Most of us do not pay attention to our breathing unless we are having difficulty. Then, we pay attention. But for the most part, since breathing is automatic, we tend to ignore the way we breathe and believe that it takes care of itself. There is a big difference between mindless and mindful breathing. The way that you breathe when you are unaware, may be influenced by other facets of your overall health and the lack of awareness of our habitual breathing can cause damage to our health. For instance, when we chronically over-breathe, our breathing can become a struggle as we gasp for air. When we are nervous and tend to be anxious, we may find ourselves breathing heavily through our mouths and hyperventilating at times. If our nostrils are often “stuffed-up” as though we have a perpetual cold, our breathing may be characterized by an open mouth as we more or less ignore the function of our nostrils. Whatever the case may be, most people breathe poorly, out of habit and lack of awareness, according to some experts. Mindful breathing, as contrasted with mindless breathing, is marked by inhalations and exhalations that involve taking in just the right amount of air to best benefit your body’s needs, according to our activity level. Too much air, and our body’s cells, tissues, and organs will also suffer from oxygen deprivation. That may sound strange, but it is true. Mindless, heavy breathing means not enough carbon dioxide, which is necessary to deliver oxygen through the blood to the tissues that need it. Normalizing your breathing means learning to breathe in mindful way rather than mindless over-breathing or hyperventilating – which is so prevalent in our society. One can mindfully reduce the breaths in order to...

In the 1950s, Dr. Konstantin Buteyko was working with sick patients when he noticed something…the breathing that they were doing was getting deeper and more pronounced the sicker the patients became. Over time, Dr. Buteyko began to actually measure the rate of breath of his fatally ill patients and this put him on the path to his life’s work, now known as the Buteyko Method. What His Experiments Found As Dr. Buteyko looked more closely at the way people were taking in air as they came close to death, he was able to accurately predict the day of death simply by measuring the way they breathe. What he found, after time and observations, was that it was quite possible that the amount of air we were taking in was actually having a detrimental effect on our health, yet so many health professionals tell people to breathe in deeper. He tried this hypothesis out on himself, as he was a lifelong sufferer of hypertension. Within weeks, his hypertension had disappeared. In order to check this hypothesis in the opposite way, he had perfectly healthy people practice deep breathing for a period of time. Every subject who was tested experienced dizziness, nausea, coughing, wheezing and eventually passed out. This became known as hyperventilation, or breathing too much. The Buteyko Method, Today These days, the Buteyko Method is widely practiced as a way to treat a variety of illnesses and conditions. Because it is simply a way to breathe in a different way, it is easy enough for anyone to use it. There are no medications involved in the Buteyko Method, nor any type of medical procedure. This is why it is preferred over other types of medical treatment, especially when children are involved. There are many...