Categories: Hazel Rosetta Smith,
By Hazel Rosetta Smith
Chances are that your breathing is not what it should be. Under the stresses and strains of modern-day life, particularly the ongoing pandemic, even a “healthy” person has trouble breathing normally.
The importance of breath has been an integral part of the history of humankind. In the East, the care of breathing is emphasized in the religions of the Tibetans, Indians, Chinese, and Japanese, in which chanting demands intense breathing concentration.
The quality and fullness of our breathing directly affect the quality of our lives. Any hampering of the process of breathing will harm our physical fitness, creativity, and ability to deal positively with stressful situations.
Understanding how essential an adequate system of breathing is and how caring for our breath will enhance the quality of our lives, is essential. Our breathing is affected by everything that happens to us – physical or emotional strain, injury, frustration, and even enormous success. Anything that goes on in us and around us has a simultaneous effect on our breathing. We hold our breath when shocked, shallow breath under stress, and it is speeded up and stimulated by joy and intimacy.
Breathing is the natural flow of life within the automatic system of our body. It should be natural and flow easily throughout. A certain kind of breathing may be right for one situation, but inadequate for another. Sometimes, a very full breath will be needed, other times a shallow breath is sufficient.
We move less than prior generations in all that we do, since high technology and digital mechanisms have taken over much of the work for which bodily movement was once needed and has since deprived us of many opportunities to expand our lungs.
Seldom do we think about the hours of shallow breathing in the comfort of extensive sitting while watching home movies. Our lungs need expansion to clear the airwaves and that is possible only through proper inhalation and exhalation. There are exercises for strength training for our breathing muscles.
Oftentimes a handheld device is given to patients after surgery that involves breathing exercises of resistance to strengthen the capacity of the lungs during the bedridden recovery period. Doctors suggest immediate daily walks after surgery for the circulation of the blood and strengthening of the lungs.
According to a medical study of hypertension, all it takes is 5 minutes of breathing exercises 6 days a week to lower blood pressure. The greatest support for stress management is proper breathing.
Do not associate going to the gym with being where you get your heart pumping and your lungs expanding. Concentrate on your airflow no matter where you are. Take each breath as if your life depends on it….because it does.
[Hazel Rosetta Smith is a journalist, playwright, and Executive Artistic Director for HSTM-Help Somebody Theatrical Ministries and HRS – Hazel Rosetta Speaks! Retired, former Women’s Editor and Managing Editor for the New York Beacon News. Contact: misshazel@twc.com and online www.hazelrosettasmith.com]
