The purpose of conscious, connected breathing is not for the movement of air, but rather for the movement of energy.
By doing relaxed, connected breathing for a few minutes, you begin to experience dynamic energy flowing throughout your body.
The more that you practice it, the more relaxed and peaceful you feel.
In Eastern philosophies, this flowing of energy via conscious, connected breathing is the merging of spirit and matter.
It creates harmony between your body, mind and soul.
Breathing is such a simple thing, but conscious breathing involves activating the upper cortical brain cells.
If you inhale and hold your breath to lift a weight, you maintain control until the breath is released.
Normally you involuntarily breathe 14 to 18 times a minute.
The more excitable you are, the more breaths per minute you take.
When you're reading a book, you breathe differently than when you're making love.
Different physical activities and mental states require different modes of breathing.
For instance, fear, worry and depression often interfere with proper breathing.
Gradual oxygen deprivation can in turn cause mental and physical impairment.
The amount of air you inspire is known as your vital capacity and can be measured by a watch-size instrument called a spirometer.
To test your expiration capacity, take a deep breath, open your mouth wide (no pursed lips) and see if you can blow out a match held 3 inches from your lips.
If you can't, you need help.
To illustrate how you can voluntarily control your breathing, take a deep, abdom- inal breath, and read the following paragraph aloud without inhaling.
Powerful effects can be felt by controlling your inhalation and exhalation in a connected way.
By gently, but deeply breathing in and out without a pause in between, you can supercharge your system with energizing oxygen.
Maintain this connected breathing in a relaxed rhythm (don't force yourself into a hyperventilating syndrome) for an hour a day for 30 consecutive days, and you will feel far more able to successfully accomplish many of the other exercises in this manual.
Your stress and negative emotions will dissipate too.
There is a merging of your pure life energy with the air you breathe that will send vibrations throughout your body in a cleansing, nourishing way.
By controlling your breathing in this way, you can physically extend your life.
Connected breathing is a relaxing and natural process that can leave you with a euphoric feeling.
It is a very cleansing process that can also clear out physical, mental and emotional blocks.
About 3% of the body’s wastes are eliminated by defecation and 7% by urination.
The skin excretes another 20%, leaving the remaining 70% to be breathed out.
Maintaining connected deep breathing for about an hour can also slip you into an altered state of consciousness where old images and feelings come to mind.
These patterns can be consciously observed, and allowed to pass on without their having any psychological effect on you! As an adjunct to the above exercise, take in a deep, abdominal breath and hold it.
Now stick your tongue out and bring the air up as if to exhale, but instead put a throat lock on it and gag.
The gagging noise is not necessary, but directing the air and 'life energy' to your brain and eyes is important.
Some people experience a similar action while having a bowel movement.
"It is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God."
(Matt. 4:4) If your essence is part of God's universal essence, could not your affirmations and visualizations be directed to help produce the necessary sustenance for survival?
Breatharians are people that utilize breath and combine it with light to manufacture food for their bodies.
This 'animal photosynthetic' process is little understood, for breatharians cut down their ingested food intake to little or nothing at all.
When Jack Schwarz was studied by the Menninger Foundation, he ate one bowl of rice per week and defecated 3 full bowel movements per day.
Since his body weight remained the same, where did the extra dross material come from?
Perhaps everyone is a breatharian in some way, because each person metabolizes the same amount of food differently.
Does the process go beyond metabolism?
Do you actually assimilate the elements of light, air and some universal energy to create auxiliary amounts of food?
Have you ever had the feeling of "being full" and not wanting to eat after a sun bath?
When fasting, visualize having eaten a sumptuous meal and notice the satiated effect.
Hunger is more often a subconscious habit than it is a necessity.
The overweight population of the world attests to this observation.
Maintaining conscious control over your life negates this tendency to overeat.
In fact, through the power of visualization and your inner 'knowingness,' you can really eat what you want and still lose weight.
By such inner control, the elements of your ingested food can be either assimilated or passed.
Your metabolic rate can be either stepped up or slowed, and you learn that you are in complete charge of your bodily functions