The Daily Travesty
Bringing you bullshit since the dawn of the millennium.
Eighty issues so far! That's a lot of bullshit!
B R E A T H E
excerpted from Tuesday's Health Section of the
Washington Post.
Think you know how to breathe? Try this
simple test: sit or stand wherever you are and take and a deep breath.
Then let it out. What expanded more as you inhaled, your chest or your
belly? If the answer is your chest, you're a "chest breather" and like
most people you're doing it all wrong. You're also putting your health in
jeopardy.
The technique is so powerful that physician James
Gordon teaches it to nearly every patient he sees, from people with advanced
cancer to those crippled by arthritis to school children struggling with
attention deficit disorder.
"Slow, deep breathing is probably the single best
anti-stress medicine we have," says Gordon, a clinical professor of psychiatry
at the Georgetown University School of Medicine.
"Look around your office, and you'll se so little
movement in people's bellies that it's a wonder they're actually alive," Gordon
says. "Then watch a baby breathe and you'll see the belly go up and down,
deep and slow." With age, most people shift from this heavy abdominal
breathing to shallow chest breathing, he says. This strains the lungs,
which must move faster to maintain adequate oxygen flow, and taxes the heart,
which is forced to speed up to provide enough blood for oxygen transport.
The result is a vicious cycle, where stress prompts shallow breathing, which in
turn creates more stress.
"The simple and most powerful technique for
protecting your health is breathing," says Andrew Weil, director of the Program
in Integrative Medicine and clinical professor of internal medicine at the
University of Arizona in Tucson. "I have seen breath control alone achieve
remarkable results: lowering blood pressure, ending heart arrhythmias, improving
long-standing patterns of poor digestion, increasing blood circulation
throughout the body, decreasing anxiety and allowing people to get off addictive
anti-anxiety drugs, and improving sleep and energy cycles."
You know, I think [saying] "because I am
cool" [as an explanation doing something] is one of the most useful things
I've ever picked up from someone. Not only are people inclined to believe
you, but it is also great for rationalizing anything, from sheep to ice cream to
planetary functions.
Yeah, I have to rationalize those all the
time. The planetary functions, I mean. Not the sheep.
v Bullshit makes the flowers grow, and that's
beautiful. v