Abdominal Breathing - the Brick exercise

Babies don't breathe using their chests but their bellies. When we grow up, we gradually learn how to use our chest rather than our abdomen to breathe. The reasons why this happens are mostly cultural. It is important to re-learn how to breathe with our abdomen rather than our chest. The Brick is the first in a series of exercises designed to develop the practice of abdominal breathing

There are 3 goals to this exercise :

• Teach you an easy way to breathe with your abdomen rather than your chest.
• Train you to focus your mind in the tanden area (Bring your mind there)
• Teach you to pay attention to the sensations in that area (Listen to your mind there)

1st ABDOMINAL BREATHING EXERCISE : The Brick

Lie on your back with your feet flat on the ground and your legs bent with your knees in the air.   Place an object the size of a brick, a woodblock or a phone book on your belly. The weight needs to be enough that you feel it, but not so much that you feel uncomfortable.

As you breathe in, make sure the brick rises.

 

When you breathe out, let the brick go down.

 

Avoid any chest moves when breathing in, avoid any contraction of the abdominal muscles when you breathe out.

 

Focus your mind on your Tanden : an area 1 or 2 inches under your belly button, and concentrate on how you feel when your abdomen expands during inhalation (breathing in) and collapses as a balloon emptying itself from air when you exhale (breathing out)

The Tanden

The Tanden is an area localized 1 to 2 inches under the belly button, and 3 or 4 inches inside. It is approximately the center of gravity of your body.

Note : There are actually 3 Tanden in the body, the Lower Tanden is the important one for our exercise.


Important points for proper practice :

• Avoid any chest moves when breathing in
• Avoid contraction of the abdominal muscles when breathing out.
• Keep your mind concentrated on the Tanden area about 2” below the belly button.
• Avoid muscular tension, try to keep your overall body relaxed. This will help you only concentrate on what you feel in the Tanden area.

 

 Tips :
You may practice on your bed or a couch, however, it is better to practice on a firm floor or exercise mat for it helps better feel what is happening in the tanden area.

Visualization : When you breathe in, it may be helpful to visualize the air flowing from your nose up to the tip of your skull and then back all the way down through your spine to your sacrum (the tail bone) to then fill up your lower abdomen.
 

When you breathe out, visualize the air flowing up through your sternum (breastplate) toward your nose.

 

 

(In this drawing, the subject is sitting in the lotus position:  such visualization can be  practised in any position)

Practical Exercises for Zen Meditation

I am just back from a zazenkai retreat at the Atlanta Soto Zen Center.

Michael Elliston Roshi, abbot of the center and founder of the Silent Thunder (Mokurai) had invited me to teach at this event.

In my presentation of actual exercises to help the practice of Meditation I put emphasis on the 2 following aspects of Zazen:

• Focusing (Thinking of Non Thinking)
• Relaxing (to help focusing) 
  
  

I introduced to my audience a set of physical practices inspired from Traditional Oriental Martial Arts and Medicine. (Tai Chi, Chi Gong, Taoist exercises...) which I have been using  for several years in my own practice.

These exercises are designed to improve :

• Body awareness,
• Breathing,
• Balance,
• Physical Relaxation.

I addressed in particular :

1. How strength and mental energy follow Awareness and Mind. And how the Chinese concept of Chi explains this.
2. How to channel awareness and one's mind to parts or points of the body to tame one's monkey mind.
3. How to practice regular and reverse abdominal breathing to calm the mind.
4. How Tai Chi can actually remove muscular tensions and joint pains during long meditation sessions.

In the next weeks, I will get into the details of my presentation.  Stay in touch ! 

Posture, Tension, Breathing

The whole attitude of a human being appears in his posture, in the relationship of tension and relaxation, and in breathing. Posture, tension and relaxation and breath can never be exclusively physical factors. They are integral functions of the person manifesting himself anagolously on the psychological and spiritual levels. 

For this reason, IT IS POSSIBLE TO BEGIN THE WORK ON THE WHOLE MAN WITH THEM. 

Karlfried Graf von Durckheim in Hara, the vital centre of man.

The capital letters are mine.

There is basically no need to master complex philosophical or intellectual concepts to progress on a path.

Diligent training (exercitium) in maintaining proper

• Posture
• Tension/Relaxation
• Breathing

is fundamentally important and necessary. 

No amount of physical or intellectual technical expertise will ever compensate for a lack of mastery of these basics. 

Your zazen should be anchored in your lower abdomen, your breathing deep and calm, your spine kept gently but not stiffly erect.

In Sword Arts, you should cut from the same place, your grip should be firm without excessive tension (Right hand push, Left hand pulls), and your breathing should flow with your moves.

 

Practice

Mechanics of breathing

The following is a very simplified explanation of the mechanics of breathing. To get this kind of understanding may help you develop greater awareness of what you actually do when breathing. 

There are 3 basic ways to breathe. Some are better adapted to different types of activity. 

Read this and experiment. In a later post I will propose some basic exercises.

Basic Architecture of the Torso :

The Chest at the top contains the Lungs and Heart. The Chest is a cavity formed by the spine in the back, the sternum in the front, and 12 pairs of ribs on the sides.

Under the Chest the Abdomen contains the digestive organs : stomach, liver, spleen, pancreas, intestine; the kidneys and bladder, and the reproductive organs.

Chest and Abdomen are separated by the Diaphragm, a flat muscle shaped as a dome. In the center of the diaphragm is a hole through which run the esophagus and some veins and arteries. The shape of the diaphragm is modified during breathing. Inhalation corresponds to a flattening of the diaphragm. 

 

The lungs located inside the ribcage have the general shape of a bell. Their structure is similar to that of a sponge and they are elastic. Muscular action can stretch or compress the lungs, (exhalation or inhalation). When the muscular action ceases, the lungs revert to their original shape and volume. If you try to force yourself into inhaling lots of air, and then relax, your lungs will naturally empty. If you try to force yourself into emptying your lungs as much as you can, when you relax, air will naturally fill them up again.

The digestive organs in the abdomen are not elastic. Their shape and position can be changed by muscular action, but not their volume. Separated from the lungs by the diaphragm, they act as a sort of piston which can move up or down under the lungs, pushing or pulling them up or down.

There are 3 basic ways to modify the shape of the lungs :

1. lifting or lowering the chest.
2. expanding or squeezing the bottom of the chest.
3. raising or lowering the digestive organs.

1. Lifting or lowering your chest : Inhale by raising your chest : straighten your spine and lift your ribs; exhale by letting your ribs fall and rolling your spine down. This is the shallowest kind of breathing, there is not much room for expansion of the top of the lungs.

2. Vary the diameter of your chest. By expanding or squeezing your lower rib cage sideways. This is a deep way to breathe. The ribcage can expand quite a bit sideways, and the bottom of the lungs can expand a lot to inhale lots of air.

3. Upward or downward movement of your abdominal organs, through action of your abdominal muscles..

Exhalation happens by contracting one's lower abdominal muscles. This action lifts the guts. They push the diaphragm and the lungs upward. This type of breathing is very adapted to intense activity such as fighting where emphasis should be made on short forced exhalation through contraction of the abdominal muscles. Inhalation just happens by itself in between each exhalation. 

 

Inhalation is produced by contracting the higher abdominal muscles. This pushes the guts downward, which pulls the diaphragm and the bottom of the lungs down. This way of breathing is less common. It does not allow for a very deep breathing, because the same action that pushes the guts down also limits the ability of the chest to expand laterally, but for some non-mechanical reasons, it is very interesting for meditative purpose.

Of course, it is possible to combine these actions, and practically we very often do it. For example, when we are out of breathe, we combine lifting and lateral expansion of our ribcage in order to inhale huge quantities of air. Or when we sneeze, we roll our spine to the front to lower our ribcage, and contract all muscle groups that squeeze the chest and push the guts upward.

In a later post, I will propose a few exercises. for now I suggest you try to figure these 3 modes out by yourself. 

Have fun...