4. About the importance of the breath from "Yoga and health" by Selvarajan Yesudian and El

"Our greatest mistake", writing the two, "is that we do not know how to breathe. A man without proper breathing is nothing but a lifeless pupa underground. We can stay alive for weeks without solid food and without water for a few days, but without no air life is possible only for a few minutes. Breathing is the most important biological activity of the body, any other of its activity is related tightly with that of breathing. That has a crucial influence on our health, on our mood, and even on a length of our lifetime. The modern man doesn't know how to breathe. Our unnatural lifestyles in the apartments of a big cities, in factories and in the offices could result the fact that man will forget the rhythm of the proper breath.

Restrained soul life and his doubts between lust and fear strangle the man's throat, so he doesn't dare literally to inhale a deep breath…

Our lifestyle associated with multiple sitting, prolonged standing, causing the flat feet or sitting bent over the desk, resulted the fact that a man of our times forgot the correct way of – sitting, standing, walking and breathing. According to the conclusions of medical science, western man makes in sitting position about 15 breathes in a minute, only half a liter of air in a lung, in much stronger breathe exchanging one and half liters more, That means that a western man, who sits often, utilizes only one tenth of his five liter lungs capacity".

Further Yesudian and Haich explain what a complete breath is (as it was explained simply in the previous post) and extensive detail on how to breathe. First rule of course: breathe through the nose!