It took me my whole career as a therapist to recognise the proverbial elephant in the healthcare room. It is curious that the animal in the proverb is the elephant, as it has a long life, an amazing nose, remarkable teeth that form its tusks, and lives in a close-knit family community. All these elements relate to the subject of the breath connection.
It’s hard to argue that breathing isn’t the most important activity in our lives. We arrive in this world with our first breath and a cry, take about half a billion breaths during our stay, and leave with the last sigh. Surely, because it is the most important, most vital activity in our lives, shouldn’t we take care in how we do it?
However, modern medicine shows little interest in breathing unless we present with serious pathology that affects it, and, as a general rule, your doctor won’t check your breathing if you visit for a health check.
The elephant, like all mammals, including Man, has the allotted half-billion breaths, but he breathes quietly and slowly, often reaching a ripe old age of over a hundred years in good health. Like all mammals, he breathes through his nose, which further helps ensure a long, healthy life.
Although he may have remarkably overgrown teeth, like tusks, he, like all mammals except humans, won’t need orthodontic work for crooked or crowded teeth.
Finally, his close family group provides ideal support during his early years and in old age.
Another remarkable thing about breathing is that we don’t all eat from the same plate or drink from the same cup, but we all share the same air. Surely, breathing is the most social thing we do! When we take a breath, we inhale a little of the exhaled air of every living person and animal on the planet! Now that’s quite a breath connection, if ever there was one!
I suppose it is because we never need to think about our breathing, as it is an automatic and mainly unconscious activity that we actually naturally give it little or no attention. We may be more concerned about what we drink and eat because we know we can get that so wrong.
It can make us ill, but I’m sure most of us don’t even consider it matters how much or how we breathe, so long as we do it! One aim of this article is to make more people aware of how important breathing is to health and sickness.
So why do we breathe?
I suggest that, if you want to know more, you read my free ebook, “ The Breath Connection”
Michael Lingard – BSc Econ. DO
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Michael Lingard, a regular contributor to Wellbeing Magazine for the past 18 years. A passionate promoter of real health care and would like to see a paradigm shift in modern medicine; from a disease & pathology based system to a health and ethology based system.
