Lesson 6 – Breathing exercise
Focus on breathing
Working with constancy and dedication on the practices described in Lesson 4.5, you will slowly develop unconscious attention to quality breathing:
- That kind of focus is necessary to build the instinct that will allow you to use the most appropriate breathing in every situation
- An autonomous mechanism that, in most cases, will activate without even having to think about it
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).
After a few weeks of (uninterrupted) practice, the conditioning of your respiratory system should be started, so it is possible to switch to the first and simplest breathing techniques.
A note by Master Kongling – Important: do not skip the previous steps of this chapter or your entire preparation will lose all its substance.
What is the purpose of breathing techniques?
Let’s start with a premise: it is not true that we always breathe in the same way. Try to take notice of it (read Correct breathing), our inhalations and exhalations change depending on:
- The age we have reached – For example, (tendentially) small children breathe with their abdomen, older people with the upper chests
- The state of mind – For example, if you are afraid, you tend to breathe more quickly and in a less deep way, if instead, you are bored you do it slowly
- The health status – For example, if something occludes our respiratory tract (eg. mucus) or if we are overweight, we will tend to breathe with our mouth
- The current situation – For example, after intense training, the breath can be heavy and throttled, during sleep, it is constant and regular
- …
Through extensive training, 6 Dragons Kung Fu’s breathing techniques can help us to:
- Manage in the best way each of these variable conditions (independent of our conscious will)
- Gain high-level skills related to body control (read Advanced body control)
A note by Master Kongling – As it happens for fighting techniques, it is not enough to know the theory and try to put it into practice 1-2 times (read A scheme to quickly learn any kind of technique). In order to achieve these goals: constant discipline, preparation and concentration are forcibly required.
The first breathing techniques and tricks
As we have mentioned in Lesson 4.3, our school has a lot of different kinds of breathing, let’s see some of them with a brief explanation of their practical application:
- The 6DKF’s combat breathing – Although we have not yet addressed the combat topic (self-defense, sparring, fighting techniques, etc.), it is important to begin to outline how a 6 Dragons Kung Fu practitioner breathes during a fight
- Invisibility: how to hide heavy breathing – A simple trick to hide heavy breathing, to not reveal our presence / position in a self-defense context (this is a small Stealth technique)
- Breathing for immediate relaxation – How to recover control in conditions of stress (and with proper training, even in the ones that you normally cannot manage)
- How to free stuffy nose – This is the Buteyko method, an easy way to rid the nose of mucus and immediately return to breathing regularly (very useful during workout)
- …
A note by Master Kongling – For now, we see only these techniques, it is more than enough; later on (always in this course) we will analyze more advanced breathing methods (related to the cycles of Qi, the Fa Sheng, etc.).
In the next chapter, we will start to see fighting techniques.
In-depth articles
- A breathing exercise to develop the 6DKF’s muscle chain – An advanced exercise to help building the 6 Dragons Kung Fu’s muscle chain (not for beginners)
- Control of emotions: the exercise of the switch – An advanced method to gain control over your emotional changes voluntarily (with a breathing exercise included)
<< Lesson 4.5 – Index – Lesson 5.1 >>
Author: Master Kongling
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April 12, 2018 @ 6:24 pm
Can breathing be used for fear managing?
May 4, 2018 @ 3:59 pm
Yes, it can, absolutely. But to control your sensations and feelings you need a lot of positive practice.
You need to sincerely appreciate each peaceful moment of meditation: if your mind associates breathing concentration to something of completely and purely positive you will gain access to an incredibly wide power upon your mind.
April 15, 2018 @ 2:51 am
I found interesting the stealth breathing, do you have others?
May 4, 2018 @ 3:57 pm
Yes, we have… but you have to wait for their publications 😉
April 16, 2018 @ 9:56 am
What is Fa Sheng?
May 4, 2018 @ 3:54 pm
The Chinese Kung Fu’s equivalent of the Japanese Kiai (for example of the Karate). It is not just a thing that makes a scene or gives courage, it helps to manage power through breathing. We’ll talk about it later.