Breathe correctly to better health.

The first time I learned the right way to breathe was through a friend, Tan Han Chiang, a teacher whom I met at the Language Institute in Pantai Valley in Selangor. According to some people, he was so similar to me in appearance that they thought we were related. Hopes he reads this and gets back to me as I have lost touch with him.

Next, I met him in Alor Star where he taught for a number of years before getting a transfer back to his home-town. Was it Parit Buntar? Well, I am not too sure about that.

Anyway, he was the guy who first introduced me to stomach breathing. He taught me to ‘breathe into the stomach’. It seems he has been practicing it every day since he was young. He pulled up his shirt front to reveal a spot about two inches below his navel. It was raised slightly and hard to the touch. That was the first time I heard about the ‘tan tien’, the centre of the body where the ‘chi’, the life-force' is stored.

He then demonstrated the correct way to breathe. He lay down on his bed and exposing his abdomen to show me how it is done correctly, breathed in by extending his abdomen. He told me to put my hands, folded together, on the abdomen so as to feel it rise as the breath goes in. Then, as he exhale, the stomach flattens and descends inward. He told me to do it slowly for as many times as I feel comfortable, which could be 5 minutes, ten minutes or even half an hour.

Since then I have changed my way of breathing. I breathe into my lungs with the stomach expanding outwards. However, I have not been as regular in my practice as my friend as I am constantly in search of knowledge, practising whatever new thing I have just learned and twenty-four hours are just not enough. And there is always a little bit more to learn. So, I have not had the chance to stop learning.

So, there you are, a way to breathe your way to health. In fact, it is the natural way. Look at a baby the next time you have the opportunity. Look before a teacher or parent tells him to breathe in and put his chest out. Look and see the calm breathing a sleeping baby does as his/her stomach rises and descends with each breathe.

That is the way mother nature has always meant for us to breathe. It is the way to move the diaphragm downwards as we breathe in, so as to give space for air to reach the farthest corners below and replace the (possibly stagnant, unchanged) air there as the diaphragm again goes up as we breathe out.

If you are too busy to make it a regular practice, you can do a number of times each day to start a new way of breathing if you have not yet discover this technique.