CHANQUANSHU

One of the concerns of an ‘Internal’ practitioner is Qi, and Qi is sometimes translated as breath and Qigong as breathing exercise. Now the dictionary defines breathing as ‘the act of external respiration’. So, what is respiration?

Respiration is the overall physical and chemical process by which organisms obtain energy from food. Generally, respiration is divided into two separate phases: Internal and External respiration.

Internal respiration occurs inside every living cell. It consists of a series of chemical reactions in which the energy in food molecules is released a step at a time. During this process, the food molecules are usually combined with oxygen and carbon dioxide is usually given off as a waste product.

External respiration consists of all the activities involved in supplying each cell with oxygen and getting rid of the waste carbon dioxide.

So we call the internal action of the transfer of gases within the body respiration; but the mechanical action that triggers this respiration is generally called breathing.

Now we know what we are talking about, how do achieve this?

The point of breathing is to pull air into the lungs, and then to expel it back out, but we do not consciously pull in air. We expand the chest cavity, creating a suction and pull air through the upper airways and into the lungs.

At rest, the chest cavity can be expanded in several ways. The rib cage can be pulled outward (thoracic breathing). The shoulders can be pushed upward (clavicle breathing). The muscular floor of the chest cavity can be pulled downward (diaphragmatic breathing). Everyone uses different combinations of these breathing techniques.

Research has shown that only one of them is truly efficient - that of diaphragmatic breathing. Any of the others uses significantly more energy to take in oxygen and expel carbon dioxide.

The diaphragm is a dome shaped sheet of muscle, that separates the chest cavity from the abdominal cavity. It runs horizontally across the torso, connected to the lower ribs. During inhalation, the dome of the diaphragm moves down creating a partial vacuum, thus expanding the lungs. At the same time, the abdominal musculature relaxes and protrudes outward.

This method of breathing is the healthiest for several reasons. Because of gravity, the distribution of the blood within the lungs favours the lower areas. With diaphragmatic breathing, more air is drawn into these areas, thus efficiently mixing blood with oxygen. Diaphragmatic breathing is also the easiest and involves the least expenditure of energy.

In thoracic breathing, the air is drawn to the upper area of the lungs, while much of the blood remains in the lower portions and is not mixed with the air as well as it is in diaphragmatic breathing. Breathers who are primarily thoracic take more frequent breaths than diaphragmatic breathers.

Despite the fact that diaphragmatic breathing is obviously the most efficient method, most people fail to use it.

We alternate between the left and right nostrils during normal breathing. A number of studies have confirmed this ‘nasal cycle’ in which we shift sides about every two and a half to four hours. The older the breather, the longer the duration of the cycle.

Eastern mystics have long asserted that proper breathing is the key to mental and physical well-being and for thousands of years have emphasised the alternate nostril method. They believe that the right nostril should be used during active, aggressive enterprises and the left side for quieter, more passive endeavours. This bears a striking resemblance to current theories about the functions of the right and left brain. Studies found that performance of tasks involving right brain activities comes in cycles. This fits in with thought that our whole system functions in alternating active and passive cycles. In other words, the way we breath through the nose could be directly linked to the way our brain functions. If we can change our breathing pattern, can we also change the way in which our brain functions and in turn change our entire physiological balance?

A number of factors affect the nasal cycle. The first is posture. When you lie on your side, your lower nostril congests, while the upper one opens. A second factor is pressure. Put pressure on your armpit on one side and the nostril on the other side will open. The third and perhaps the most important factor is emotion. Many people tend to hold their breath when they concentrate, their breathing is shallow and rapid when they are upset and they breathe deeply and evenly when at rest.

But what exactly is in the air you inhale?

Consider an average breath. Surprisingly, this air is loaded with some 25 million particles, each smaller that the diameter of a single human hair. Most of the material, perhaps 99 percent, will be particles of salt, clay and ash from the smoke of forest, industrial or domestic fires and some of the thousands of terpenes or unsaturated hydrocarbons that are produced every day by natural vegetation.

A far smaller fraction of the flotsam consists of larger, angular mineral fragments or of particles of paint and asphalt and rubber produced by friction on our roads.

And growing in, or growing on, or simply being carried along, is a zoological garden of local and exotic fauna and flora.

In that same lungful, there are likely to be:- a few stray viruses; four or five common bacteria; fifty or sixty fungi, including several rusts and moulds; one or two minute algae drifting in from the coast; anything from 2 to 20 pollen grains, depending on the season; and possibly a fern or moss spore, or an encysted protozoan.

Because of air’s mixing over time, the air you inhale in any one breath includes, on average, one molecule that Alexander the Great breathed in any one inhalation during his lifetime. The same holds true for breath from any individual, famous or obscure, who lived more than a few centuries ago.

Makes you feel good - doesn’t it?

Breathing influences our lives on many levels. When we look at breath and breathing from a wider perspective, some surprising things emerge.

The autonomic nervous system is divided into two branches: parasympathetic and sympathetic. The former is involved with controlling resting activities by slowing the heart rate and metabolism, while the latter serves to increase the speed of them. During inhalation sympathetic tone increases, while exhalation increases parasympathetic tone. By consciously controlling breathing one can slow down or speed up activity in the limbic system that causes changes in moods and bodily functions.

Take for instance, some of our reactions to events:

• we gasp in pain
• we sigh in relief
• we are breathless with excitement
• we hold our breath in anticipation

Many people tend to hold their breath when they concentrate, their breathing is shallow and rapid when they are upset and they breathe deeply and evenly when at rest.

Language
From the Latin ‘In’ (into) and ‘Spirare’ (to breathe) we get the word Inspire, and a host of extras. To Conspire is to breathe together; to Respire means to breathe again; to Perspire is to breathe through; to Aspire means to breathe towards and to Expire means to breathe out, and to breathe across is, literally, to Transpire.

Also associated with ‘Spirare’ is the Latin word ‘Spiritus’, breath of life, which has provided the English terms ‘Spirit’ and ‘Sprite’. Another word which connected the ideas of breathing and conscious life is the Latin ‘Anima’ from which we have words such as ‘Animal’, ‘Animation’ and ‘Animus’.

Sometimes the belief was that a god’s breath rather than the god himself would enter into the chosen one. Thus the Greek word ‘Psyche’, which has provided numerous modern terms, such as ‘Psychologist’ and ‘Psychiatrist’, originally meant breath (of life).

Birth, although not the beginning of life, is a clear transition, and it is easy to understand why the idea of life and breath and spirit and creation should have become so intertwined.

In many languages they go by the same name, ‘Ruh’ in Hebrew and Arabic means both breath and spirit. The Dakota and Sioux Indians called it ‘Niya’, the Aztec ‘Ehecatl’.

Myth and Legend.
In Egyptian mythology Geb was the third divine Pharaoh. One text tells us how Geb caused the Golden Box, in which Ra’s Divine Asp was kept, to be opened in his presence. Ra had deposited the box, together with his cane and lock of his hair, in a fortress on the eastern frontier of his empire as a potent and dangerous talisman. When opened, the breath of the Divine Asp within killed all of Geb’s companions then and there, and gravely burned Geb himself ¾ proof of the long lineage of halitosis.

Early Egyptians also considered the ears part of the pulmonary system. One ancient manuscript states that “The breath of life enters by the right ear and the breath of death enters the left ear.”

A Phoenician story has in the beginning Time - the Desire and Darkness, ‘from the union of these two first principles were born Aer (air) and Aura (breath). Aer represented pure intelligence and Aura the first living creature proceeding therefrom by movement.

The Australian aborigines have a legend of a god, Pundjel, who made two male figures from clay and bark, which he then brought to life by the use of magic passes with his hands followed by blowing air into their mouths, nostrils and navels whereupon they came to life.

In Fiji people suffering from bronchitis or asthma were thought to be in danger of losing their souls. Also, when the canoe of chief was launched, a number of men were sacrificed so that their souls (breath) might supply a wind for the craft. (Stay away from taiji teachers with new boats).

Then there was Adam, the first man who, according to the book of Genesis, was fashioned from earth by the hand of god, who then breathed life into him through his nose.

The American Indians, too were aware of a kind of Magic Breath called Orenda which was a power granted by the creator and available to all manitous, who were the secret life of every created thing.

An old belief was that the breath of the dying would re-enter the living. A dead Algonquin child was interred in a busy place so that their breath might re-enter a future mother.

Not to be left out, Aristotle developed a theory of Pneuma (air/breath) as a constituent of the bodies of men and animals in which the sensitive soul resides and which is ‘analogous to that element of which the stars are made.’

Ancient Greek theories of breathing stem from the work of Aristotle, who wrote, "The soul is air; air moves and is cognisant. Air that we breathe gives us the soul, life and consciousness." The Pneumatists, inspired by Aristotle’s notion, concluded that air was pneuma - or spirit, the vital force - and was the source of all health and disease.

The theory was taken up by the Neo-Platonist philosophers. Porphry, for instance, in the 3rd century AD, said that as the soul descends from Heaven to earth, where it will acquire a physical body, its pneuma gradually thickens and darkens as it absorbs moisture from the air until it can be seen visibly.

In China the Daoist texts describes how the one ‘Primordial Qi’ split into the light ethereal Yang Breath, which formed Heaven; and the heavier, cruder Yin Breath, which formed the earth.

Breath or air as the creative spirit is also linked with the mind, the creator of ideas. In Hinduism, mind and breath (Prana), are considered to be identical.

Pantanjali, an Indian sage who first codified the rules of Yoga in the 2nd century AD, wrote that control of thoughts and emotions is linked to breath control - mastering various methods of regulating prana, the life force.

Finally, the Chinese character for Qi has its roots in the steam or vapour coming from cooking rice. Compare this with Breath which comes ultimately from the Indo-European base Bhre ‘burn, heat’, and in its original Indo-European form Bhretos appears to have meant something like the ‘steam, vapour, etc given off be something burning or cooking’. Now is that a coincidence, or what?