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Health Through Breath Control

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Improving Health Through Breath Control.

Proper Breathing Techniques Are Necessary For Optimum Health.

I’ve been fortunate to be involved with lots of people from many different walks of life and countries from around the world, both as a teacher and a student.  There is one health essential that crosses all cultures and age groups and that is, most people don’t breathe correctly.  Following is one of the exercises I’ve incorporated into my health programs.

Stand with the feet shoulder width or a little wider apart.  The feet should be parallel or slightly turned in.  This helps relax the knees, hips and lower back by taking pressure off the joints and take pressure off the heels.  Every energy channel in the body runs through the heels.  Bend the knees slightly to allow for energy flow.  Locking any joint stops or slows the energy at that point and causes stress and tension.  Don’t bend the knees too much because that adds tension to the supporting muscles.  Later, as you become more proficient at the posture, you can experiment with how deeply you want to bend the knees.

The lower back should be straight.  This can be accomplished by tucking the pelvis and lengthening the spine.  Try imagining there’s a hook attached to the top of your head that’s gently pulling your head upward.  The chin should be slightly tucked and the gaze level.  A level gaze balances the right and left brain hemispheres. 

Raise the arms out to the sides and horizontal.  The shoulders aren’t collapsed in or pulled back, just relaxed and comfortable.  Bend the elbows inward, fingers pointing toward each other.  The position is the same as if you’re hugging a tree.   

The posture opens the shoulders, separates the ribs and allows maximum space in the chest cavity for the lungs to expand.  Take a few deep breaths monitoring the ease with which you can breathe and the volume of air when inhaling and exhaling completely.  Next, without changing anything else, drop the arms to the sides.  Now inhale and exhale the same volume.  You should be able to feel how much easier the complete inhale and exhale is in the tree posture, as opposed to the normal standing position.

Standing in the tree posture, breathe completely in through the nose and completely out through the mouth ten times, or as many as feels comfortable to you.  On the exhale, with the lips puckered as if whistling, say the word wuu in a low tone, then eee in mid-range and finally ahh high pitched, all with the lips puckered.  Say the words as slowly as possible.  At first you may only be able to say the words for 10 seconds or less. With practice some people have been able to go as long as 40 seconds.  You’ll find the three sounds, healing sounds in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), resonate in different areas of the body. 

This posture has proven over thousands of years to be effective for asthma and emphysema patients.  This is a foundation posture in many healing and therapeutic breath control procedures.  Yoga, T’ai Chi, Qi Gong and Ruesri Dut Ton from Thailand all use the breath as a basis for healing.

 

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About Larry Miller

I was born in Los Angeles in 1940. My father was a fighter pilot instructor during WWll and we moved from coast to coast, maybe that’s where I got the nomad in my blood. After graduating from high school in 1958 I joined the Marines. That lifestyle wasn’t for me and upon my discharge I went on with my life, and have never looked back. I worked briefly for a Caterpillar dealer in Riverside, CA before moving back to N. California where I was a welder and truck driver for a chemical company. Truck driving wasn’t my calling anymore than being in the Marines, and I went back to work for another Caterpillar dealer steam cleaning dirty tractor parts and welding. They sent me to schools, lots and lots of schools. I spent as much time going to trade schools as I did at work. I went from cleaning parts to apprentice field mechanic, to mechanic to the parts department to satellite store manager in less than two years. They wanted me to move to Sacramento and be a salesman: I moved to Oregon to learn to commune with nature. I went to work for another heavy equipment dealer and was later contacted by the World’s largest Lorraine Crane dealer and offered the position of purchasing agent and general parts manager. In 1967 I was offered a line of automotive parts and supplies and went into business for myself. My business revolved around eleven race cars that we maintained for others, driving race cars professionally and maintaining high end sports cars. I was a championship and regional champion driver. My business was the largest import parts and service, non dealer, in the state until I sold it in 1979. We went sailing in 79, first to Mexico and then Hawaii. I was an award winning Trans-Pacific sailor and sailor of the year, Hawaii, Island of Kauai. An opportunity presented itself in Hawaii during 1981 and I was back in business, importing Japanese auto body and hard parts. I also felt the pull to write and began freelancing for magazines and newspapers in 1982. My main focus in my articles is, and always has been, health, wellness and fitness. Most of us have heard the saying, “Time is all we have.” I disagree. Our health is all we have, because without our health, we have no time. I was a US Olympic team hopeful in racewalking and held all the records for the state of Hawaii. As a sponsored athlete in my forties, I finished first in nine marathons in a row in my division, qualified for the Ironman® and was the state USCF cycling champion five times in Hawaii and Oregon. Celinda and I were married in 1988 after a three year engagement. We sold our businesses and organic farm and sailed back to Oregon. After our sailboat boat was sold, we moved to Joseph, Oregon, two miles from the trailhead into the Eagle Cap Wilderness. We were caregivers for my mother the last ten years she was alive. We moved to New Mexico in 1995 because it was too cold for my mom in Oregon during the winters. Celinda designed, and I engineered and built our strawbale house. I began writing the weekly health column for a local newspaper in 1996, and still do. In 2000, I took the summer off to do a four month, 4000 mile, hike, bike and kayak odyssey. I’d been writing health, fitness and sports articles since 1982 and the journey produced a full-length, nonfiction, first person adventure book, Yol Bolsun, May There Be A Road, which can be bought from Amazon.com and others over the Internet. The summer of 2001 was spent hiking. kayaking, fishing and exploring the southwest. In 2002 Celinda and I spent the summer in Canada learning the hospitality business at a resort in preparation for doing promotion for the resort in the US. Most of 2003 was spent reestablishing the trees and landscape that had died during the stay in Canada. We had a house sitter and the house sitter had an ex-husband, and that’s a long story. In July of 2004 I did a solo kayak trip on the Snake River, taking pictures, writing articles and pencil sketching the journey. I hope to do another kayak adventure on the Snake River during the summer of 2008, on the section I missed in 2000 and 2004. In 2005, I returned to Canada to the resort where we’d spent 2002. I was supposed to be there for the month of June. I’d contacted people I’d met in 2002 and they came back to Canada to fish, hike and spend time at the resort, Echo Valley Ranch and Spa, while I was there. My one month became five and then it was off to Spain to do the El Camino de Santiago as a travel companion with one of the guests who’d returned to Canada in June. During the summer of 2006 a friend from Ireland, who I’d met in Spain the year before, came to visit in NM and we fished, hiked and explored the White Mountains of AZ. He’d never slept out in the wild in a tent before, and it was quite an experience, for both of us. My newspaper articles were put on the Internet beginning in 2002. I was asked to give public speaking engagements, photo and video presentations, on various subjects for the library in Deming, NM and continue to do so. In 2006 I videoed and produced a DVD for the Smithsonian Institute’s travel exhibit “Between Fences.” NMFILMS had a conference by invitation only, which I attended. While attending the conference, I realized that film making wasn’t what I wanted to do but I still wanted to use my sixteen years of experience and enjoyment of videoing and photography. During the winter of 2005, I discovered that no one on record had ever run from the Arizona border to the Texas border, a distance of 165 miles. During the spring and summer of 2006 I trained for the run and the run was completed in October, 2006. In late 2005, I began building and maintaining websites incorporating all the things I enjoyed about video, photography, travel and the out of doors. 2007 has been a summer of upgrading the home and property which resulted in a downgrading of my enthusiasm for being located in one place. If we don’t like what’s happening in our life, we need to change what we’re doing. Celinda and I are ready to pull up roots and move on. I guess I’ve come full circle. I’m ready to revert back to my childhood, and a nomadic lifestyle.

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