A Complex Vital Process

Breathing (respiration) is not merely inhalation and exhalation (breathing in and out, intake of oxygen and release of carbon dioxide in living organisms) as it might seem. It is a complex process of the body’s metabolism taking place in cells, which is similar to burning. From physics classes we know that there is no burning without oxygen (02). Its final product is carbon dioxide (CO2). Let’s take glucose (sugar) for illustration: the metabolism of sugars (burning sugars) takes place at body temperature (approx. 37 °C/98.6 °F).

There must be a certain balance of the O2 and CO2 gases in living organisms. But if oxygen permanently exceeds the norm, it causes the so-called verigo effect. That means that if the percentage of CO2 is smaller it causes the blood pH to turn alkaline. (This biochemical effect was confirmed by the physiologists Bohr and Henderson.) The consequence of this is damage to the body’s metabolism at the cellular level; it affects the immune system of the body. It then fails to react adequately to the external negative stimuli and causes strange allergic reactions such as joint arthritis, osteochondrosis (from Greek: osteon - bone, chondros - cartilage; pathological changes in bones, discs and cartilages), acute cramps, gout etc.

We said that these allergic reactions are caused by smaller CO2 concentration. Another symptom is the sclerotisation of blood vessels and smooth muscles.

But the verigo effect is also seen in the following process: erythrocytes (red blood cells) transport O2 from the lungs to the cells and CO2 from the cells to lungs. Erythrocytes contain hemoglobin (hem - iron, globin - protein; it is a biochemical unit capable of taking O2, transporting it, handing it over and exchanging it for CO2. The color of our blood is influenced by iron’s qualities. If it contains O2, it is bright red, and if it contains CO2, it is dark red). If there is too much O2 and little CO2, hemoglobin may keep the O2 for a maximum time in a chemical connection, which is unnatural in normal breathing. It leads to a chronic insufficiency of O2 in the body. Yet we can see that the person breathes a lot, it is a strange paradox. We breathe more and we are suffocating.

Take snoring for example. A lot of people suffer from it in their sleep. But what is it actually? What causes snoring? A person breathing normally doesn’t snore at night. But people who breathe excessively have oxygen poisoning resembling anesthesia. If you happen to know an anesthesiologist, ask him or her how people who have been anaesthetized snore before coming round. It bears no relation to age. Some children snore too.

Oxygen poisoning is like this: You breathe quickly deeply in and out several times in a row, and your head starts spinning and you may feel sick.

The positive impact of carbon dioxide is as follows: If you hit your finger, or experience any other kind of trauma, you immediately stop breathing. CO2 levels rise significantly in the organism and pain is subsiding. The same effect takes place when you go to the toilet. Everyone holds their breath for a certain while during excretion. CO2 opens up the intestinal smooth muscle.

It is formerly active sportsmen and women (not necessarily just the professionals), but also people who do sport only occasionally, singers and people in extreme stressful situations who are most afflicted by this syndrome. Stress is nothing else than a reaction to fear. Sport teaches you to breathe a lot, but once you stop playing sport actively, you stop moving so much, but you keep breathing the same as if the load were the same. The same problem is seen in pearl divers, who have large lungs (they can stay under water for up to 5 or even 6 minutes), and good health but die relatively young (their life expectancy is about 45 years). If we could breathe properly we would definitely live much longer. And that is the problem hidden behind “deep breathing syndrome”.

The predecessors of Homo sapiens started to breathe more and faster. They ran away to save their lives if they were afraid of something (e.g. wild animals). In this way, the consumption of O2 rose, and poisoning did not occur thanks to their movement.

But just imagine a person in our rushed and hectic world who is yelled at by the boss at work. (Leaving aside the question whether this attack is justified or not) True, the person in question has the same bodily reaction as his predecessor in our story, but contrary to him the modern person does not move. He cannot run anywhere at that moment. That is why we have headaches and backaches, pains in the joints and heart, cramps in our stomach and other organs etc. It was not the boss who caused it; the culprit is the deep breathing. A normal person can live up to a month without food, a week (but only one or two days at the most in the desert) without water, three to four days without sleep, but only three to four minutes without breathing, not more. A month without food and three minutes without breathing – that is an interval up to ten thousand times shorter. So, treatment by breathing is ten thousand times more effective than dietary treatment.

In the 1860s, Leo Kefler, a German singer, contracted tuberculosis of the throat and lost his voice. It was at that time that he met yogis from whom he took over some breathing exercises and created his own method: to take a full deep breath and to sing different singing exercises as you breathe out (in total there are 60 of them). After exhalation there is a two to three second pause which enables the accumulation of CO2. It was in this way that the singer saved himself. On the basis of his own experience he decided to help others who were similarly afflicted.

In an experiment, chemists took a solution of kitchen salt (NaCl) similar to blood and started to enrich it with CO2. The more CO2 was in the solution, the easier it was to dissolve calcium, potassium and magnesium in the salt and vice versa: the less CO2, the more difficult it was to dissolve the minerals. It appears from this that O2 and CO2 are competitors. The more we breathe, the more O2 is in the blood and the less CO2. That means that the salts dissolve worse, the kidneys cannot wash out the residual salt and so it starts to deposit in the joints (gout), spine (osteochondrosis), kidneys (sand, stones), gall-bladder (stones) and the body’s vessels start to sclerotize and mineralize.

If you want to check how you are breathing, sit down comfortably, relax and stop breathing. Watch the time as you do this. If you can go without breathing at least 50 seconds (preferably more) and then go on breathing without gasping for air it means you are healthy. But if you experience a great difficulty doing it, or if you can’t keep without breathing at all, you suffer from deep breathing syndrome. This problem can be eliminated by breathing exercises, which need to become a part of your daily life. Often, it is only people with severe problems who take up this exercise. That is because it requires a great motivation or strong willpower. But it should rather become a lifestyle for us all. If you breathe according to this method, you get the same amount of oxygen as if you were high up in the mountains. The renowned Arabian medical doctor and philosopher Ibn Sína (Avicenna in Latin) sent the ill to the mountains for treatment, because with rising altitude there is less oxygen.

Taking too many deep breaths in a row may cause people with asthma to have an asthmatic fit. At the end of 19th century, the American physiologist Henderson did experiments with dogs where he forced them to breathe deeply, and this breathing killed them within several minutes.

On the other hand, the positive influence of CO2 is known from embryology (science of embryonic development of multi-cellular organisms). The human fetus takes two times less oxygen and 1.5 times more carbon dioxide from its mother’s organism that the pregnant woman herself, during its nine months of development. Why is that? Does the mother want to kill her baby with the “poisonous” CO2? Or are these the ideal conditions for the development of a healthy human being?

It is best to do these exercises sitting – in the mornings or evenings before going to sleep. We start by exercising for several minutes and increase it gradually to two to three hours a day to get the required result. Do not be afraid of the problem which often manifests itself through pains in the sick organs. What is happening is that your body is purifying itself, so you should actually be happy to see this reaction.

Sit down comfortably and relax. Start with a small inhalation (silently count to three), then a gentle longer exhalation (count to five). Do this for several minutes until you start feeling heat in your body. Keep going as long as you can. We finish by gentle and calm breathing.

If you are correctly breathing during the exercise then there is a constant feeling of not getting enough oxygen, which we can stand a couple hours a day. The outcome of our effort is a lengthening of the pause without breathing, which we can increase substantially through regular exercise.

The first crisis may come after 20 seconds without breathing. It is optimal to reach the 50 second limit, or exceed it.

What is the pause without breathing? It is a state when you do not breathe, are completely relaxed and then go on breathing with a normal inhalation and exhalation (not like you were suffocating!).