Asthma Relief

• Asthma relief
• No breath holding

An extremely fast way to change one's breathing is mechanically through very specific techniques and exercises. Asthma relief may also require combinations of change of environment, internal cleansing, nutrition and extra water consumption to help rid the lungs of mucous and toxins.

But if you want to change it NOW, you must begin by making it bigger, easier and better coordinated. I observe many asthmatics breathe in a high chest dominant and constricted state. An acupuncturist described it as they send their energy up. Conserving output of air is critical, but NOT by holding your breath. Holding your breath locks up the diaphragm and tightens the muscles in the throat. Environmental issues aside, asthma is largely a sympathetic nervous system dominated in-breath. People can be in poor environments and not have breathing problems like this. An exercise for this is at the main article page.

Breathing exercises need be practiced daily, without fail. If you don't do something to hold it in check and expand and strengthen your breathing, gravity and tensions of living will bring it back.

Posture and breathing styles are critical. Drugs, stress (emotional and physical), biochemical elements (nutrition) and brain tumors are possible causes of asthma. Environmental and food allergies are strong factors as well. For specific breathing nutritional insights, see the #191 Secrets of Optimal Natural Breathing manual.

Beware of breath holding exercises. The "hunger-for-air" approach conditions the body to function with less air, but it doesn't increase lung volume and breathing ease. Oxygen relaxes muscles and nerves; carbon dioxide (CO2) tenses them. In another person's words found on the Net, "It prevents you from using more lung capacity than you actually need. The problem with this is that the actual inflammation and concomitant airway remodeling continue, and you may well reach a point where your maximal lung function permanently drops below your requirements for minimal function."

As long as you disregard the oxygen cost of breathing, you overlook the fundamentals of enhanced reflexive breathing and its innate oxygenating and healing potential. Breath holding is "unnatural." Using breath-holding techniques, the body gets less oxygen, more carbon dioxide and appears to stimulate breathing. It will partially control sympathetic enervation, which is a major key, but it is wrong because it hurts tissue oxygen levels, for example an athlete getting hypoxia, lactate formation and ketosis. It looks as if the person breathes more, but the tissues get less. Mountain climbing would do something similar.

Volume and ease are indispensable. I would rather have a 12 cylinder engine than a two cylinder one. More volume then makes more oxygen, with less effort and less oxygen cost of breathing. CO2 levels are manageable with easily obtained increased supplies of oxygen breathed in an easier and more autonomic nervous system balanced way. Hyperbaric research, high altitude flight and space travel research has convinced me of this.

I am getting good results without the hunger-for-air approach with athletes and opera singers as well. Athletes can develop asthma even in youth and emphysema in later years. The stresses of competition tighten up the diaphragm and rib cage, and we lose our ability to "squeeze the sponge." We slowly and often imperceptibly breathe less and less over the years. Like boiling a frog long-term...only WE are the frog.

Focus on belly breath strength, breathing volume and internal coordination. In this way, you can become more full of life instead of putting so much attention on getting rid of an illness. Address wellness, not illness.

At Optimal Breathing, you'll discover an easy-to-use, information-packed Web site.
Click here to learn more about breathing relief.