Attack victims" published in the Research Bulletin of the Himalayan International Institute 2 (2) (1980)10-12

11. ("Comparison of Diaphragmatic Training Methods". Proceedings of the Twenty-first Annual Meeting of the Association of Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback" Wheat Ridge, Co.AAPB, 1009157-59).

12. Critical and hidden factors in optimal breathing, Michael Grant White,CMT, DD, NE.

13. A report on teaching 16 first grade children a simple breathing exercise.

Ms Grace Caliendo, Executive Director

John Muir/Mt Diablo community Health Benefit Corporation

The purpose of this program is to train asthmatics, emphysema victims, psychotherapists, therapy clients, grade school children and prison inmate services personal in Optimal Integrated Breathing for an increased quality of life. Also to train those interested therapists and teachers to train others.

Results are completely verifiable by standard biofeedback monitoring devices (in the area of breathing, it is more cost effective to use biofeedback as a measuring device than a training device) and trainee testimonial.

We can comply with necessary non profit status requirement and I’m sending this to you to see if you think it has enough merit for us to spend considerable time in the finalization of a firm and clear proposal.

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