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So many ways to breathe

Each type of activity has a more favorable way to breathe:

Some of them are good for relaxation
Some to reach peak performances
Some to maintain a specific pace
…

In this lesson, you will start to understand what are the biggest differences.

Note – This article has been asked by one of our Core Course practitioners on Patreon (see how to attend our home study classes here Learn Kung Fu online: a beginner-to-expert course).

Some premises before continuing:

Breathing is an advanced topic, not all the categories we will list in this lesson are for beginners
Be careful, the incorrect use of breathing techniques can cause dizziness, loss of energy, bad athletic development, etc.
Breathing is a vast subject that we will discuss again later in this Kung Fu guide
…

The principal categories of breathing in 6 Dragons Kung Fu

The ones we are going to list are not exercises or techniques, these are only (the most important) categories of breathing that 6 Dragons Kung Fu implements:

Normal Breathing – It is an optimized version of classical breathing, it can be used in everyday life, to free our lungs from stale air, to have better performances in effortless activities (working, studying, etc.) and to correctly oxygenate our body
Speed Breathing – Perfect in combat situations, its goal is to regulate or suddenly change our fighting pace (increasing / decreasing our combat velocity, timing, etc.); it is hard to be used constantly but not impossible, it requires a lot of preparation (the risk of hyperventilation and / or excessive energy consumption is high if not done / trained correctly); Speed Breathing can also be used to recover lucidity after excessive relaxation, fatigue, etc.
Economized Breathing – In connection with Speed Breathing exchanges is the best method to manage your energies and to be unpredictable during a fight (eg. in relation to complexity, duration, difficulty of the scenario)
Rhythmic Breathing – It is ideal for long-term activities that require endurance; it gives our body a controlled rule to be forced upon (during its development) and to be appealed (during a proof of resistance like a long distance run, a long struggle, etc.)
Performance Breathing – To be used only in “special moments” to release the maximum attacking power (to execute a breaking, a powerful blow, etc.) or defensively to protect our body from big damages; it cannot be used constantly, it is intense, deep and it requires a (relatively) long time to load
Recovering Breathing – Its goal is to recover the energies after an effort through a guided path, in a controlled way (after Performance Breathing, at the end of an exercise, etc.); this breathing also serves to teach our respiratory system to never give up to heavy breathing
Relaxation Breathing – The application of this kind of breathing is meditation, relaxation, advanced body control (read Advanced body control) and especially to gain a high level of flexibility; it is long, profound, extremely slow and accurate (it is also very useful to control our states of mind, to eliminate physical and mental stress / tensions, to sleep better, etc.)
Training Breathing – It is a set of training exercises to expand our lung capacity, apnea time, to calibrate muscle chain, etc.
Stealth Breathing – It is an ensemble of techniques to hide our breathing in dangerous situations (eg. hiding from an aggressor, etc.), to gain concentration on the environment (catch details, etc.), to breathe in unfavorable situations, etc.
Healthy Breathing – It consists of a small bundle of respiration techniques good to solve / alleviate body problems, for example, to free stuffy nose (read How to free stuffy nose), to help normal body functionality (digestion, defecation, etc.), to refresh our body during a hot day, etc.

What distinguishes one breathing type from the other?

Before going into the details of breathing exercises and techniques, it is important that you get an idea of what are the most important elements on which you will have to focus your attention.

Let’s see therefore some of the crucial discriminants that differentiate the various kinds of breathing:

The use of mouth and / or nose (only with the nose, simultaneously, etc.)
The duration of inhalation / exhalation (long, short, etc.)
The ratio between the duration of inhalation and exhalation (same duration, longer inhalation, etc.)
The speed of inhalation / exhalation (fast, extremely slow, etc.)
The duration of the pauses (apnea, sequences of 3, etc.)
The muscle contraction (general relaxation, diaphragm pressure down, etc.)
The absorbed air storage direction / concentration (only abdominal area, both abdominal both chest area, etc.)
The arrangement of the body elements in the space (in combat movement, cross-legged on the ground, etc.)
The total duration and number of repetitions (one time, an hour, etc.)
The situation of execution (during a fight, to recover after an effort, etc.)
The focus of our Qi (read The use of Qi in the 6DKF’s meaning) in our body (in a damaged area, in the lower dan tien, etc.)
…

A note by Master Kongling – One of the few aspects that all these types of 6 Dragons Kung Fu’s breathing have in common is the fact of never letting the respiration system lose control, to reach that kind of fatigue that (for an instant or more) makes us unable to complete our tasks.

In the next article, we will see how to perform thoracic and diaphragmatic breathing.

In-depth articles

Physical conditioning: how it works – Some examples of 6 Dragons Kung Fu’s conditioning
Invisibility: how to hide heavy breathing – An example of Stealth Breathing techniques to help hiding your presence

<< Lesson 4.2 – Index – Lesson 4.4 >>

Author: Master Kongling

Founder of 6 Dragons Kung Fu.

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