FOREWORD
The staff of life is not bread—it is breath. For you can live days without drink, and weeks without food. But you can only live a few minutes without air.
You would think, inasmuch as the human race has been breathing for at least five hundred thousand years, that men and women today would know how to breathe.
As a matter of fact, however, consciously controlled breathing is known to but very few people. These few fortunate individuals have been rewarded by Nature in the way Nature always rewards those who follow her laws.
She blesses them with magnificent constitutions, tireless energy and the strength and beauty that comes from radiant health; skin that shows the rich blood flowing under its clear surfaces, sparkling eyes, and the vivacious manner that attracts and holds the attention of men and women alike.
This, Nature does for those who use rightly her great gift.
Of the few in all the world who know the inmost secrets of the art of breathing, Edward Lankow, the talented author of this course, is perhaps the greatest.
The Editor of Physical Culture Magazine says of him:
“Mr. Edward Lankow is rated by many critics as the greatest basso in America. The richness, resonance, depth, power, flexibility and cello-like beauty of his voice has not been duplicated in America for years. Mr. Lankow is thirty-five years old; weight, 205 pounds stripped; height 6 feet, 1-1/2 inches; chest 44-1/2 inches; waist, 38 inches. He is Russian-American, born in Tarrytown, N. Y.”
In 1902, at the age of nineteen, Lankow was offered the principle Bass engagement with the “Bostonians” by Barnabee and MacDonald, which he declined on account of a desire for further study. The same year he was offered a Tour with Adelina Patti, which he declined for the same reason. In 1906 he started his career in Europe, where he sang at all the principle opera houses, and in concerts. In 1911 he returned to America and made his debut on the opening evening of the season with the Boston Opera Company. Before going to Boston, he studied Pelleas et Mellisande in Paris, at the first rehearsal at which the famous composer Debussy was present, he received the superlative compliment from the composer, who said to him “In your voice, I hear for the first the mystic timbre of voice I thought of when I composed the part fifteen years ago.” Mr. Lankow sang all the nine performances of this opera in Boston with Mme. Leblanc and Mary Garden.
In 1912-1913 at the first performance of the Magic Flute at the Metropolitan Opera House, the management brought Mr. Lankow over from Boston for the first half dozen performances, where three of the New York newspaper critics pronounced him the greatest basso in America—one critic saying “A voice of amazing beauty, he is by long odds the greatest basso in America.”
In April, 1917, while attending a garden party at Governor’s Island, Mr. Lankow noticed that the speaking voice of Colonel Hartman was naturally exceedingly well placed (or resonant) and asked the Colonel if he had studied to produce it that way. To which the Colonel answered, “No, I always spoke that way, and always wanted to find out how I did it so as to show it to younger officers—but I couldn’t.”
Mr. Lankow then showed the Colonel by pressing his hand on the Colonel’s abdomen how by Nature he used that organ in support—a support which most of us had to learn but which came quite natural to him. The quick mind of Colonel Hartman absorbed the value of the idea at once, and he asked Mr. Lankow to teach this subject at Camp Gorden, Ga., the largest development camp in the country.
Here official instructors of various subjects from all the other camps in the country from Maine to San Francisco were gathered for special instructions—from 6.45 A. M. Mr. Lankow would have classes ranging from 25 to 1100, and gradually developed 41 officer assistant instructors, so that several thousand men were doing the work at the same time. The Commanding General, Brigadier General William Sage and all of his staff were in his morning class.
After the third week, Mr. Lankow was asked to mess at Headquarters, and live at the former home of Brigadier General Shaw. The results of his work were more than astounding.
Men who had apparently no voices at all, and who had pain in the throat while giving commands, suddenly found that it was a pleasure to use the voice. On the other hand, men whose health was run down so that they were on their way to forced retirement, were so changed in appearance that their civilian friends asked them what they were doing.
Surgeon General Rupert Blue thought so highly of the health-building power of Mr. Lankow’s course of instruction that he made the following statement to Mr. Lankow in Washington:
“Use my name for anything you like in connection with your system of teaching breath control.”
Another health authority said:
“Give the world two generations of children taught this trained, scientific method of breathing and you’ll make the community free of consumption.”
Many of the world’s greatest singers have profited by Mr. Lankow’s instructions. Mary Garden, Director of the Chicago Opera Company and famous prima donna, has written “Half the world does not know that correct breathing means health, happiness and contentment. I had the joy of learning this truth from Mr. Lankow. Every day my voice became better—and my health too. His work is really great.”
In this complete course of “Lessons” Mr. Lankow tells all the secrets of his wonderful work.
Within a few days you, too, by following the simple directions Mr. Lankow advises, may be well on the road to such health, strength, mental clearness and physical beauty as you have never known before.
For you will be working in harmony with Nature—and with Nature’s great and beneficent laws.
The Publisher.
LESSON I
Importance of Consciously Controlled Breathing
Air is truly the breath of life. It is the vital fluid that animates our being; that stimulates into activity every one of the billion of cells that go to make up the body.
It is a fact, conceded by every scientific man today, that the oxygen in the air we breathe is absolutely the greatest purifying force in all Nature.
Yet there is but one way to get oxygen into your lungs and into your system—and this is to breathe it in.
As long ago as two thousand years before the Christian Era, the Chinese and the Hindoos made elaborate studies in the art of breathing. Indeed, they developed a complex science having to do with control of the breath. Certain forms of breathing were employed for the cure of various diseases. Thus, for example, it was believed that controlled inhalations and exhalations would allay fevers; or, in a contrary condition of the body, induce a salutary rise in temperature.
In India the Buddhist priests were at pains to practice breath-control so as always to command deep, quiet action of the lungs. In this measured breathing the number of breaths was greatly reduced. The usual eighteen to twenty-two breaths per minute were reduced to six or eight. Experience justified the theories of the priests concerning the value of a controlled breathing. Its merits have stood the tests of ages, and today, in the Orient proper, breathing is still deemed the fountain of health.
Aside from the distinctly physical advantages derived from breath-control, there results also a poise of mind that is most desirable in its benefits to the whole nature of the man.
Later in history both the Greeks and the Romans practiced controlled breathing for hygienic purposes and for the attainment of bodily perfection. They even went further than the Orientals of an earlier epoch, for they deliberately set out to enlarge the chest cavity. They realized that the principal part of the body is the trunk, and that in this the chief constituent is the chest. The success they attained in the development of superb physiques is demonstrated by the examples that survived to us of their classic art. They were able to attain a bodily perfection unequaled in the history of the world. In their methods, controlled breathing was the chief agent.
In Europe, during the Middle Ages, this science of breath suffered from increasing neglect, and finally died out.
As an appalling commentary on the neglect of proper breathing by the mass of mankind, we may consider the fact, now generally admitted by the medical profession, that fully one half of the world’s death-rate is due to consumption.
The fact could hardly be otherwise. Any experienced physician is well aware that only a small part of the lungs is ordinarily used by the average person. A large portion of the breathing apparatus is in most cases never employed at all. Naturally, inevitably, such areas in the lungs weaken and become degenerate. They offer a breeding place for the germs of various infections.