Cross Breathing

[zellerzone]

If he desire of a man, 'May he be likely to die', he should set them
down for him without being in contact; verily he severs his expiration
and inspiration from cross-breathing; swiftly he dies. If he desire of
a man, 'May he live all his days', he should set them down for him in
contact; verily he connects his expiration and inspiration with cross-
breathing; he lives all his days.

Vajur Veda, Book 6 Part 4

[zellerzone]

"One's breathing is amazingly important. It is one of the mechanisms
that keeps one alive on this planet. It also is that which massages
the soft organs within the belly cavity and within the chest cavity."

John Lilly, _The Dyadic Cyclone_

"...the breath should be gentle and continuous. This means that the
exhalation of the old and the inhalation of the new should be
"continuous",
"neither existent nor dead". In other words, you should adjust your
aspiration into
long and slim one, just as the silkworm spins continuously and
endlessly.
Its theory is like a spider knitting its web. The spider must
knit the vertical threads first, then the horizontal threads. After
finishing
this task, the spider returns to the web core and waits patiently in
order to
deal with the other worms but let them plunge into the cobweb. At the
same
time, it catches and eats them quickly. So is the procedure of using
the
virtuous breath to resist the evil breath and defeat the disease."

"The Most Important Rhyme", author unknown

I've recently rediscovered a technique I've used before. I guess you
could call it cross breathing. It seems to incorporate the benefits of
Yoga and Tai Chi without having to go through all that nonsense of
learning the "right" way. If you stand in a quiet place, or if you
stand in a not-so-quiet place while wearing earplugs, and rotate your
shoulders while twisting your torso, you'll soon hear a noise like
heavy breathing. A sort of wheezing. This is not the sound of air
rushing in-and-out. It's the sound of air rushing from one lung to the
other.

As Lilly pointed out, breathing massages your internal organs. So far
so good. When you inhale, you take in oxygen. Good. You need it. When
you exhale, you lose carbon dioxide. Not so good. You need it, too. Oh
sure, your body will make more of it, but not enough to compensate for
what you're losing if you're just standing or sitting there. Cross
breathing levels the playing field. Keeps you from losing CO2 faster
than you make it.

[zellerzone]

Of course, the wheezy rocking back-and-forth I described in the
previous post is just to give you the idea. In actual practice it's
much more subtle, drawing breath first with one side of the diaphragm,
then the other.

[zellerzone]

There's a video posted to YouTube titled "atemreduktion". In it you see somebody wearing a full-face respirator mask. All is silent as he slowly moves his head around ever so slightly. About 30 seconds later a hand appears and unscrews a hose fitting. Immediately there is a loud gasping for air. About a minute later the hand reappears, holding the hose. You can see that the end has been taped off. The hose is screwed back into the mask. The silent squirming resumes for another two minutes.

This video inspired (!) me to modify a old gas mask by adding a shut-off valve to the air inlet.  

[zellerzone]

And here it is.

[zellerzone]

With the valve closed, cross-breathing is the only kind I can do.

[zellerzone]

Years ago, I found a moth pupa like this in my back yard. As I held the rounded end between my thumb and forefinger, the articulated, pointed end squirmed around, its point describing a circle. Fascinating.

[zellerzone]

Am I the only one who noticed that average life expectancy had its
biggest increase during the very years when cigarette smoking was
almost universal?

[zellerzone]

After the valve has been closed a while, my diaphragm starts to
twitch. Flexing my waist and squirming around helps alleviate it. I
suspect this twitching is due not to too little oxygen, but rather too
much . Scuba divers are advised not to try to conserve air by holding
their breath, because the added CO2 leads to oxygen poisoning. Carbon
dioxide aids the transfer of oxygen from the blood to the body's
tissues.

[zellerzone]

I have a padded mask which I made that covers my mouth and nose. It
doesn't really restrict breathing, but it does keep my mouth shut and
makes me more aware of airflow through my nose. Makes it audible. I
bundle myself up warmly. I have velcro cuffs that wrap around my
wrists. I connect them together with a ratchet strap that goes around
my back, binding me in the classic straitjacket pose. I stay that way
for as much as three hours every morning. Sometimes sitting, sometimes
in a rocking chair. Sometimes standing. Or climbing stairs. Or walking
around outside.. Or lying down. Or doing sit-ups. Always cross-
breathing.

[zellerzone]

There's another passage in the Vedas which refers to "four naturally-
perforated bricks". It says exhaling is the first brick, cross
breathing is the second brick, inhaling the third. It doesn't say what
the fourth brick is. Laying a course of bricks calls to mind The Cask
of Amontillado.

[zellerzone]

"...if you can breathe through your nose, when you inhale, bring the breath down to just behind the navel, not below it. That place is empty and is without anything. In fact, from the beginning there has never been anything there. That is the place where your breath has to stop...a practitioner with sufficient skill does not breathe externally. That external breathing has stopped, but the internal breathing functions. With internal breathing there is no exhalation through the nose or mouth, but all the pores of the body are breathing. A person who is breathing internally appears to be dead..." -Hsuan Hua

[zellerzone]

Evolution has shortchanged us. As lomg as a species lives long enough to reproduce, its genes get passed on. We humans live long past the age of reproduction. No doubt there have been mutations that made that possible. Those mutations have been passed down to us, because the critter that had them had little ones. But there were plenty of critters that didn’t have those mutations. They also had little ones, and we inherited our genes from them, too.

[zellerzone]

Interestingly, an experiment found that increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the lungs causes your body to lose heat faster. I suspect this is because blood circulation to the skin is increased https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14660514