If you’ve met me in the last one year, chances are you would
have received an unsolicited lecture on abdominal breathing. I can ‘see’ some
of you smiling! I thought I must share this with a wider audience as this may
benefit some others as it has benefitted me. It was 2 years ago that my husband
and I learnt Kriya yoga. While I don’t practice the entire breathing sequence,
what stuck to me is abdominal breathing which is used in Kriya yoga.
So let me tell you how I discovered this magical tool which
is available anywhere, anytime and free of cost! Last year in November, I was
diagnosed with dengue and was hospitalized. Although I knew about belly
breathing, it did not occur to me how it had benefitted me until I was
discharged from the hospital. In the hospital, my husband stood by my bedside
asking me to take deep breaths through my stomach. Though I was weak, I did as
much and for as long as I could. As soon as I was discharged from the hospital
I was up and about. I did not feel excessively weak as is the case with dengue
cases (which I realized much later). I was discharged on 25th
November evening and 27th early morning at 5 am I was off with my
husband to attend the Passing Out Parade (POP) at the National Defense Academy
(NDA). My Mother thought I was crazy. But that was an event I was looking
forward to for many months and I was feeling well enough to go.
People who came to visit me at home were surprised when I
myself opened the door and was helping my Mom in the kitchen. They expected to
see me bed-ridden. Exactly a week after I was discharged, we met two dear Army
friends. The gentleman remarked that he couldn’t believe I was in the hospital
just last week as he had seen many able bodied Army men look like zombies for 2
months after a dengue attack. Another hilarious incident happened when 2 weeks
after returning from the hospital, my brother-in-law from Chennai, decided to
pay a surprise visit to see how I was recuperating. I had just returned from a
jog and was cooking breakfast when he came. He looked really confused about my
condition. My Mother kept informing me of people who even two months later
enquired very sympathetically about my health.
It was then I wondered about why I had literally and almost
instantly sprung back to good health. The answer was clear: Belly breathing! Since
then I have been practicing belly breathing for all ailments and physical and
emotional too and giving unsolicited lectures on it to unsuspecting people ;-)
Whether it’s an itchy throat signaling the onset of fever
(in my case), or a headache, or even indigestion or feeling stuffed after
overeating, I do abdominal breathing and I’m back to normal. In May sometime, I
went for a jog without a warm up (don’t ask me why), and suddenly while jogging
I felt a shooting pain on my right calf muscle. I had to stop and limp back to
my house. For 2 days I went around limping and no amount of stretching or pain
balms helped. I don’t know why but only on the 3rd day it occurred
to me that I should try belly breathing. I did and next day onwards I was
walking normally and 3rd day onwards I was back to jogging. I was
surprised! Now my husband too had a knee injury from running since January and
medicines and Physiotherapy wasn’t helping too. So after breathing had cured me
of my severe catch on my leg, I asked my husband to try that for his knee.
Without exaggeration, the pain which had been with him for 5 months disappeared
in less than a week’s time!
Even right before my Himachal trip, just a week before, I
had sprained my right ankle by missing a step. As soon as I fell down, my first
thought was, “Gosh my trip is in 6 days”. Almost instantly I remembered the
abdominal breathing and did that almost continuously. And needless to say, I
did go on my trip, walked a lot, climbed trees, etc. My ankle did feel wobbly
at times and I pacified it with breathing.
Fast forward to 2 days back. On Thursday, last week, I cut
my tongue while eating, and it was very painful. I saw that there was a boil like
growth where it was painful and I had slurred speech on Thursday and Friday. I
was worried about how I would host guests who were visiting the next 2 days. I
decided to try the breathing on the boil. I sat down and did a 100 breaths and
went about my work. Suddenly while talking to my husband, I realized I wasn’t
slurring and there was no pain. I rolled my tongue on the roof of mouth and
still no pain. The boil had disappeared! This was really a miracle!
Another important and remarkable recovery was that of my
Father-in-laws’. Around two years ago, he was diagnosed with the first stages
of Parkinson’s disease. And when he came to visit us in Pune last year in
August, he was already around 10 months into the illness and had been on
medication for the same. My husband taught him belly breathing and insisted
that he must do 100 breaths each day without fail. And within two months there
was no trace of Parkinson’s!
Even when I’m emotionally disturbed or angry or even when I
sense anger/frustration rising in me, I just breathe and I’m fine and able to
be more objective about the situation. And yes, breathing has made me happier!
Now-a-days, I breathe through the belly whenever I remember
and I’m conscious of it, like, while I’m typing this. If I am not regularly
breathing through the stomach, I sit down and do belly breathing for as long as
possible, sometimes for upto one hour. Whenever I have tried it, it has worked
and I am still discovering its benefits with each passing day.
How to do it: Doesn’t matter if you are sitting, standing,
sleeping! Just take deep breaths through the belly. It means, feel your belly
expanding and contracting with each breath. For any ailment in a specific part
of the body, you need to use your imagination a bit. For example; if I am
having knee pain, I imagine my knee breathing in and out, although I continue
breathing through the abdomen. If you find it difficult to imagine this, place
your palm on the ailing part and breathe through the belly, at the same time
bringing your awareness on that part of the body.
I remember in one of Lobsang Rampa’s books, he had mentioned
that pain in any part of the body occurs because of a lack of oxygen supply to
that part. May be that’s why bringing one’s awareness to that part and
breathing through the abdomen works so well. I also remember a scene from the
movie ‘Black Swan’ where Natalie Portman goes to the doctor for a strain in a
muscle and the doctor tells her “Breathe into it” (into that part of the body).
Even babies and Rishis naturally breathe through their
abdomen. Maybe we need to re-learn the natural way of breathing. It surely has
helped me. Try it out and do let me know if it helps you!
