Can you perform Abdominal Breathing all through out the day and during Qigong/Tai Chi practices? Do you breathe into the back and sides?

[4bsolute]

Due to an unconscious lifestyle for many years, I have to recalibrate certain things. Such as proper breathing. I am aware of many forms of breathing, but never performed one consciously. So first time doing so.

 

Starting with Deep Abdominal Breathing.

 

#1 Can you use this breathing technique all out during the day? I have noticed you need to be in a relaxed state in order to drop the diaphragm at all. So that is a good practice in itself.

 

#2 When breathing into the abdomen, how much do you breathe into the back (kidneys and below) and into the sides? I started it compeltely wrong by mostly or totally breathing into the belling. Ending up with very lose stomach muscles that overall screwed up my organ pressuring. Breathing into the sides, and especially creating a very slight bulging outwards towards sides and back is compeltely new to my mind.

 

My Iron Shirt is Iron Rags, at the moment as you can see. Please help

Edited July 25, 2014 by 4bsolute

[joeblast]

I cant just pick at this, so here's a relatively full go...

 

1) Absolutely! As many times as you have the thought. Reintroduce the mechanical protocol and reap the benefits.

2) Deep centerline is key Expanding the belly is really just a technique to get people to stop using their chest for meditative breathing. The front of the abdomen is powerful, if it is overused, it is not balanced.

When I began long ago I used the front of the abdomen a lot - still with the idea of timed protocol, but before discovering the (literally) deeper aspects, it was utilized a bit too much, with less emphasis on the diaphragm - combine that with your sinuses buffering the air pressure that reaches your diaphragm - how much are you really using it?? Are your internal mechanics powerful and decently well net energy positive? I contend that they most certainly will not be, so long as the diaphragm is both relatively little used (in that it ceases to become the primary motivator of the movement) and its job winds up getting half done by the expansion of air inside the sinuses!

Upon discovering the signal that the olfactory nerves generate - and how it is increased by the copious usage of expanding the sinuses while breathing - I decided it was a good idea to just stop using the sinuses to move air. Eventually I extended this concept to wherever air even touches - leave it alone, dont use it to facilitate the movement of air. Put that emphasis ALL on the internal mechanics. Practice, practice. Eventually I got things slow enough that I found out that the musculotendonal tension of the diaphragm is not the same when comparing the front vs the rear - a single hiccup would manifest (with attendant minor disturbances of xin) as the diaphragm "sorted itself out" via a vis the exhale>inhale transition.

The solution? Anchor the movement of the diaphragm.



So to begin an inhale (I was somewhat incredulous years ago that nobody ever stated this, specifically ) you pull downwards from those attachment points (crura) of the diaphragm...

Now also consider the juxtaposition of the psoas muscles:

And it winds up being that there is not really any need to conceptually separate these two different muscle movements, diaphragm and psoas. They move as one. Therefore treat them as one in breathing.

 

 

So the result is an intent of descending along the centerline, from solar plexus to lower dantien:

 

 

This method roots the motion of the diaphragm into the spine - not only that, it more thoroughly integrates harmonic muscular movement. Diaphragm and psoas work in concert - this is the reason you dont need to focus on the "umbrella" of the diaphragm.

 

 

One interesting keypoint, almost as an aside here - very often when I start out a session and things arent quite "there" yet, I will use the front of the abdomen to facilitate a smooth exhale. And use it as much as needed to support the movement of the internal mechanics. Part of "getting there" is getting the internal mechanics smoothly established. After a couple minutes of the mechanics going, becoming well established, the front of the abdomen returns...to its normally scheduled programming where the focus is a bit more on the qihai, its range more limited (since it is not necessary to have substantial range of ab-front movement once the internal mechanics are good and efficient.)

 

 

 

As the internal mechanics become very efficient, the "breath externally disappears" - meaning very close to non-movement of the front of the abdomen. When this manifests, it is very much so because of the proper addition of timing, duration, extent, of the perineum's movement. The inclusion of the perineum was not a closely guarded secret in china for umpteen generations for no reason, this really adds significantly to the efficiency and power of the breath. If your breath duration is not very long, then you have plenty of work to do in this area.

 

 

 

 

 

Now, to actually get to answering question #2 - those considerations are very secondary to the above points I just made - but I had to make them well enough and establish all that, just so I can tell you to be natural with them Because if you establish the correct physical and energetic movement from the above points, then the kidneys/back/sides pretty much fall into place of their own accord. Movement too far in any direction from them will perturb the above dynamics. The movement of the quadratus lumborum is very slight, as is the movement from the sides - physically speaking there is not much length for them to travel - dont let that keep you from investigating the energetic output of the structure, though - but do the more fundamental structures mentioned above first.

 

Natural breath, sides and back are passive when inhaling, diaphragm and psoas are the only yang on the inhale, then on the exhale, the rest of the structures (perineum, ab front, sides, rear) all gently support the exhale - this is done until the muscle memory is built well - and once the muscle memory is built well and you work on energetic refinements, this is where it becomes more useful to investigate the energetic moment coming from the nodes of the structures, i.e. huiyin for the perineum, qihai for front of abdomen, mingmen for rear.

 

Reverse breath, I always teach forget about the front of the abdomen (and by extension, compression!) when learning it so that the internal mechanics can be well ingrained before the front is added and the compression happens. So to begin reverse breathing, the inhale portion, as far as the diaphragm and psoas are concerned, are no different than natural breathing. The perineum movement is timed in with the diaphragm/psoas, (the energetic momenta, all directed to the dantien,)

 

 

and relax on the exhale

 

it becomes little different than looking at a dyno readout

 

 

further refinement, each component having its own power-time curve, now combine them all together so that the peaks line up...

 

 

Now remember with all of this, you're not using the nose, sinuses, throat, bronchi, etc, to facilitate the movement of air. The air still travels through the nose, but when this gets efficient, very little into the sinuses bordering on nothing at all. (Yes, you can miss out on scents using this method...sometimes that's a good thing )

 

This centerline method is very good for priming the zang organs.

 

"Finding an energetic maxima, amidst a relative consumption minima"

 

[Brian]

Cam swap there, joeblast?

[joeblast]

lump it juuuuust right and you can make a '89 5.0 pass emissions testing, with no emissions components attached dude at the testing place wouldnta believed it if we didnt show him, he was darn near flabbergasted

[joeblast]

I hope that's not in a "overloaded with info to the point of being jumbled" sort of way

[ChiDragon]

Starting with Deep Abdominal Breathing.

 

#1 Can you use this breathing technique all out during the day? I have noticed you need to be in a relaxed state in order to drop the diaphragm at all. So that is a good practice in itself.

 

#2 When breathing into the abdomen, how much do you breathe into the back (kidneys and below) and into the sides? I started it compeltely wrong by mostly or totally breathing into the belling. Ending up with very lose stomach muscles that overall screwed up my organ pressuring. Breathing into the sides, and especially creating a very slight bulging outwards towards sides and back is compeltely new to my mind.

 

My Iron Shirt is Iron Rags, at the moment as you can see. Please help

 

#1 Yes, you can use the Deep Abdominal Breathing technique all out during the day. This is the technique that you want to accomplish in Qi Qong. As soon you can have the breath reached the abdomen, then, do it as your normal way in breathing. I had emphasized that in many of my posts about breathing. Indeed, I am doing abdominal breathing as I'm typing at the moment. I only do it when I am awake. I don't do that, at bed time, to prevent insomnia due to over energizing my blood circulation.

 

#2 I know there is one ,and only one, proper way to breathe is down deep into the abdomen(LDT). This is what the Chinese Taoists tried to accomplish by practicing Qi Gong.

 

This is a big fallacy on your part:

"I started it completely wrong by mostly or totally breathing into the belling. Ending up with very lose stomach muscles that overall screwed up my organ pressuring. Breathing into the sides, and especially creating a very slight bulging outwards towards sides and back is completely new to my mind."

 

It is impossible to breathe into the sides. Your abdomen may expand outward during deep breathing; but it was not considered to be breathing into the sides.

[Brian]

lump it juuuuust right and you can make a '89 5.0 pass emissions testing, with no emissions components attached dude at the testing place wouldnta believed it if we didnt show him, he was darn near flabbergasted

Nice gains up top. New springs, too, or just a bigger bumpstick? Air-fuel ratio is a lot closer to stoich, too.

[deci belle]

Cam swap there, joeblast?

 

hhahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahaa!!

 

I sink he muss have sneaks in an align-bores et groovied followers, not to mention cutting back the valves and seat-tops…

 

My speed-shop insider girlfriend who races a little truck with a biG engine told me aaaaallllllll about it!! She says hi, Joe!!❤❤ I'm no fool (I hope), but her race-engine builder has had my antique truck's original block since NOVEMBER!!!!

 

 

 

ed note: add the align-bore bit❤

Edited July 27, 2014 by deci belle

[deci belle]

In other news… I asked the I Ching this week about the fact that i don't even know how to meditate!!! i didn't mention the part about not knowing how to breath too… all it said was something about "…faults not appearing and spontaneously dissolving unawares, transforming silently…"

 

Some people have all the fun.

 

I've mentioned this before, and that is that the only time womb-breathing happens to me is when i wake up in the middle of the night and it just is… so I just go back to sleep. Obviously, whatever is going on doesn't need me…❤

[ChiDragon]

Mr. CD, you and I share one of the most foundational and enjoyable cultivation practices I know of - "breathing." Perhaps we were instructed differently. Is it abdominal breathing, only, that you do? Or is your goal embryonic breathing?

 

rainbowvein....

Nice nick btw.....

 

I only go with one definition when involve with breathing, 氣沈丹田, chi sunken to the dan tian. In modern language, the breath has reached down deep to the abdomen which is known as the "abdominal breathing". That's all one needs to know about Chi Kung. All the other things had learnt are cosmetics. As soon as one has attained this condition, it was considered to be that one has attained the realm of Chi Kung. Hereinafter, one shall perform abdominal breathing as one's normal breathing.