Can You Breathe With Your Feet?

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When I first begin to work with a client, I spend a lot of time with them on their breathing.

Most people (it’s estimated to be 90%) don’t know how to breathe properly. When you breathe fully and completely, you exercise the lungs completely. You begin to use the remote sections of the lungs, the lower lobes, that remain unused by most people.

Activating a greater portion of your lungs increases your energy levels and boosts your vitality. This is a huge help if you are out of shape and starting a fitness or exercise program. It also provides a significant boost to performance if you are training or competing. Elite athletes work on their breathing patterns to help them train harder and longer and get an edge in competition.

When I teach martial arts, I pay attention to how the student is breathing. Many times, as they work on their forms or sparring, they will actually stop breathing!

I think this is partly a reaction to performing something new and challenging. When we are unsure of ourselves or our capacity to handle the thing in front of us, we often pull within ourselves and tighten up. We try harder, we clench up.

Before you know it, we are breathing so shallow as to hardly be breathing at all.

Most breathing instruction centers around abdominal breathing, with the primary focus being whether your abdomen moves in and out when you breathe. This is an incomplete approach. When you breathe properly, you are using the muscles and structures of your chest, abdomen, sides and back. You should see and feel these areas moving, expanding, then relaxing with every full, complete breath.

Ancient martial arts instructors and philosophers even taught that you should breathe all the way into your feet!

Of course, your lungs don’t reach to your feet. Their point was to imagine you were breathing all the way down to your feet. This helps ground you and puts you in a position of strength and stability.

It may take you some practice before you are able to breathe this completely. In the Secret Power of Dynamic Energy Exercise Course, you learn how to breathe completely. You also learn an incredible series of exercises that will have you breathing more completely and fully than ever before — while simultaneously relaxing and rejuvenating your body.

Some of the exercises you learn are adapted from traditional breathing methods, methods that involve and engage practically the entire body. They help open up your airways, strengthen the muscles that support breathing, and leave you feeling clear and energized. When you feel this good, breathing from your feet seems like a piece of cake.

You Can Do It!

Karen

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