Holding the Breath

[somatai]

i am talking about stationary exercises and relaxation.....not packing breath, but gaining a better sense of the muscles of the diaphram through gentle timed breathing cycles

[DeusTrismegistus]

Holding the breath can increase lung capacity. That is useful. As long as your breath holding is not tied condionally to factors that may make you hold it involuntarily. It is also useful to learn how to stay relaxed while not breathing. I found being choked enough did that though. Eventually you realize that if you stay calm you stay awake longer and have a better chance of finding a way out.

When people are under stress in combat they tend to hold their breath. Learning to keep breathing and recognize when you are involuntarily holding your breath is really important to learning how to stay relaxed while sparring/fighting. Also when you are holding your breath is how you get hurt when you get hit, if you are exhaling you won't get the wind knocked out of you for example.

I can see the usefulness of increasing lung capacity, and relaxing while deprived of oxygen. There may be valid qigong and yoga methods for breath retention too that I may practice in the future. When it comes to training to fight though I am going to avoid anything that might make lead to me inadvertantly hold my breath through conditioning.

[middleway]

there are three fazes of breath .. in out and pause .... the pause happens between the in and the out it may be a micro second but there is a point where you are neither breathing in or out ... Its good to work on the transition between these three as well as with them individually. So really with every breath we are 'holding' our breath in that pause faze.

Working while holding your breath (both in and out) is useful.... mainly from a mind training perspective, but can increase capacity etc also ... which is obviously applicable to combat. you are learning to control your body and the associated fear that arrises using your mind. as pointed out by Ian. Mind training cannot be overlooked ... and breath training can be a very good way to train to understand panic response, fear, etc....

learning to breath 'shallow' is also useful. Get the heaviest guy in your class to lay over your chest or stomach while your led down and try to breath using the 'classical' way ... you may have to use what you can and still be able to function ... usually a panic responce is seen and you have to control your breath with much more shallow breaths than you would stood up then work from there.

Holding breath when the shit hits the fan isnt good ... learning to work with the 3 fases of breath helps you recognise what your doing with your breathing and connect natural breathing to the movement you make.

There is a saying that 'the posture breaths for you' so as you move through your form or chi gung or whatever ... what does the body want to do with its breath ... do the pressures on the body caused by the postures make the breath naturally go in or out ....

Its good interesting training. IMO breath is also one of the most obvious and visible links to psychological state that we can see.

Of course breath work can have adverse effects as well as the positive ones .... so you have to be careful, preferable work with a teacher. But EVERY practice can have adverse effects if not done properly....!!!

cheers
Chris

[Daniel]

Edited for brevity.

D.


Sarcasm. Oh yeah, like that´ll work.

[Darthwing Teorist]

there are three fazes of breath .. in out and pause .... the pause happens between the in and the out it may be a micro second but there is a point where you are neither breathing in or out ... Its good to work on the transition between these three as well as with them individually. So really with every breath we are 'holding' our breath in that pause faze.

Working while holding your breath (both in and out) is useful.... mainly from a mind training perspective, but can increase capacity etc also ... which is obviously applicable to combat. you are learning to control your body and the associated fear that arrises using your mind. as pointed out by Ian. Mind training cannot be overlooked ... and breath training can be a very good way to train to understand panic response, fear, etc....

learning to breath 'shallow' is also useful. Get the heaviest guy in your class to lay over your chest or stomach while your led down and try to breath using the 'classical' way ... you may have to use what you can and still be able to function ... usually a panic responce is seen and you have to control your breath with much more shallow breaths than you would stood up then work from there.

Holding breath when the shit hits the fan isnt good ... learning to work with the 3 fases of breath helps you recognise what your doing with your breathing and connect natural breathing to the movement you make.

There is a saying that 'the posture breaths for you' so as you move through your form or chi gung or whatever ... what does the body want to do with its breath ... do the pressures on the body caused by the postures make the breath naturally go in or out ....

Its good interesting training. IMO breath is also one of the most obvious and visible links to psychological state that we can see.

Of course breath work can have adverse effects as well as the positive ones .... so you have to be careful, preferable work with a teacher. But EVERY practice can have adverse effects if not done properly....!!!

cheers
Chris

Chris punched the breath out of the correct.

Ian, that is a good point about kids holding their breath. Breathing is NOT a solely unconscious process, though it is most efficient when run unconsciously. We have conscious control over breathing as well. Keep in mind that certain people do not breathe in the most efficient manner. This can be taught through exercises, using breathing control, until it becomes second nature.

I've been doing this stuff for almost 4 years now, and I am alive and kicking. Obviously, you have to know what you are doing and stay withing some safe limits. Keep in mind that holding the breath is often used to emphasize the importance of breathing. My teacher calls this principle "beating out the stupid", meaning that you start by doing something that is wrong, just to see the difficulties then you move to correct practice. In general this approach will convince almost anyone as to what the correct practice is. But I diverge.

Anyway, I checked this thread to post about square breathing, because I mentioned it before but I am not sure that everyone is familiar with it. Basically, you do something repetitious, like pushups, situps, squats, jogging, walking etc. It can be applied to anything where you can measure time: from biking to cleaning dishes to driving (be careful though practicing when driving: always focus on the road). What you do, is breath for 1 count, hold your breath full for 1 count, exhale for 1 count, hold your breath empty for 1 count etc. Then you progressively increase the count for each phase then come back again to 1 count. More advanced drills include asymmetric counts for various phases. There is also an easier version where you don't do the holding the
breath phases. This is NOT used in fighting. It is an exercise in controlled breathing. It promotes relaxation: it is VERY hard to do without proper relaxation. It also removes tension from the body, even after a short practice so we sometimes use it to cool down after an intense session, such as wrestling.

[Darthwing Teorist]

Stupid as hell, regardless of what physical activity you're engaged in. Triply so when your life is on the line.

How about when snorkeling?

[Dmitri]

I used to practice some yoga breathing back in the day when I was running in the morning... Would start with 4-8-8 pattern (inhale during 4 steps, hold for 8 steps, exhale for 8 steps), then as the body warmed up it would go to 4-8-4, 2-4-4, sometimes 2-4-2, and sometimes 2-0-4 (on days when I wasn't feeling all that great.)
Just came up with it while experimenting with things on my own... Didn't seem to have had any negative effect on my health; probably to the contrary.

But as far as martial stuff -- I don't think it's a good idea. Esp. in the IMA, since IMHO holding your breath is the epitome of "raising qi", and I haven't heard that ever being mentioned as a good thing to do.

As a separate (non-MA) training though, e.g. part of some qigong or yoga practices -- absolutely; it's great stuff, on its own. Good for yer heart, or at least so I heard. When done properly, of course.

[Brady]

Wow . . . thanks for all the responses this thread turned out way more interesting answers than I had hoped for. Gotta love the flower.
I'm gonna step aside and keep listening because it is clear than 95% of the folks here have much more developed thoughts on the matter than myself. Still, I'm sorta in the camp that if you can feel your body and are smart about it you ain't gonna be causing hemmoroids or an aneurysm. I mean, if its that dangerous, then I'd better quit Judo and live in a buble because I do so many things way more dangerous than consciously holding my breath for a few seconds.
-Brady

[DeusTrismegistus]

Wow . . . thanks for all the responses this thread turned out way more interesting answers than I had hoped for. Gotta love the flower.
I'm gonna step aside and keep listening because it is clear than 95% of the folks here have much more developed thoughts on the matter than myself. Still, I'm sorta in the camp that if you can feel your body and are smart about it you ain't gonna be causing hemmoroids or an aneurysm. I mean, if its that dangerous, then I'd better quit Judo and live in a buble because I do so many things way more dangerous than consciously holding my breath for a few seconds.
-Brady

I messed up my breathing before because I was experimenting on my own. I tied my breath to a visualization that ended up inadvertantly raising my qi and making me breath very shallow. I couldn't even stand in a horse stance for 10 seconds when it was its worse. I had no power in anything I did. My balance was horrendous. My teacher had to help me fix it and what damage I did in a couple months took over a year to fix. I actually still have problems with tension in my throat that constricts my breathing. I don't know about hemmorhoids or aneurysms but I can see messing your breathing up contributing to blood pressure problems which may contribute to those things. Holding your breath by itself isn't really a problem, its what you do with your mind and body while holding your breath that may be a problem IMO.

[Darthwing Teorist]

I just want to emphasize, that Systema uses relaxed, flowing breathing that is independent of physical activities (meaning that you can punch for example, no matter what breathing phase you are in, because in real life you don't have time to synchronize your breathing when getting smacked from the blindside).

That said, we DO use breath holding for certain TRAINING purposes, however it does not interfere with our goal of smooth, relaxed and independent breathing. I found breath holding to be very beneficial, even fun (afterwards).

[Bao]

I think holding breath is something opposite to the philosophy of "natural" or pre-heavenly movements in IMA. In Chinese thought, "holding breath practice" or "power-breathing" are regarded as strength training. It is a kind of "yang" practice which is very hard for the body and should not be practiced after you reach an age of about 45-50. I don't know if there is a kind of superstition involved, but maybe you should be a bit careful with this kind of practice. I have heard about modern versions of qigong and yoga which involves "power-breathing", where practitioners have fainted, throwed up, or even started crying, in class. I think Deustrigsomething point to this trouble. Don't mix with your body if you are not sure about what you do. But also, breathing can be a powerful tool if you practice with care.

[Darthwing Teorist]

I don't know if there is a kind of superstition involved, but maybe you should be a bit careful with this kind of practice.

I heard that you become deaf and then go to Hell if you hold your breath.



PS: Obviously, it is bad if you don't know what you are doing and you can't relax and look like this while training:



If you know what you are doing, it is good training.

[middleway]

i think we have a bit of a problem with imagery here.

I think maybe people think that when others talk of 'holding breath' they assume its a big in breath, a red face, a puffed out chest, a whole bunch of pressure ... and a big release afterwards ...

This could not be farther from the ideas i am familiar with ...

Like i say there are 3 breath fazes.... In out and pause ... no matter how rounded or circular or smooth you make the breathing these three parts of breath will always be there ... there will always be a pause.

You can 'hold' your breath pause after the in or out pause. So you may excersise after a natural breath out ... or after a NATURAL breath in .... Not pumping as much air into your lungs as you can!!

you can also work with extending the in faze, but the pause and out being natural ... or the in and pause natural and the out faze extended ... or you ca link the fazes to motion.... there is a huge body of work on breath training and breath training linked to motion in IMA, EMA, JMA, CMA, RMA .....

We are not talking about conditioning to do this in combat in any way. I think we all know that ideally you breath smoothly and naturally in a fight! What we are talking about here are training methods to explore psychological and physiological responses.

That said .... knowing how to work when you cant breath is pretty useful if you have been winded! (only semi kidding)

cheers
chris

[klonk]

[...] It is a kind of "yang" practice which is very hard for the body and should not be practiced after you reach an age of about 45-50. [...]

Good, I'm off the hook! Kinda reminds me of some sites on the Internet, that say "You must be 18 years of age to enter this site." So I click past them, saying, thank goodness I'm too old for this crap!

[RobP]

The interesting thing for me was finding that the Systema breath work (8 years and no bad effects BTW) led back to Hesychasm and Western monastic practices.

It all needs guidance, but I can't imagine training without breathwork

cheers

Rob