Relax your stomach and chest and breathe in through your diaphram. When you breathe in, you should feel your stomach fill up with air before your chest. Put your hands above your head and try it.
There is a very good article on increasing punching power by using abdominal breathing in the latest article in BB Magazine. I don't quite understand the concept, but its a lot of info anyway. Check with Kickchick also, she has info on everything.
First be relaxed. Place your hands gently on your lower part of your stomach. Breath through your nose, and make sure that as you breath in you can feel your stomach coming out (bulging) instead of your chest. Its a good idea at first to and try and visualise a plunger pushing the air all the way down to the bottom of your stomach, this is were you want to make sure your breath travells too. Doing this ensures that your lungs are used to full capacity. Hope this helps
I'd quite forgotten that this was something that needed teaching! I guess I was shown but can't remember...
Are you inquiring about "abdominal breathing" for working out/training/weightlifting, while doing kata/forms, meditation or for just "breathing correctly". First, let me point out that there are 2 ways to "breathe" .... 1. High breathing refers to what takes place primarily in the upper part of the chest and lungs. This has been called "clavicular breathing" or "collarbone breathing" and involves raising the ribs, collarbone and shoulders. Persons with asthma, a tight belt, a full stomach or who otherwise become short of breath tend to resort to high breathing. One may deliberately draw in his abdomen and force its contents upward against the diaphragm and into the chest cavity in order to cause high breathing. High breathing is naturally shallow and a larger percentage of it fails to reach the alveoli and enter into useable gaseous exchange. This is the least desirable form of breathing since the upper lobes of the lungs are used and these have only a small air capacity. Also the upper rib cage is fairly rigid, so not much expansion of the ribs can take place. A great deal of muscular energy is expended in pressing against the diaphragm and in keeping the ribs and shoulders raised abnormally high. This form of breathing is quite common ...it's a common cause of digestive,stomach, constipation and gynecological problems. 2. Low breathing refers to what takes place primarily in the lower part of the chest and lungs. It is far more effective than high or mid breathing. It consists mainly in moving the abdomen in and out and in changing the position of the diaphragm through such movements.... it is sometimes called "abdominal breathing" and "diaphragmic breathing". Whenever one slouches or drops their shoulder and chest muscles, they normally adopt low breathing. We use low breathing when we sleep. But whenever we become physically active, as in walking, running or lifting, we are likely to find abdominal breathing inadequate for our needs. To do low breathing, when you inhale you push the stomach gently forwards with no strain. When exhaling you allow the stomach to return to its normal position. This type of breathing is far superior to high or mid breathing for four reasons: 1. More air is taken in when inhaling, due to greater movement of the lungs and the fact that the lower lobes of the lungs have a larger capacity than the upper lobes. 2. The diaphragm acts like a second heart. Its piston-like movements expand the base of the lungs, allowing them to suck in more blood increasing general blood circulation throughout your entire body. 3. The abdominal organs are massaged by the up and down movements of the diaphragm. 4. Low breathing has a beneficial effect on the solar plexus, a very important nerve center. 3. Middle breathing is a little harder to describe since the limits of variability are more indefinite. It is breathing in which mainly the middle parts of the lungs are filled with air. It exhibits some of the characteristics of both high breathing, since the ribs rise and the chest expands somewhat, and low breathing, since the diaphragm moves up and down and the abdomen in and out a little. It is called thoracic or intercoastal or rib breathing. But it is also a shallow type of breathing. With this form of breathing, the ribs and chest are expanded sideways. This is better than high breathing, but far inferior to low breathing and the yoga complete breath technique ... which is: 4. The complete breath, (as defined by yoga), involves the entire respiratory system and not only includes the portions of the lungs used in high, low and middle breathing, but expands the lungs so as to take in more air than the amounts inhaled by all of these three kinds of breathing together when they are employed in shallow breathing. The complete breath is not just deep breathing... it is the deepest possible breathing. Not only does one raise his shoulders, collarbone and ribs, as in high breathing, and also extend his abdomen and lower his diaphragm, as in low breathing, but he does both as much as is needed to expand his lungs to their fullest capacity. The yoga complete breath is the basic technique of all the different types of yoga breathing, and should be learned before you learn the specific breathing exercises. It brings the whole lung capacity into play and is the basis of the three specific breathing exercises. Keep in mind that this type of breathing is only done when you do the breathing exercises. The rest of the time you should be doing low breathing by pushing the stomach out slightly when you inhale, and then just letting the stomach fall back to its original position when you exhale. Also, make sure you are breathing through your nose and not your mouth!
thank you thanks for the info i knew it was better than high breathing but i had no idea. i'm gonna start paying more attention to it.
Yep, when defineing ki/chi/qi/the force/whatever as your breath those mistical early MAists werent completly making stuff up.
breath in through your nose and feel it pushing out your stomach below your bellie button then fill your lungs upwards from there ....
why?? The one question not asked is why you want to do abdominal breathing. Some kung fu styles use the back pressure of breathing backwards(for some this is pushing the stomach out while breathing out) to defend their internal organs during a fight. So then can you tell us the context of your question please. Cheers, Powchoy
