See-Saw Breathing

Now we reach an even more difficult breathing technique. Here inhale is to the chest and exhale is to the belly. Think about that for a moment. On your first inhale your chest rises and your belly is relaxed. When you exhale your chest collapses and your belly balloons out. Then when you inhale again your belly collapses and your chest rises. It is as though you were passing the same air between your chest and your belly.

How is that possible? Trust me. It can be done. I have done this in my own work and have trained many others to do it. It is simply not easy to do or to maintain speed and rhythm.

This is the only breathing technique which is fast in the sense that instead of about 12 breaths per minute you are doing 20 to 25 breaths per minute. Don't try to count or time yourself; the issue is that this is rapid deep breathing as opposed to the normal-speed deep breathing.

You can use the normal 'ah' sound to start the exhale or you can drop the sound. Both are appropriate.

This breathing is, without question, a more advanced exercise. Both for self-improvement reasons and medical reasons don't do this exercise until you have shown that your body can deal with the blowing off of the carbon dioxide (the hyperventilation that I discussed at the beginning of the book) without problem.

Hyperventilation results in a meaningful reduction in oxygen to the brain. That is one reason it produces dizziness and tingling. If, in doing this exercise, you experience significant dizziness or disorientation, simply stop the exercise. You have gone as far as is appropriate for your body. In any event, this exercise is done for only a few minutes; perhaps three to five, certainly ten is too long.

This is a good point to remind you about the rare but possible medical complications of rapid deep breathing (see: MEDICAL NOTE on page 61).

It is a frequent error in doing this exercise that while the breathing is rapid, it is also shallow. There is minimal expansion of the belly and minimal expansion of the chest. That is incorrect. The chest expansion and the belly expansion should be just as full as if you were doing normal slow breathing.

In practicing this exercise a good technique is to start it with comparatively slow breathing just to get the feel of the body and of the rhythm. When you are able for several minutes to do the see-saw breathing slowly, then you can start to speed it up. The standard is the full expansion rather than the speed. Better not too fast then to have the breathing become shallow.

Other Sounds

Throughout I have emphasized that the exhale starts with a soft, short, non-articulated, non-guttural 'ah' sound. Hopefully by this time you have that well mastered.

Now I will introduce you to other sounds that can be used. While I am introducing these sounds near the end of Part One of the book that does not mean that none of these sounds can be used earlier in your work. It is just that it is generally better to have the 'ah' sound well mastered and the breathing going fairly well before you proceed to other sounds. Still that is just a rule of thumb, it is not any sort of requirement or warning.

Your objective here is to try to put feeling into each sound. Psychologists divide feelings into two classes: pleasurable and unpleasurable.

As you have freed up your chest you have probably noticed that you can now experience far more pleasure than you could before you started. If you haven't noticed that, stop here and give yourself some time — several weeks — to become aware of the change in your ability to enjoy life. Notice that you are less "up tight" than you used to be; you have less need of rigid rules to govern your life; you are more flexible and spontaneous.

That's nice. Pleasure is always desirable. But mainly what holds us back in life is our unwillingness to deal with unpleasure. It would be nice if we could simply skip the unpleasure part. We can't. The unwillingness to deal with unpleasurable feelings acts much like a small room where every turn leads into a wall. The door out of that room is the door to the hallway of unpleasure. It is not fun but it is necessary if you are to get out into the sunlight of a full life.

In all cases of these new sounds of therapy, examples are present on the Sounds of Reichian audio.

Moan Exhale

The moan and the next one, the groan, are done slightly differently from all the other sounds. One difference is that with these sounds you roll your head from side to side as you make the sound. The second difference is that these sounds are drawn out for almost the full exhale. They don't just start the exhale as did the 'ah' sound.

The issue here is how does one, in words, describe a moan? It is one of those things that we all know, but putting it into words is not easy, so I consulted a dictionary.

Well, the dictionary says a moan is a sound of pain or grief. I suppose that is good enough for a dictionary; but not good enough here. Grief depends on the culture. In some cultures grief is expressed by a wail rather than a moan. But pain, that seems to be the same across cultures. While we think of pain in terms of body pain, there is also existential pain.

OK, so what is existential pain? It is the pain we feel from adversity in life. It is what we talk of "as a painful experience."

Unfortunately we tend to treat personal pain in silence. While I want you to think existential pain, the sound is the type you make in mild but continuous physical pain.

It usually uses the 'oh' sound rather than the 'ah' sound and often changes into almost a hum.

While this book is a discussion of technique — a method for you to treat and hopefully correct your own character problems— I would add here just one sentence for contemplation: Socrates said that "an unexamined life is not worth living;" I would add that a life without pain is a life unlived.

Groan Exhale

OK, so what is the difference between a moan and a groan? The dictionary defines a groan as a deep moan. Thanks guys, that helps.

The groan sound I have in mind is louder and stronger than a moan. It is the sound you might make if there were pain throughout your body and the pain is mildly strong and continuous.

Another difference between the moan and the groan is that while the moan often changes into almost a hum, the groan does not. Just the opposite. The groan tends to be shorter than a moan and is repeated several times during the exhale. Thus while it is easy to moan in one continuous sound, the groan tends to be louder and shorter such that a single exhale produces several groan attempts.

Again the sound is 'oh' rather then 'ah' and the head is rolled from side to side during the sound. The inhale is a normal full inhale.