Have you ever tried to catch your breath? Possibly after exercising or running beyond the range of your endurance you have found yourself hunched over, gasping for air? The deeper you breathe, the harder it seems to recover? What could be the cause? When you have too much oxygen intake, the results can sometimes be dramatic. Too much oxygen in your bloodstream reduces the amount of carbon dioxide, which is necessary for delivering hemoglobin to the tissues that need it. As a result, over-breathing, otherwise known as hyperventilation, can have an adverse effect on all the organs of your body, which can disrupt cardiac and respiratory function, damage the nervous, lymphatic and immune systems, change your metabolism and disturb your overall health. Of course, not all of these symptoms will occur, and any that do occur will probably not happen immediately but over a period of time, months or years, a chain effect from hyperventilation (i.e., the reduction of oxygen delivery to vital tissues) can result in illness, disease and even the truncation of your lifespan. But breathing normally and with the optimal amount of oxygen intake isn’t how most people breathe. Breathing so that the right number of carbon dioxide molecules is present to assist in delivering oxygen-carrying hemoglobin to the cellular tissues that need it does not come naturally. Specialists who have studied the way people breathe and how it relates to the development of difficulties have seen improvement when people learn how to normalize their breathing through the use of breathing exercises. Learning how to take control of one’s breathing in such a way as to optimize its effect on the body, according to specialists, can lead to reversals in symptoms for many people who suffer from a broad range of...