Your Life Is a Series of Breaths

Breathing is at the center of our existence. All other functions of the body depend on it. You may survive some time without eating; a shorter time without drinking; but without breathing, your life may be measured by a few minutes.

As children, we all breathe properly, filling all parts of our lungs. Then we grow up and adopt bad habits.

At some point during my childhood, my parents instructed me to breathe by filling up my upper chest, lifting the shoulders up, without considering the lower part of my abdomen… so that’s what I did. Until I discovered, in my early 20’s, that I had been doing it wrong.

Did I survive? Yes.

Was I using the maximum capacity of my lungs? Was I oxygenating all the blood before it returned to the rest of the body? I don’t think so.

Have you stopped to consider if you are breathing properly?

Not only are we dependent upon breath for life, but we are largely dependent upon correct habits of breathing for continued vitality and freedom from disease. An intelligent control of our breathing power will lengthen our days on earth by giving us increased energy and vitality. And, on the other hand, unintelligent and careless breathing will tend to shorten our days, by decreasing our vitality and making us susceptible to disease.

The Yogis teach that our physical health depends very materially upon correct breathing. And in addition to the physical benefit obtained from correct habits of breathing, our mental power, happiness, self-control, clarity, morals, and even our spiritual growth may be increased by an understanding of the "Science of Breath."

• Pay attention to your breathing.

• Fill the lower, middle and upper part of your lungs.

• Breathe through your nose.

From the first faint breath of an infant to the last gasp of a dying person, life is but a series of breaths.