[:en]5 Misconceptions about Breathing[:]

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1. More is always better

What you want is an appropriate amount of air in any given situation. Either more or less will cause problems. There is no value in deep breathing in itself, it all depends on what you are doing and how you perform the task.

2. Good breath control involves feeling the air

If you can feel the air streaming in and out, you are probably tightening and narrowing the passages. Feeling the air filling your lungs? What you feel is probably miscoordinated muscles pushing against each others.

3.Breathing excercises can fix bad breathing habits

Challenging your breath or even just paying attention to it, is bound to tempt you to interfere with the natural fow. Often breathing ecercises are based on false assumptions about how the breathing system works.

4. Supporting the breath is a matter of contracting specific muscles

For optimal breathing, the whole of you needs to work in harmony. Squeezing the air out means trouble when you need to breath in again. Saving air while breathing out has a lot to do with your ability of staying calm and alert.

5. Air is like liquid: fill in the bottom of the lungs first

Air is gas. It’s not dropping onto the bottom first, it fills the lungs a bit like a balloon would fill up.[:]