Sudden collapses should at all times be avoided, and they should especially be avoided in exercises of the chest and of the central organs.
The free, expansive facility of the whole chest is the measure of the health, strength, grace and normal actions of a human being. It is of primary importance.
4. RESPIRATORY ACCENTUATION
Keeping the body extended, the chest well expanded, take a deep, full breath, hold it a moment and gradually release it, then wait a second without greatly lessening the expansion of the chest
In this exercise be sure to accentuate the four elemental parts of an exercise. Taking breath, the active stay of the breath, the gradual release and then the complete surrender of the direct respiratory muscles: that is, accentuate the four steps or elements as in most exercises and avoid the temptation to jerk and to exaggerate minor parts or actions. Constrictions, inharmonious and unrhythmic jerks are always out of place in any exercise. The best results can be obtained only by observance of principles.
Do not force the breath out. Allow it to pass out easily and normally. Increase the inspiration rather than the expiration. The air will tend to pass out too quickly, reserve it and allow it to pass out steadily and regularly.
We find that the taking of breath is associated with the result of expansion and vitally connected with the conception of impressions and expression, and so is a necessary part.
The expanding of the chest causes greater room in the thoracic chamber and breath flows in naturally. This exercise, however, implies that we should consciously and deliberately accentuate expansion and the taking of breath. It aids in the realization of life and the diffusion of activity.
Man breathes over twenty-five thousand times in twenty-four hours. He can get along very well on two or three meals of food and six or eight glasses of water, but with as low as fourteen thousand breaths a day, he is flat on his back and has hardly enough power to move hand or foot.
We live on air. This is one reason why the expansion of the chest is so important. It gives room for breath. In fact, in breathing we do not suck breath into the lungs. Air presses fifteen pounds to the square inch to get into the lungs. Expansion is, therefore, the primary element in breathing. We should, however, at times not only expand fully but consciously draw in breath. We can expand the chest while sustaining it and drink breath into the very depths of our lungs.