My Initial Discoveries With Breathing - From July 21, 2020

The following is some correspondence I had with Sifu Cosgrove regarding some of my initial discoveries with the breathing exercises I have been doing under her guidance. I wanted to both record this and share it with anyone interested, so decided to include it as a blog entry.

My Initial Discoveries:

"Hello Sifu! So this is what I have learned thus far with my breathing. And just so we're on the same page, this is when I'm doing the 3 minute (quiet and still) breathing exercise. So in the past I've focused on breathing through my nose. When doing that, you can literally feel the air going in and it tended to only fill my chest. If you recall I was initially struggling to breathe in for the 5 seconds!! I happened upon this "different" breath intake and it's been a game changer. And I can now reproduce it at will. Initially it was hit or miss. As I said, it doesn't truly feel as though I'm breathing in through my nose. I know I am because my mouth is closed, but I can't really feel the air in my nasal passage as when you typically breathe in through the nose. When I pay close attention, it actually feels as though I'm breathing in directly through my chest. Right in the middle. It feels as though the air fills my belly first and then continues to fill from the bottom up all the way to the top of my chest. I can also easily breathe in for about 7-8 seconds. When breathing out it seems as though its the opposite, where I release the air from my chest to my belly. Another thing I've noticed is that even once all the air has been released, I don't feel any sort of immediate pressure to inhale again. It almost feels as though I could stay in that state for a long time. I have not tested that and obviously I'd need to inhale eventually...lol. It's almost like the inhale and the exhale are flowing together so perfectly that it's all one and the same. Does that make any sense?"

Sifu Cosgrove's response:

"I believe you described through direct experience the anatomy of breathing. Look it up...you described how the muscles work in respiration! And...YOU experienced this. One cool thing about not feeling pressure to breathe in again, is that you are now breathing deeper, therefore using your respiratory system more fully...which will gift you the longevity in your martial arts practice.
And...
Feeling as if your chest is breathing rather than your nose could be an indication that there has been some stagnation or congestion release, creating a greater path for the respiration, and giving your lungs and heart optimal power. Now...this breath depth would be something to apply to Awakening the Dragon."

I didn't quite realize how important breathing was until I made these discoveries. Prior to that breathing was just breathing. My body knows how and just does it....right? Wrong. There are some really cool things about breathe and how it works and what it can really provide. I'm excited to keep learning about this.