6 [Body and Enlightenment] Relax your chest and increase ...

[국제과학명상센터]

Relax your chest and increase your abdominal pressure as you inhale through deep abdominal breathing.

     He explained that breathing is accomplished by the difference between atmospheric pressure and lung pressure. It was also said that blood circulation is achieved according to changes in chest and abdominal pressure. Do you understand why the chest pressure is lower than the atmospheric pressure to breathe well? Atmospheric pressure is 760mmHg, so breathing is comfortable only when it is lower than this.

      The way the body breathes is commonly referred to as thoracic breathing and abdominal breathing. Thoracic breathing is breathing by pulling the ribs apart and expanding the chest forward and backward, while abdominal breathing is by pulling the diaphragm down.

     Children and young adults with flexible bodies hardly feel the difference between chest breathing and abdominal breathing. Of course, it is possible to find stability in the body and mind by practicing abdominal breathing from a young age, and achieve differentiated abilities through development. What I want to tell you now is to explain the general but huge difference between chest breathing and abdominal breathing with scientific principles.

     Once you become accustomed to chest breathing, you will constantly bring stimuli and pressure to the chest, and the expansion of the chest will proceed back and forth. If you are experiencing emotional changes or stress as you grow up, your body will become rigid, causing very serious confusion, especially in the breathing mechanism. With hardened muscles and nerves, breathing becomes worse, and the shoulders are shaken on top of breathing so tightly, and pressure is applied to the clavicle and upper back. Then, the nerves connected to the brain and the blood vessels of the clavicle are also stimulated, which further interferes with blood circulation and secretes stress hormones, resulting in a vicious cycle of the human body, that is, a vicious cycle of breathing. In addition, the heart is also under intense pressure due to the expanding lungs, which naturally impairs the function of the heart and further promotes various heart diseases and blood circulation disorders. So the angry person breathes heavily and moves his shoulders up and down. Such hardened habits eventually cause various diseases, interfere with blood flow to the brain, block nerves, and further promote the secretion of various stress hormones. Therefore, the older the person who is hardened to chest breathing, the harder it becomes to breathe.

     In this way, the body will become rigid and all metabolism including blood circulation disorder will not be smooth. In particular, when the lungs continuously compress the heart and the chest muscles are stiff, pressing the veins that come down from the head to the heart, the blood in the head is also hindered from returning to the heart. Since the heart is not pumping enough, it is not able to create strong blood flow, and this vicious cycle creates what is called upper sickness(a rush of blood to the head), in which meditators suffer.

     Abdominal breathing exercises can also cause 'a rush of blood to the head'. This can be said to be a case where the body is rapidly stiffened due to a wrong mindset during the training process. If this condition persists, it changes to the opposite mechanism of abdominal breathing to make thoracic breathing stronger. In other words, inhaling while pushing up the organs by contracting the abdomen raises the diaphragm and stimulates the ribs to widen them further. These bad habits eventually result in sticking the organs up. Likewise, when the organs are pushed upward, the area just above the genitals is compressed. This is what is called ‘the hypogastric region is dead’.