Another Suggestion to Help Avoid the Virus...

This one, as many of you may have guessed, has to do with breathing.

Now, it isn't a lecture on breathing deeply, or shallowly or slowly or quickly. It's to urge you to breathe, during your day-to-day living, through the nose; for in-breathing and out-breathing.

The nose is nature's gift to us. But it's a gift with a very practical purpose. It's the appendage through which we were intended to breathe in and breathe out.

Most of us today breathe in, and often out as well, through the mouth.

​The pattern of breathing that accompanies that tends to be rapid, shallow and inefficient.

Only the top of the lungs is used. The air is cold, polluted, dry. Because the breath is shallow, it's inefficient in supplying oxygen to the cells of the body. Delicate tissues in the throat are dried and uncomfortable. Speech is interfered with. The voice is under constant strain because there isn't sufficient air-flow to vibrate vocal chords and give resonance to the tone. 
​Talking becomes hard work.

 
This perpetuates the quick alarming breathing pattern and can send people into a state of blind, uncontrolled panic.

​Our bodies are polluted by mouth-breathing. There is no mechanism in the mouth, the throat and the top of the wind-pipe to filter the air we breathe.

However, when we breathe through the nose, the air gets warmed, moisturised and filtered. By the time it gets to the lungs, it's been pretty well cleaned of a lot of the gunk that would otherwise find its way into our systems.

This crisis we now face, the Coronavirus,  may be a good time to earnestly practise  nose breathing. 

You'll also be less likely to spread any germs through the nose, so while you're protecting yourself, you're also helping to protect your neighbour.

When you do your breathing as an exercise, however, depending on the technique you're practising, it's as well to breathe in through the nose and out through your mouth, as this helps a more complete and rhythmic form of flow in the breath.

There are another couple of really good reasons to think about doing more nose breathing. 

These are to do with the mind and Mindful Awareness.

Stay tuned.