Rewind Your Body Clock by Jayney Goddard

Author:Jayney Goddard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Watkins Media

Key Insights into Taoist Longevity Breathing

Before giving you the practical guidance, I feel I should mention that Taoist Longevity Breathing can feel a little counterintuitive at first in that your lungs don’t actively control your air intake while you’re doing it. Instead, this technique comprises a set of progressive exercises that activate all parts of your abdomen: first lower, then middle, then upper. Doing this allows you to smooth out your breath so that it becomes more even. Eventually you will find that it becomes easier and more natural to slow and extend your breath.

Down the line, if you decide to study with an expert trainer, you’ll go on to learn how to activate other areas of your body too, which will increase the effectiveness of the practice. It is said that the study of Taoist Longevity Breathing is a lifelong pursuit as you can go deeper and deeper into the technique, getting progressively more from it.

One of the most important concepts to consider when doing Taoist Longevity Breathing is diaphragmatic control. The diaphragm is a sheet of muscle at the bottom of your ribcage that separates your lungs from your entire abdomen. It wraps around the lower parts of your ribcage and attaches to your spine, and it moves up and down when you breathe.

When you are at rest, or have exhaled, the muscle is bell-shaped. When you breathe in, the muscle flattens and, due to the vacuum that this causes, air is drawn into your lungs. When you breathe out, your diaphragm relaxes and becomes bell-shaped once again, your chest gets smaller, and this causes the air to be pushed out of your lungs.

Diaphragm mobility and strength is very important for overall health, not just from the perspective of breathing, but also for other parts of your anatomy as ligaments link your diaphragm to your internal organs, which causes them to move as you breathe. Ultimately, then, our breath can be thought of as providing a form of internal massage, as if our diaphragm moves well, our internal organs should also be able to move properly – and this will assist with the flow of lymph throughout our body, allowing effective detoxification and therefore encouraging good all-round health. Lymph is a fluid that moves through channels helping to remove accumulated debris from the body. It has no pump as such – unlike our vascular system, through which blood flows due to being pumped around by the heart. Instead, lymph transport relies on our movement and breathing, and the movement of our diaphragm assists with this. (You’ll read more about the lymph channels in Chapter 13.)

REWIND PRACTICE – OVER TO YOU

Taoist Longevity Breathing

As just discussed, Taoist Longevity Breathing exercises will help you breathe more healthily, which in turn will improve every function of your body and mind. But it is crucial to learn the techniques slowly and not to force anything, as to do so might stress internal organs.

It can be useful to think of the technique as a dance – focusing on rhythm and transitions between each breath.

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