It’s been said that the breath is the life. We’ve heard that read that, and it’s totally true. If you think about, say, survival, the rule of three. You could go for, usually, three weeks without food, three days without water, three minutes without air.
These are, say, wilderness survival tactics and things to know, good to know, rule of three.
Well, with COVID, so many people are being affected by this, and it’s not just the people who are passing away. That’s, of course, extremely unfortunate, but there are other people out there that are having what’s called long COVID, meaning the virus is no longer active in their body but they’re still suffering from those symptoms.
Last week, my brother, Mike, and I, were on a wonderful webinar where we were asked to be guest teachers. We were asked to give something to the group, and there were many people there, and we took them through one of our basic breathing exercises. In the end, we were doing the Q and A. We had some wonderful Qs and we had some, hopefully, very comprehensive As. But then, one was a comment. It was from a woman that we’ve never met before, still don’t know, but she had long COVID.
She got COVID in April of 2020. It’s now the end of January. It’s now actually February. She’s had trouble breathing. She had a terrible cough ever since, even after the virus had run its course and her body had fought it off. At the end of this webinar, she was getting very emotional and very teary-eyed, because after this one exercise, and it took literally 15 minutes maybe, to teach the group this one exercise. She said it was the first time since April that she had actually been able to breathe correctly and that she didn’t have pain when she breathed.
I’m going to show you that breathing technique right now. It’s very simple. Very simple to do. All you have to do is take your hands like this. What we’re going to do is we’re going to make a strong shhh sound. Okay? We’re going to squeeze our abs and we’re going to exhale and go shhh. Now, we’ll want to do this with your eyes closed, but for right now, just go ahead and follow along.
Then we’re going to inhale. We’re going to tense our hands. We’re going to bring our hands out like this. Now, this next part, we’re going to spread our arms out and we want to keep our hands totally tense, pulling those fingers back, and we’re going to take our arms all the way out to the sides. Now, you may not be able to see what my hands are doing. Hopefully, you will. We’re going to get a stretch all the way through the chest and the shoulders all the way out to the hands. Now, I’m still pulling my hands back nice and strong. As I bring my hands back in, I’m just going to hang out there. I’m going to put my hands right here and I’m going to bring them back to my chest, and then I’m going to exhale again, shhh. Nice and powerful.
Again, we exhale, shhh, inhale, hold our breath, exhale, shhh. That’s all.
Pretty simple, right? Breathe out, breathe in, hold it, breathe out. When we have our hands like this, we’re going to shhh out, inhale, hold our breath, putting our hands out. Keep your breath held. Okay. You should not be struggling too much at this point. All the way back in and all the way back, and then shhh out. Okay?
Once we, all of this is breath held, and we want to go as slow as we possibly can, and then shhh at the end.
Very important with this though is, if we keep our eyes open while we hold our breath for this long or if we’re this tense, we could damage our eyes. So we want to make sure we never ever open our eyes. From the very beginning, we’re going to, here we go. Okay, put your hands together, close your eyes, I’m going to walk you right through this.
We’re going to push our hands together nice and strong, inhale, and then exhale, shhh, then inhale through your nose, and we’re going to take our arms straight out so they’re out front like we’re pushing on a wall out in front of us, then we’re going to spread our arms pulling those fingers back. Keep your breath held all the way out, all the way out, all the way out. We’re going pretty fast on this. Hold it out there all the way stretched out. Then bring them back in together. Bring them so that you’re back in that pushing against the wall pose. There you go. Hands together. And bring them back to your chest unto a prayer posture. Keep your breath held, and then exhale, shhh.
Now, if you do that just a couple of times a day, you’re going to notice that your oxygen levels go up, you’re going to notice also you’re going to get a great stretch from the brachial plexus or the sternum all the way out into your arms and your hands, and you may even find yourself able to breathe cleaner and freer, especially if you have asthma or if you have allergies or you work in an environment or live in an environment where there’s a lot of pollution. Regularly exercising your lungs is absolutely invaluable, so give it a shot.