Respiratory gymnastics (Translated) E-Book

Various Authors

• Herausgeber: David De Angelis
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Man, "creature of air and sun", has always put the respiratory function over the digestive function, i.e. he has always believed that to live well it is enough to "eat well" (which in the vulgar concept means precisely to eat too much, irrationally, or in short "to eat badly") and has never stopped his attention to these simple and incontrovertible facts - 1. Not only steaks and eggs are food, but also air is a food. - 2. In order of importance, breathing far exceeds food.

Leseprobe

RESPIRATORY GYMNASTICS

Purification - Health - Strength - Energy

through the physical and psychic exercise of breathing

VARIOUS AUTHORS

Translation and 2021 edition by ©David De Angelis

All rights reserved

INDEX

Warning

- I. PHYSIOLOGICAL RESPIRATION

Appendix

- II. - PSYCHIC RESPIRATION

Warning

Man, "creature of air and sun", has always put the respiratory function to the digestive function, that is to say he has always believed that to live well it is enough to "eat well" (which in the vulgar concept means precisely to eat too much, irrationally, or in short "to eat badly") and has never stopped his attention on these simple and incontrovertible facts

- 1. ° not only steaks and eggs are food, but also air is food.

- 2. ° In order of importance respiration far exceeds nutrition.

Life is impossible without breathing. You can live several days without eating; you cannot live a few minutes without breathing. One can go on a hunger strike, but not on a breathing strike. Breathing is, therefore, the vital act par excellence, and this not only for man, but also for animals and vegetables of all kinds. If these are things that wholesale everybody knows, or thinks they know, very few have a clear idea of the practical consequences of them. For example, one does gymnastics and everyone says: gymnastics is good for you, gymnastics develops muscles, gymnastics gives you an appetite, etc. But why is it good for you? But why is it good for you? Why does it develop muscles? Why does it give you an appetite? Simply because of this: that gymnastics activates, accelerates the turnover, or, as doctors say, the process of osmosis and endosmosis. In summer people go to the mountains or to the sea. What is good for you in these places? The better quality of the air, on the one hand, and, on the other, our greater pulmonary activity produced by greater physical activity. So if we breathe well we are well, if we breathe badly we are badly. Many will be surprised that it is possible to teach how to breathe well. Yet it is a fact that almost all of us breathe badly, that is, insufficiently. To teach how to breathe well therefore means to teach how to develop the amplitude of our respiratory rhythm, to teach that our health, our energy and our well-being largely depend on the amplitude of this rhythm. But breathing also has a psychic side that Western science only now glimpses, while India has known it for centuries, making it the basis of a serious and continuous teaching. Only now - as we were saying - is the concept beginning to make its way among us that if man is not a unit in opposition to the Universe, but a part of the Universe itself, the less he will deviate from the law that governs the Universe and more precisely the other vital beings - animals and plants - the less he will run the risk of getting sick, the more he will feel healthy and energetic. Just as the energy used to move our machines and to heat our hearths is basically nothing but transformed solar energy, so the energy of our body or of our thought is nothing but the transformation of the energy existing in the ether that surrounds us. The Western physicist now calls electrons or hormones what the Indians for thousands of years have called prana, or universal energy. The Universe is but energy: man, like all other living things, is but a transformer of energy, and Breathing is the most natural and powerful means by which we can relate to this energy and harness it to our ends. Our teaching will therefore comprise (for clarity of exposition more than for scientific necessity) two distinct parts:

- 1. ° Physiological breathing.

- 2. Psychic Breathing.

- I. PHYSIOLOGICAL RESPIRATION

Breathing is a function of muscles

If you ask a layman what the organs of respiration are, he will answer that they are the lungs. It would seem, therefore, that to improve the function of breathing it is enough to improve the lungs. But the lungs themselves would be immobile and flaccid if they were not emptied and filled with air by the respiratory muscles. Thus a sponge would remain inert if the muscles of the hand, by squeezing and loosening, did not empty and fill it with water. Therefore to educate the breathing can only be understood in the sense of educating the respiratory muscles so that they are able to squeeze and fill the lungs conveniently.

These are in communication with the exterior by means of passages, consisting of the nostrils, pharynx, larynx, trachea, and bronchial tubes. The air penetrated in the nostrils, heats up when in contact with the mucous membranes abundantly irrigated with blood, goes down in the pharynx, and through the larynx passes into the trachea. This divides into numerous tubes, called bronchial tubes (bronchi), which in their turn divide into all the numerous alveoli which constitute the lung cells. The air could not enter the nose if we did not make a vacuum in the nasal caverns by suctioning, and it could not come out if it were not pushed out by a reverse current. The main muscle which, like a bellows, is responsible for introducing and expelling air through the lungs, is the diaphragm. When the diaphragm dilates, the capacity of the chest and lungs increases, and the air rushes into the compartment thus formed. When the expansion ceases, the chest and lungs contract and the air is expelled from them.

The bloodstream and respiration

To understand what happens to the air during its stay in the lungs, we must have a rough idea of the circulation of the blood. The blood, as we know, is pushed from the heart, which acts as a pump, through the arteries to the capillary tubes. During this first part of its journey, which we might call the outward journey, the blood becomes oxygenated, that is, it takes possession of the oxygen of the air, it becomes bright red and is enriched with vital qualities and properties. As it flows through the body, it distributes this wealth and at the same time becomes charged with all the detritus of the system, thus becoming not only poor, blue, dreary; but also polluted. It starts like a current taken from the mountains and descends like a gutter discharge directing itself to the right auricle of the heart. When this auricle is filled, it contracts and sends the current of blood through an opening in the heart's ventricle, which in turn pushes it back to the lungs. To the lungs thus comes the blood laden with impurities and distributes itself among the millions of cells of which they are composed. In the act of inhalation, the oxygen of the air comes into contact with the impure blood by means of the capillary vessels whose walls are thick enough for the blood not to pass through them, but delicate enough to allow the oxygen to penetrate. When the oxygen comes into contact with the blood, a kind of combustion takes place: the blood assimilates the oxygen and releases the carbonic acid generated by the detritus of the venous matter it has collected from every part of the body. The blood thus purified and oxygenated, returns once more to the heart, is thrust into the left ventricle, and thence through the arteries goes to distribute life to all parts of the organism. It is calculated that in twenty-four hours, from seven to ten thousand litres of blood cross the capillary vessels of the lungs, making its corpuscles flow in single file and exposing its sides to the oxygen of the air. In conclusion, by breathing we wash the blood, detoxify the body and at the same time supply it with the oxygen necessary for the combustion of food. If not enough new air reaches the lungs, the current of venous blood is not purified and the body is not only deprived of nutrition, but the toxins that were to be eliminated poison the organism. When oxygen comes in contact with the blood, it unites with haemoglobin and is carried to every cell, tissue or muscle which it fortifies and vitalizes, replacing failed cells and tissues with new materials which nature transforms for her use. Digestion, too, depends on respiration, and it is easy to demonstrate this. If the food is not oxygenated, it does not burn or burns badly, and consequently it is necessary that a sufficient supply of oxygen be stored in the lungs. This explains the fact that weak lungs and poor digestion are so frequently encountered simultaneously. Finally, we shall observe that the combustion resulting from the change in spoiled matter generates heat and balances the temperature of the body. Persons who breathe well are therefore in less danger of falling ill, and generally possess a great abundance of blood, which enables them to resist changes of temperature. Wishing therefore to study with some order the gymnastics of respiration, we shall have to study:

- 1 Respiratory function

- 2 The elements of air care

In respiratory function we will examine the state of the respiratory organs, to make sure of their current state. In the elements of air care we will draw a picture of respiratory gymnastics and atmospheric hygiene.

- 1 Respiratory function

THE REQUIREMENTS OF GOOD BREATHING