Conscious Breathing: Breathwork for Health, Stress Release, and Personal Mastery

by Gay Hendricks

Book Overview

Conscious Breathing draws on more than twenty years of research and practice to present a simple yet comprehensive program that can be used every day to improve energy, mental clarity, and physical... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0553374435
• ISBN13: 9780553374438
• Release Date: March 1995
• Publisher: Bantam
• Length: 189 Pages
• Weight: 0.84 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 9.2" x 7.3"

Customer Reviews

Our breathing: the more we learn the better we feel

If only we breathed as we began life doing! As Gay Hendricks puts it: "if you want to see healthy diaphragmatic breathing, watch the way a baby breathes. The belly rises and falls effortlessly with the breath. The chest moves somewhat, but the primary movement is below the diaphragm. Later, breathing becomes restricted as the baby is affected by the various shocks life has to offer. It is rare to see poor diaphragmatic breathing in kindergarten, but it is rare to find proper diaphragmatic breathing by high school." (p. 44) CONSCIOUS BREATHING is notably well written, lacking the smart alecky colloquial banter that even weight loss giants like Mehmet Oz (YOU ON A DIET) feel compelled to sport. The book abounds in drawings. Early on we are led inch by inch as a single breath works its way into our lungs, deposits its oxygen and removes carbon dioxide (pp. 4 - 7). Take air in through the nose, not the mouth. That warms your breath and purifies it. See the four lobes of the lungs, all resting on the diaphragm. Breathing better, says Gay Hendricks, will increase your oxygen by 5% per breath. And better breathing means better health. One Minneapolis hospital studied 153 heart attack patients. Not one breathed "in the effective abdominal style." Rather they tensed stomach muscles and therefore not enough oxygen got to the bottom of their lungs. And 76% of those heart attack patients were mouth breathers, not nose breathers. (p. 17) Surprisingly small amounts of the body's toxins are "discharged through sweat, defecation and urination." A whopping 70% of toxins are removed by exhaling. (p. 17) Dr Hendricks's principal action recommendations boil down, I think, to the following five: What are the GENERAL elements of proper breathing throughout the day? --(1) Breathe in with your stomach muscles relaxed. Breathe, that is, like a baby. --(2) Breathe through your nose, not your mouth. --(3) Do not hold your breath. (This is not easy, as we instinctively clench up when faced with pain or danger.) What additional recommendations relate to systematic breath EXERCISING? --(4) When doing "breathwork," i.e. conscious breathing exercises, do them slowly, gently. --(5) Block one nostril, then the other. Dr Hendricks stresses that his book is based on his 20+ years of doing and teaching conscious breathing. He believes that theory is still way behind practice. But theory there has been and is and he points toward some of it in his Appendix B: "A Bibliographical Note." There he begins with Wilhelm Reich, commending the 1984 biography by Myron Sharaf, FURY ON EARTH. For the personally inarticulate Moshe Feldenkrais, Hendricks suggests beginning with Thomas Hanna's 1980 THE BODY OF LIFE. He also cites books on Hindu psychology and western medical and bio-feedback traditions. This is a rich, very well written book. I have omitted far more topics than I have sketched. If you have not given much thought to the subject but are nonetheless seriously conc

Using this book in my yoga classes

The author speaks from years of experience teaching people how to lower their stress and improve their health by learning how to breathe correctly. Very readable with clear instructions for the exercises. I'm using it with my yoga students. It's been life transforming.

Gentle Reminder and Useful Text for Years

The exercises in this book have been beneficial during stressful times for years ... and included is a great 10-minute sequence of three exercises for daily preventive maintenance and self care. The commentary is helpful, not fluff at all, the instructions are easy to follow, and the illustrations of people doing the exercises are very clear. For a more advanced book on the breath, you might also want to take a look at The Tao of Natural Breathing by Dennis Lewis.

one of the top five books on breathing as of June 1998

I consider Gay Hendricks to be one of my primary teachers concerning the breath and one of the world's foremost experts on the subject A gifted author and therapist, he has facilitated over 20,000 private breathing sessions. This book is a must for anyone interested in the importance of the breath and breathing. I have integrated many of his insights in to my OPTIMAL BREATHING work.

The 20th Century West's answer to The Science of Breath

Ask people what they know about popular body-centered therapists Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks and their answers usually contain the words "relationship" and "breathing." Conscious Loving described the Hendricks's thoughts and experience regarding relationship transformation. Conscious Breathing, by Gay Hendricks, Ph.D. details the myriad, transformative uses of breathing he has explored. Reading Conscious Breathing, I was reminded of the Buddha's admonition to accept nothing based on faith or teaching, but only by your experience of its truth. Similarly, Hendricks repeatedly describes how the various techniques in the book have been refined and honed by his personal experience and by the experiences of the thousands of clients and workshop participants over the last 26 years. For example, teaching the age-old alternate nostril breathing, Hendricks shares the particular variation of which his clients reported the most profound effects. The wide variety of applications for breathing that he explores, makes Hendricks's breathing inquiry, and this book, unique. Unlike methods, like Rebirthing or Holotropic Breathwork, which focus on a particular technique and it's effects (e.g. Holotropic's design to reproduce hallucinogenic drug experiences through breathing), Conscious Breathing details breathing practices for everything from releasing trauma, stress reduction, heightened athletic performance and curing asthma to raising the body's "positive energy thermostat" and improved sexual performance. In fact, the cathartic breathing that most people think of as "breathwork" doesn't even appear in Conscious Breathing (but can be found in the Hendricks's earlier book, Radiance). This omission demonstrates the continual evolution of the Hendricks's work. Over the years, Gay and Kathlyn's emphasis has shifted to subtly and gently removing tensions and traumas from the body and "rewiring" it to hold a higher positive charge rather than engaging in less directed, cathartic process sessions. In fact, the constant development means that those who have previously learned some of the techniques described in Conscious Breathing (e.g. the "10 Minute Daily Breathing Program") will find changes in those teachings, and those who attend the Hendricks's workshops will find both refinements and additions to the material in Conscious Breathing. More than merely informative, Conscious Breathing is enjoyable and Hendricks makes his presence clearly felt. Abundant and entertaining self revelation run the gamut from Hendricks's valuable diary of how he uses breathing on a daily basis to the story of how his pre