CORRECT BREATHING :

ABDOMINAL BREATHING is easily the most important single act following our birth due to which you are reading what I have written. It is one of the most mysterious happening in our entire life. There are many theories as to why a new born baby takes a breath but that itself means that we don t know the exact reason. Thus breath is life and life is breath. Life is over when the breathing stops, as life begins when it starts. Thus if we manage our breathing properly we manage our life properly. External breathing is more important for us than internal breathing because it is one activity which is at the same time voluntary as well as involuntary. This means if we want to voluntarily increase the rate and depth of breathing , we can do that. We can even stop breathing if we want to! However this is within certain limits. Thus we cannot indefinitely stop breathing as we will become unconscious and the body will take over. We cannot even breathe very fast and deep for a very long time as we will again become unconscious and the body will take over. Breathing - as we all know - continues even while we are asleep. Body tries to keep its internal equilibrium at all times and almost at all costs. According to our emotional state and physical state the metabolic rates of our body keep changing. In simple words the oxygen requirement of our body keeps changing depending on our physical and mental state including dreaming. The breathing rate and depth change accordingly to provide sufficient oxygen to the body. The actual act of breathing has two components, thoracic and abdominal. These components come into play in a variety of ways but to make it simple we understand that a person who is mentally disturbed starts breathing predominantly through chest and a very quiet and composed person breaths almost entirely through abdomen. Witness a few month old child during sleep moving only abdomen. Thus chest breathing is emergency breathing.
In an emergency the body is interested in getting out of the situation at any cost hence the efficiency of breathing is very low. However it is often seen in civilised people that they breathe through their chest even without any emergency as an habit and pay for it in the form of many disorders like acidity, insomnia, irritability etc; which may further lead to more serious disturbances in health. One has to learn this breathing as since childhood the attitude while standing is supposed to be chest out, abdomen drawn in and breathing through chest. This tendency to hold the abdomen tight is further enhanced by the so called ideas of fitness where a flat abdomen means ultimate in fitness and to show that pulling in abdomen is the way.
This is very wrong. It simply destroys the normal healing breathing pattern and substitutes for it a very unhealthy, abnormal breathing pattern.
Emotions change our breathing and both are related to each other like hen and an egg. We do not know which came first, but we know that both exist. Emotions have to be watched and breathing has to be changed.
EXERCISE FOR ABDOMINAL BREATHING :
Lie on your back comfortably with the legs and hands spread out at a comfortable distance from each other. Put a pillow or a biggish book on your lower abdomen. Now take a deep breath and lift the object up and down without moving the chest. Initially you are bound to use chest as you are not used to this kind of breathing but persevere and you will master it soon enough. To start with do it for thirty minutes at a stretch as this will change the entire perspective of your life. Compare your emotional state before you began the exercise and compare it after you have finished it. There will be an obvious change. The situation of your life does not change much but you change the internal environment so that the perception of external environment changes. Suddenly you will find the key to take it easy. Give special time to do this exercise morning and evening and at least half an hour or more. Do it for two to three weeks and once you are sure that you know it stop giving any special time for it but now do it twenty four hours a day.

STOP MEDITATION:
Whatever you are doing, stop in your tracks for a second and watch your breathing. Sitting, walking, bathing, eating, reading, having sex, or anything ....... see that the breathing is correct. Once you are sure that you are breathing right twenty four hours a day stop giving special time to do this exercise. Watch yourself. Any time of the day you feel insecure, irritable, jealous, greedy, angry, or conceited; watch your breathing. It has changed to the thoracic type or chest breathing. Correct it immediately. It will help you to understand not only the emotion and the breathing associated with it but it will make you a better person who is able to sublimate his negative emotions and stay healthy.
Know that the entire universe actually breaths in the same environment. The breath which was in me is in somebody s body the next moment. The molecules of oxygen in me were in some tree few minutes back. The carbon dioxide which was in me a few minutes back in now in some plant. I am connected to every single living thing with breathing. I am living in but an assembly of so to say non living things and I am connected to non living things as well. When this assembly dissembles each element will claim its part. To know that energy which keeps your body breathing is easy to know. Just exhale and watch what happens. Without you willing anything the breath enters. Without you willing it just goes out. You are but a watcher and perceiver. You do not do anything.