Croak Hold And Flick

This is a very useful exercise, but it is difficult to describe in words. I will do my best.

The inhale is about one-third to one-half of a full inhale. It is only to the chest. The belly is pulled in during the inhale (but it is not tensed). During the inhale you make a "croaking" sound.

Note that this is the first and only exercise during which a sound is made during the inhale. The croaking sound is the difficult to explain part, I will return to it after I complete the description of the exercise.

After the inhale you pause. As in other exercises, the duration of the pause is about the time it takes you to slowly say (in your head) the word "hold."

Then you start the exhale both with the normal 'ah' sound and with a flick of the belly. Important: the 'ah' sound is normal and the belly is flicked, not expanded. Later I will return to this issue of the flick.

Don't speed up. Even though the inhale was only a 1/4 or 1/2 inhale, still the exhale should be full. There is a strong tendency to abort the exhale so as to get to another croak inhale. This is not a fast exercise so give yourself time to exhale fully.

Don't forget the hold. It is an important and integral part of the exercise. Of all the errors I see students making in this exercise, the failure to do the hold is the most common, even more common than making a sound other than the soft 'ah' and sticking out the belly rather than flicking it.

This exercise is extremely difficult to do correctly. It should be left until you are relatively advanced in the work. This exercise has a major effect on the diaphragm. In each session of work it should be done only as long as you are doing it correctly. During the learning period you might do only half a dozen executions and then go to another exercise. It is better to not do this exercise than it is to do it incorrectly. Once you form a bad-execution habit it is hard to break. So learn to do it correctly and give yourself as many work sessions as needed to learn it and do it correctly.

First, the croak sound. The sound is made in the throat, so it is not like a wheeze. The best way I have of describing it is in movies you might have seen where someone was dying and gasping his final breaths. The most common error in this croak is that the sound is forced by tensing the throat muscles in an effort to force the sound. It is actually an easy sound to make and is a very natural sound, almost the only one that can be made on an inhale. Just pretend to yourself that you very ill and are lying on your death bed. You are, with difficulty, inhaling your last breaths and you make a noise in your throat while inhaling these last breaths. If you can act out that scene, you will get a good idea of what the croak sounds like. You can hear examples of the croak sound on the Sounds of Reichian audio.

The second most frequent error in this exercise, even more frequent than a bad croak sound, is to stick out the belly rather than flick it. Here is a way to think about it. Rest you forearm on the arm of a chair with your hand on your belly. Now move your belly out and in slowly. Get the sense of that motion. How does it feel to your hand with the belly being expanded and contracted. Now, holding your hand on your belly, flick it out. Note that when you do that there is an automatic rebound so that your hand almost instantly returns to its starting position. That is the difference between a movement and a flick.

When you flick the belly it is a quick out and relax, much like the hand flick you just felt. The belly does not stay out for the exhale or even for any length of time. It is only flicked.

The flick actually comes from the diaphragm not the abdominal muscles. Try to think of it not as pushing out the belly, but as flicking the diaphragm. That is, try to sense the motion as coming from the diaphragm at the base of the ribs rather than as coming from the upper abdomen.

Just to make it explicit, this exercise is impossible before you have freed the diaphragm. That means that the breathing exercises I discussed in Part One about the diaphragm in addition to the exercises I have presented here in Part Two must all be mastered before you can try this one.

After the exhale, the croak inhale, pause, and flick is repeated. Continue this for up to ten minutes or until you can no longer maintain the proper rhythm.

Double Croak Hold And Flick

Don't even think of doing this until you have fully mastered the normal croak hold and flick. You should be able to do a full

10 minutes of the normal croak hold and flick without losing the croak or the flick before you even begin to think of doing this.

You already have learned the croak and starting the exhale with the soft 'ah' sound and a flick. Now you are going to learn to do a double flick.

Here is the sequence:

1. chest inhale of about 1/3 of a normal chest breath with the croak sound

2. start the exhale with a pause (hold) then a flick with the 'ah' sound

3. do a second 1/3 inhale with the croak sound

4. do a second pause (hold) and flick with the 'ah sound

5. continue to exhale to the normal end point

6. start again: small inhale croak, hold, flick, etc.

This exercise is impossible to do if the flick is an extending of the abdomen rather than a flick of the diaphragm.