The Benefits of Breath: “Health Is the Best Wealth”
Breathing is the very root of your life; it is vital. It is important, therefore, that you do it
properly. No habit pays bigger dividends and pays them so promptly as complete
breathing, maintaining strength and suppleness in all the sixteen vital organs of the body.
It is the source of your health, your cheerful spirits, your feeling of youth, your energy,
and your relaxation.
A body that functions at its peak is a blessing to its owner. Health is so much
higher than all other values that soul can build its grandeur and glory upon it alone. No
relationship can long be maintained without health, and no health without harmony of
vital bodily, mental, and emotional functions. If you know how to regulate and synthesize
mind-processes, you can cure diseases completely.
The art of complete breathing is fundamental to your task of acquiring relaxation.
It releases the nerve centers from the extensive tension that afflicts them. Correct and
complete breathing has a tremendous effect on maintaining the harmony of body, mind,
and emotions. It brings full relaxation. Only the relaxed mind is open to ideas. A deep
breath helps break every fear or sinking spell.
The exercises in the new DVD, The Science of Breathing and Glands, 2 nd Edition,
comprise teachings that have been practiced for thousands of years in India, Persia,
Egypt, and Ancient Greece. Originating in India during the Vedic period, more than
10,000 years ago, they represent some of the oldest philosophies in the world. They were
perfected by ancient saints and yoga masters, who received this knowledge intuitively
from the divine, and have been passed down from master to student for centuries.
Originally this was a secret science, but today these same exercises are practiced as an
integral part of any yoga class, in both the East and here in the West.
Building upon the success of the first edition of The Science of Breathing and
Glands, the second edition includes three new exercises and comes with a fully revised
and expanded booklet of explanatory notes and detailed instructions for each exercise.
The Science of Correct Breathing: “The Nerves Are the Man”
To know man, it is necessary to understand why it is that he needs air to breathe; and to
know the air, we must understand how it relates to the life of man.
Without breathing, man cannot live. Breathing is the process of taking in vital
energy and removing waste products from the body and mind. The chemical basis of life is essentially an oxidation of tissues. Oxygen carbonizes the lung tissue, and a fire
follows the meeting of oxygen and carbon in the lung cells as surely as in the stove, and
where this fire is kept constantly burning, it is impossible for bacilli and the cohorts of
death to exist.
Shallow breathing, on the other hand, means that the waste material in the body is
not burnt up, and the result is fatigue, or a lack of zest for living. The blood, filled with
toxins, gets heavy, lazy and causes poor circulation.
Any impediment to respiration checks development, both mental and physical.
When your personal rhythm is disturbed, it harms you physically, mentally and
emotionally. Nervousness is simply disturbed breathing rhythm. A tense person never has
the same amount of courage as the relaxed one. Conversely, the person whose breathing
rhythm has the longest pause is the one least likely to break down under the strain of
action. All competition is strain, and all cooperation is mutual gain.
Indeed, the breath-force or prana is the final cause of all the manifested forces of
nature. Practical study and rigid training in the Science of Breath and nature’s finer forces
through the unfailing psychotherapeutic methods demonstrated in these exercises will
help all nerve, gland, and functional disorders and derangements, adjusting them through
simple and natural methods.
These exercises are built on the comprehension of the law of radiation of
magnetic currents and of the psychic potencies or force-centers found in all bodies, and
upon their relationship to the cosmic force-centers and currents of the solar system and
the universe. Our bodies are subject to the same rhythmic laws as is the Earth itself in its
revolution around the sun, and the solar system around the galaxy, and the galaxy around
the universe.
Much of the esoteric side of the Science of Breathing and Glands is based upon
this well-known principle of nature. By falling in with the rhythm of the body, the yogi
manages to absorb a great amount of prana, which he disposes to bring about the results
he desires.
Meditating on the Breath: “Throb Thine with Nature’s Throbbing Breast”
As the breath enters your body and as it leaves the body, watch it, not breathing
unnaturally but assuming the role of the witness to life’s function inside you. Watch as it
comes in and out. You will notice in a short while that you will have a consciousness that
you are something above life itself.
Later on, you will have the feeling of hearing the beating of the inner throb within
you. As Emerson says, “Throb thine with Nature’s throbbing breast and all is clear from
East to West.” There is no such a thing as hearing the inner throb. Later on, some people
close their eyes and ears, and they hear an inner hum inside them and they concentrate on
that inner hum until they are totally lost in it. This gives a consciousness of being a
witness, an observer.
Yogis seek to attain the state of universal consciousness through meditation and
rhythmic breathing, and these exercises will do much toward developing this universal
consciousness in those who earnestly and faithfully practice them.
The Exercises and Their Benefits
1. Simple Breath Excellent breath to improve the liver and spleen.
2. Vitalic Breath Helps in regulating weight for those who are overweight or
underweight.
3. Dynamic Breath Best exercise for those whose hearts are weak and vitality low.
Helps in controlling emotions.
4. Lung-Strengthening Breath Good for everyone, especially consumptive or
tubercular people. Excellent for ex-smokers to restore the lungs to full function,
and especially designed to stimulate the air sacs in the lungs.
5. Beauty Breath Excellent for all who are bald-headed or who wear glasses. Keeps
the face free from winkles, benefits the tongue, teeth, and tonsils, and keeps the
thyroid and pituitary glands in good shape. Enriches the supply of blood.
6. Constipation Breath Promotes health of prostate, brain, liver, kidneys, adrenal
glands, spleen, stomach, intestines, and pancreas, and eliminates constipation.
7. Insomnia Breath Keeps the body’s cells in perfect condition by eliminating dead
cells and stimulating the action of live ones. Strengthens spinal fluid.
8. Solar-Walking Breath Charges the solar plexus with breath. Charges the sixteen
electrical batteries of the body (i.e., the glands). Eliminates fatigue.
9. Lunar-Walking Breath Quickly oxygenates the entire bloodstream. Man dies for
lack of oxidation. Relieves swollen veins and hardened arteries.
10. Vibratory Breath The longevity of the physical man directly depends upon the
digestive and the creative brains, and their hundred percent health and integrity.
This exercise keeps these two parts in perfect shape and form. It also straightens
out the spinal column and gives it electrical vibration. Strengthens the pancreas,
enabling it to mobilize starch better. Improves the power of hearing.
11. Pineal Gland Exercise For good constructive thinking and its healthiest
reflection. A vital body vitally needs this vital gland.
12. Vagus Nerve Exercise Controls heart action and life waves. Strengthens the
metabolism.
13. Adrenal Gland Exercise Excellent for kidneys, suprarenal and adrenal glands,
spleen, liver, and lymph nodes. Keeps these vital organs in excellent health.
14. Parathyroid Gland Exercise For bronchial and neck glands. Bronchial tube
troubles will eventually leave and the throat will be in excellent condition.
15. Adam’s Apple Exercise Energizes the entire abdominal region. Speakers and
singers will most appreciate this exercise. Renders the voice soft, beautiful,
flexible, and powerful.
16. Dog Exercise Excellent for eyesight, thyroid gland, solar plexus, and sex glands.
17. Rejuvenation Exercise A tonic for the entire body. Varicose veins will vanish.
All brain congestion is cleared, making the thinking better.
18. Regeneration Exercise For control of sex organs. Sex organs will be divinely
strong and under moral control.
19. Plough Posture Strengthens generative and abdominal regions.
The Effects of Using These Breathing Exercises
The exercises in The Science of Breathing and Glands bring stimulating pressure to bear
on important nerve centers, which in turn stimulate and energize the entire nervous system and send an increased flow of nerve-force to all parts of the body. By practicing
these exercises as a way of life, the student of breath can increase the circulation in any
part of the body by an order from the will, and in the same way he can direct an increased
current of nerve-force to any part or organ, stimulating and strengthening it.
Practiced devotedly, respirotherapy, or the Science of Breathing and Glands
exercises, helps remove all ailments. These exercises are wonderful for developing the
lungs, muscles, ligaments, air sacs of the lungs, and all parts of the body, and are
especially effective against chronic conditions.
These corrective exercises, combined with selective diet, help cure the following
conditions: constipation, dyspepsia, sleeplessness, melancholy, nervous exhaustion,
headache, piles, heart disease, neuralgia, sinus troubles, diabetes, hysteria, consumption,
obesity and underweight, sterility, and impotence. They result in definite improvement of
circulation, digestion, assimilation, and elimination. In these ways, complete breathing
can even arrest the process of aging itself—the mother of all chronic conditions.
Breathing and Other Disciplines
Complete breathing enhances all it touches, and it is an invaluable aid to all other health
and fitness practices.
Rhythmic breathing improves the efficacy of all healing modalities by several
hundred percent, in that it increases the flow of nerve- and breath-energy to the site of
healing. A knowledge of the Science of Breathing and Glands is a great asset to any
health practitioner. Likewise, yoga instructors, fitness professionals, and personal trainers will,
through these exercises, become more aware of the truths and myths surrounding the art
of breathing, as well as of the related conditions affected by proper or improper
breathing. This will allow them to better teach and guide their students and clients.
“All life on Earth is breath. All else on Earth is death. Breath is the
flywheel of life: its dynaspheric finer forces, sanely used, add years to life
and life to years.”
—Dr. Bhagat Singh Thind
