Body
Physiology of Breathing
Simply Beautiful
Viola Edward and Michael de Glanville
The function of breathing is to supply our body
and the brain with the energy it requires to exist, to
grow, to observe, to learn, to reason, to understand,
to create, to procreate and to love.
From the magic moment of the first breath
taken during our birth experience, we have
been breathing continuously, twenty-four
hours a day, throughout our whole life. The
vital importance of this instinctive action
becomes clear when compared with our other
bodily needs. We can survive for weeks on end
without eating and even manage to go without
drinking for many days, but if our breathing
is interrupted for much longer than three
minutes, we cease to live.
Breathing is popularly considered to be one
of those natural automatic bodily functions.
It is always there, going on in the background
of our lives and we are not really conscious of
its broad ranging influence. Night or day, we
breathe, we manage what our lives bring us. We
deal with the habitual, with the contentment,
the joy and the pleasure, the pain and the
stress.
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In contrast, the conscious practice of
Breathwork focuses on developing a detailed
knowledge and understanding of this
fascinating function in order to make the best
use of its powerful healing properties for mind,
body and spirit.
When free from conscious intervention,
human breathing patterns are selected
autonomously, depending on our perception
of safety or danger, on the emotions we are
feeling or the stress we are coping with. Once
we perceive the cause for alarm has passed,
other autonomous processes return our
breathing to normal and this capability of fluid,
easy variation of heartbeat and breathing
tempo is an excellent indicator of our body
health.
However, problems arise when we find
ourselves continuously exposed to stress,
danger or pain and in a state of perpetual
alarm. Our nervous system finds itself locked
onto crisis mode. We trade reflection and
clarity for instinctive reaction, losing our
capability to relax, to reason, wind down and
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