The Chinese Perspective of the Breathing Cycle

Eastern medicine's overriding perspective is that the breath acts as a timing mechanism. Making a physiological connection between the head (the intellectual centre) and the Tan Tien (the physical centre), it forms the 'primary orbit'. In between the head and the Tan Tien lies the third centre - the emotional centre - which has its physical home in the solar plexus. As the breath is drawn from the atmosphere through the nose, it travels down past the solar plexus to the Tan Tien, then travels back up again and is returned, transformed, to the atmosphere. As the breath moves round its cycle, it triggers the spine to fire a wave of reflexes. In Chinese medicine the concept of breathing encompasses much more than our narrow Western viewpoint, and this is reflected in the different definitions of 'lung' in both traditions.

The Chinese lung and the Western lung share some similarity. They both relate to the intake of air and include some of the same physical structures. But the Chinese concept takes the physical organs as only one component of a larger functional group, which includes the process of extracting Chi from the environment in the form of air. circulating Chi along with fluids, and (offering) overall body protection. The lung. then, is involved with fluid metabolism and transportation in the Chinese concept, it moves fluids down to the kidney and around the body especially the skin and pores. The relationship to the skin includes the body hair and sweat glands, and the secretion of sweat. Finally the lung is related to protection from 'external invasion' seen in traditional Chinese medicine to include both infection and climatic influences.

Body, Mind And Spirit Harmonization

The exercise of connecting to the breath strengthens our ability to harmonize the body, mind and spirit in times of conflict or stress. The common advice given to somebody who is becoming angry or is about to enter a stressful situation is usually to 'take a few deep breaths'. This points to a common understanding, which is not unfounded, that the breath can help you to calm emotional agitation. Bringing your attention to your breathing and encouraging it to deepen will begin to bring about the harmonization of the somatic and autonomic nervous systems.

The breath is one of the body's few autonomic functions that can be overridden by the somatic nervous system. For example, you can hold your breath or speed it up but you cannot tell your liver or kidneys to stop working. This fact opens up a direct communication to the instinctual side of ourselves and allows us to build a working relationship, via the breath, with the fight-or-flight response.

When the body perceives a threat, the hypothalamus initiates the fight-or-flight response, and it does this with an instinctual sensitivity to the degree of danger it perceives. For example, a large unexpected bill can trigger fear in your body, but not to the same degree as an assailant that is approaching you can. In the case of the unexpected bill, the anxiety could be almost imperceptible to your conscious mind yet have a significant impact on your homeostasis by, for example, triggering mild hyperventilation. The study of Meditation trains your awareness to alert you to fear in your body. Therefore, if you have practised a connection to your breath then you will be able to instruct it, via the somatic nervous system, to release and drop into your Natural Breath Cycle. This will communicate to the brain stem and hypothalamus that there is no threat and your autonomic nervous system will begin to shut down the instinctual fight-or-flight response. If you maintain the connection, your physical body will begin to relax and your mind will begin to regain focus. This refocusing of the mind is significant because if you allow the mind to daydream and revert to negative images then the fight-or-flight response will begin again.

The danger to your health brought about by prolonged exposure to stress and anxiety is significant. The instinct of the fight-or-flight response is designed to protect you from life-threatening situations and not the many imagined threats that we have the luxury to indulge in in Western society. Prolonged exposure to stress and anxiety can pose a serious threat to your physiological homeostasis.

In the case of being physically attacked, the threats perceived by the body are much greater and the reaction in your body will increase correspondingly. Connecting to your breath in a situation such as this uses the same cooperation between the somatic and autonomic systems but will not tend to stop the reaction unless you have trained to a very high level. However, it is not necessary to stop it; indeed, the extra energy released into your body via the fight-or-flight response is useful to us, but only if you learn how to channel it for your own purposes. The first step towards this is to bring the attention onto the breath so that you can keep focused in order to prepare for the initiation of explosive movement.