“As we grow, we tend to take more shallow, rapid breaths — chest breathing that becomes more pronounced when we’re stressed.
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Learning to engage in the more calming abdominal, or diaphragmatic, breathing can lower your heart rate, reduce blood pressure, and induce relaxation. The technique is often employed in yoga classes.”
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Most people use only the upper, smallest part of their lungs for breathing. Because they are underutilizing their lungs, they essentially live in a continuous hyperventilated state that creates hypoxia or a lack of oxygen to blood and tissue. Diseases related to hypoxia include heart attacks, strokes, cancer, pulmonary hypertension, kidney disease, complications from diabetes such as ulcers and blindness, and toxemia (blood disease).
Research shows that less oxygen in red blood cells quickly depletes a chemical called s-nitrosothiol (SNO). Red blood cells normally release SNO to relax blood vessels in the lung which in turn helps have healthy blood flow (see http://www.news-medical.net/news/2005/10/03/13511.aspx).
Two people I know had very shallow, rapid breathing. Both were high-stress individuals. One was an attorney who died around 40 from a heart attack in the middle of the night leaving behind a wife and newborn. One was a family member who developed ovarian cancer and after surviving treatments for 8 years, ultimately passed on from complications of pneumonia that coincided with a recurrence of the cancer.
Martial arts training and practicing abdominal breathing will permanently transform one’s breathing. In my experience, it took about a year of consistent practice of five minutes per martial arts lesson, five days a week.
If that seems like a lot of work, ask yourself how much time and money would you pay to address, and recover from, a heart attack.
Kind regards,
Bob Lee
Head Instructor
3rd Degree Black Belt
http://www.bodymindsystems.com/asthma-deep-breathing-abdominal-breathing.html
Questions about how martial arts training can benefit you? Email bob.lee@bodymindsystems.com
