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.