Want To Breathe Properly? Learn Buteyko
By Eric Cho
Buteyko is a breathing technique that seeks to re-train people with breathing disorders. The program deals with people suffering from asthma or other breathing problems and tries to change their breathing patterns to reduce symptoms of the ailment. When symptoms are reduced, medications too become redundant.
People suffering from sleep disorders, breathing disorders, sinus or hay fever can be retrained to control their symptoms.
With the help of Buteyko, it is possible to reduce or even eliminate the use of medication safely.As with any holistic healing process the breathing patterns used in Buteyko also helps to increase energy levels, thereby making the individual feel healthy and buoyant.
About fifty years ago, Dr. Konstantin Pavlovich Buteyko noticed that the more ill people became, the more they needed to breathe in. Bringing the volume of their breath back to normal led to an elimination of symptoms and even helped normalize their discomfort. To put it very simplistically, he said that the more you breathe, the closer you are to death. Conversely, the less you breathe the healthier you get.
To make it effective, Dr. Buteyko developed a method of breathing that allowed people to use a lesser volume of air effectively for all body purposes. In a short span of time, people with cardiovascular diseases, allergies, high blood pressure, immunity problems, chronic fatigue and stress-related problems show drastic improvement. Breath holding and the controlled reduction of ventilation are the twin pillars on which the Buteyko method stands.
Many people believe that the purpose of breathing is to get in as much oxygen as possible. However they are totally ignorant of the need to maintain a balance between oxygen and carbon dioxide levels in the body. A body that is depleted of carbon dioxide (as is often the case when we over-breathe) cannot make optimum use of the oxygen supply. Thus the tissues suffer from oxygen depletion. This leads to disease.
Thus there are two kinds of breathing – good breathing and bad breathing. Allergic reactions and breathing problems are some of the common manifestations of bad breathing. The body creates nasal restrictions to restrict the CO2 levels and this appears as sinusitis, nasal polyps, asthma and bronchitis.
According to Dr. Buteyko a healthy individual should be able to hold his breath for forty seconds after a normal expiration. Asthmatics can barely hold theirs for more than 10 seconds. Even people with overt breathing problems cannot stay too long without gasping for air. Since most of us are totally unaware of our breathing processes, we are also unaware of how this pattern changes and how it affects our health.
Many factors contribute to bad breathing. For instance, the lack of exercise or even an excess of it can lead to increased CO2 levels in our body. Even the highly processed food we eat leads to breathing problems. Stress and tension, over wrought emotions are just some other factors that contribute.
By focusing on breathing techniques one is able to purposely induce calm by breathing properly. This helps to calm the nervous system and normalize body functions. The Buteyko system is probably the only form of breath-retraining that teaches people to reduce their air intake while maintaining a relaxed diaphragm. This technique usually needs guidance from a trained Buteyko practitioner. Most practitioners teach breathing techniques over a five day period. Once the technique is learnt, it can be practiced by the individual on his own.
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