Breathing articles

[justwannabe]

I work at a school and some people are interested in reading articles about breathing, but a lot of people here are christians and it may cause a stif if the article mentions the word yoga more then once. I tried looking online for articles about breathing without too much mention of yoga but just the breath from a scientific point of view. Kind of looking for an article that talks about the importance of a full exhale and full body breathing. does anyone know of a good link to an article similar to these parameters?
thanks
seeker

[InnerAthlete]

You can merely mention that available oxygen, as a result of our toxifying the atmosphere, makes deep breathing more critical than it might have been for our ancestors. I'm not sure why there is a need for an article. You could merely direct your friends to Google and let them fidn their own, non-offensive articles.

You could also tell them that the breath is the method for bringing oxygen into the blood strem via the lungs. Deeper, slower breathing allows the body to draw more oxygen into the blood stream.

For the doubters re: breath, ask them to hold it for three minutes and then tell you its importance.

[justwannabe]

I understand you points IA, in today socioty a lot of people like to be spoon fed and know the scientific reasons why things work. People take perscription medication because they think they trust science "if the doctors perscribe it, it must be good for us" I am trying to lead some people to some information and then from there it is up to them to drink of it or not, just like I am sure some people have lead you at one time or another and it was your choice to take what they offered.

I sent out an email where I detailed a summary of what I found most important about breath, I summarized the many things I have read, of course not perfectly though. SOme of these people that I would like to send some links to already take medication, so therefore they believe in science. So the "science of breath" they might take to more readily then yoga. and once they start researching breath they may find stuff about yoga on their own. But in the school system a mass email about yoga would be taboo. I have looked through different searches and have a hard time finding a concise article that is too the point and deals with it scientifically and thought someone here may have run across on at one point or another

[Mirjana]

Hi Tubeseeker,

check this out : Tony Robbins Breathing Exercise

I found this a while ago searching for the information about the lymphatic system.

Greetings

[InnerAthlete]

Well that's an interesting piece from Robbins. I'm not sure how comfortable I'd be with breath retention tutoring from Tony.

Given the choice, perhaps this article would be more directly pertinent to your people.

The Art and Science of Breathing

[jezheath]

As knowledgable as Dr Weil may be, he doesn't provide much scientific support as to the reasons that breathing techniques work or scientific evidence supporting their effectiveness (has such research even been carried out?)- or quite what each technique is supposed to do.

this site Know Yoga : Pranayama has the complete set of pranayama nd their benefits - but still no science.

This site Pranayama :: pranayama :: Yoga Breathing - has the full list of pranayama and some research articles. However the "research" is peformed with statistically dubious sample sizes and possible lack the necessary control.

[InnerAthlete]

You remind me of someone very close to me
And we have something in common. We both have a link to our own web site in our posts. How about that.

Judging from your three other posts and your web site (which has a typo that youmight want to fox but otherwise it is very well constructed) you know all this that I'm about to write. So it is really for the rest of us int he earlier stages of our practice.

It is true there are few studies in the area of breathwork - as you mention about Dr. Weil's article. And the ones there are often are statistically inconclusive, violate statistical protocols, or are not in peer-reviewed journals. In "science" this makes them basically worthless. Dr. Weil's record however speaks for itself. I don't go to M.D.'s but respect his particular work in integrative medicine.

While you are correct, the correctness is only from a layer of what we know as "truth". Truth is not one dimensional but rather multi-dimensional. Science is incredibly useful when properly wielded, just as a fine piece of cutlery. Either though, in the wrong hands, is dangerous. Just at the Bible or Torah can be an amazing tool in the right hands it can also be dangerous in the hands of others. The man who drowned in a river that was, on average 4 feet deep will attest to this.

I would venture to say that we, as humans with perhaps under developed thought centers (which is to say we're not using much of the gray matter on strict percentages) are just beginning to get some information on the human body. There are many, many things we do not know and some of them we might not be able to ascertain with a statistical measure. But we'll keep trying. The vedas, which it now appears go back perhaps 20,000 years and not the 5,000 first thought, offer us so many unscientific gifts.

There is a larger concept at play however. And this is only a yogic concept. We tend to allow ourselves to be run by the mental forces. And while this isn't an inherently "bad" thing, from the yogic perspective the thought center and the vital force in the pelvis have agendas while the heart does not. It is only when we are able to channel the ego of the mind and the craving of the pelvis that we can be authentically guided. Call it a sense. Call it intuition. But the heart has the propensity to guide and direct us. Is that science? In a way I suppose it is. But only when it can be reproduced with a sizeable population in a double-blind measure.

While not scientific (in the eye of the OP) there is some work by Jospeh Chilton Pearce that discusses the makeup of the heart and some of its similarities to the brain. I have not read Magical Child but it intrigues me.

If the point however is to debunk the efficacy of breath then simply do not practice it. Petriedish, party of one? Your table is ready. It's your hundred years.