Artour Rakhimov - Yoga Benefits Are in Breathing Less: Introduction to Yoga Spirit and Anatomy for Beginners

Artour Rakhimov (PhD)

Guyton AC, The Textbook of Medical Physiology*, Fifth Edition.
* Worlds most widely used medical textbook of any kind
* World's best-selling physiology book

Content copyright Dr. Artour Rakhimov. All rights reserved - 2012.

This book is copyrighted. It is prohibited to copy, lend, adapt, electronically transmit, or transmit by any other means or methods without prior written approval from the author. However, the book may be borrowed by family members.

The content provided herein is for information purposes only and not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent cystic fibrosis or any other chronic disease. Always consult your doctor or health care provider before making any medical decisions). The information herein is the sole opinion of Dr. Artour Rakhimov and does not constitute medical advice. These statements have not been evaluated by Ontario Ministry of Health. Although every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information herein, Dr. Artour Rakhimov accepts no responsibility or liability and makes no claims, promises, or guarantees about the accuracy, completeness, or adequacy of the information provided herein and expressly disclaims any liability for errors and omissions herein.

Do you want to get am astonishing boost in your health and main yoga benefits using your usual yoga practice but combined together with one simple tip described in this book? This tip relates to the most important health factor: O2 content in the human body. Furthermore, this book will show you a simple DIY test that is very useful to use in order to monitor your progress in yoga and experience real yoga benefits. If you achieve a certain amount of oxygen in tissues of your vital organs, you will be free from about 200 chronic diseases that include heart disease, diabetes, cancer, asthma, bronchitis and many more. This book provides you with the most important parameters (including exact numbers) in your yoga practice: the direction where to go and the criteria that you need to achieve in order to, first, reduce and eliminate symptoms of common diseases, and, eventually, achieve real yoga health and practically experience yoga benefits.

Yoga has always been about health especially physical health. For centuries, it was one of the most powerful techniques for physical rejuvenation. Probably, it was the most powerful technique for health restoration. Not anymore. You can practice yoga for months and years (the way it is now taught by leading yoga gurus), and your health may not improve or even can get worse. Why does modern yoga provides very limited benefits? Why was it successful in the past?

To put it simply, modern yoga leaders and yoga teachers do not know how to breathe! You can read tens of yoga books, and you will unlikely not find a single book on yoga that provides you exact numbers for ideal breathing even at rest of during sleep for maximum brain and body oxygenation. Furthermore, there is no goal in modern yoga. It is a purposeless eternal activity related to postures and exercise with some variations depending on yoga schools and their specific teachings. As about breathing, they say "breathe more", "breathe deeply", and many yoga gurus and teachers, can even add "expel toxic CO2". These are all inventions and fantasies of modern yoga teachers and mass media.

Traditional yoga never had such ideas. Their teaching was based on breathing slower and less. Furthermore, old yoga had a clear goal in mind, and this goal can found in many yoga books written centuries or many decades ago. There is factor that clearly separates sick and healthy people. Old yoga, without any scientific devices and measurement, grasped the essence of health. And yoga teachers in the past taught their pupils about this essence of yoga. But these days, using medical research, we can prove that old yoga was right.

Hundreds of medical studies have proved that chronic diseases are based on low levels on oxygen in body cells. What about breathing patterns in sick and healthy people? All available research, I am talking about hundreds of studies, has shown that sick people (heart disease, diabetes, cancer, asthma, bronchitis, COPD, and many other conditions) breathe about 2-3 times more air than the medical norm. They breathe deeply and expel "toxic CO2" exactly the way modern yoga gurus teach.

Even modern so called "normal subjects" breathe about 2 times more than the norm and much more than we used to breathe some during the first decades of the 20th century. When we breathe more air than the medical norm (it is called hyperventilation), we get less oxygen into our body cells. This is the law of physiology. Therefore, traditional yoga, and this book provides exact quotes from the most known ancient Sanskrit manuscripts, was absolutely right.

Virtually all traditional yoga practices are about better or slower breathing 24/7. Restoration of correct breathing defeats nearly all chronic diseases and leads to stunning level of health, no pain, no suffering, clarity of mind, joy of exercise, super short and very refreshing sleep (naturally down to a few hours only), and many other effects that comes with high body O2 content.

Note that this book does not provide all details that a yoga student requires to achieve good health. The book discusses the direction and expected results.

Breathing retraining and yoga breathing exercises produce a mild stress for the human body so that it needs to adapt to new conditions and function better in future. Such adaptive effects also take place during, for example, physical exercise. It would be silly for an unfit person to try to run a marathon without weeks or months of preparation.

If the demands due to yoga breathing exercises or other breathing exercises are too high, there is no adaptive response, and, as a result, the exercises can even produce a negative effect. Hence, breathing exercises should also be adjusted to the current adaptive abilities of the human organism. A more gradual approach in relation to hypoxic and hypercapnic demands of breathing exercises (quick changes in air composition) is necessary for many patients with:
- Heart disease (aortic aneurysms; angina pectoris; arrhythmia; atherosclerosis (plaque buildup); cardiomyopathy; ciliary arrhythmia (cardiac fibrillation); chest pain (angina pectoris); high cholesterol; chronic ischemia; congenital heart disease; congestive heart failure; coronary artery disease; endocarditis; extrasystole; heart murmurs; hypertension; hypertrophic cardiomyopathy; tachnycardia; pericarditis; post myocardial infarction; stroke)
- Migraine headaches and panic attacks

Those people, who recently had serious problems with their lungs or suffer from severe and moderate forms of lung damage, should avoid too fast and too large stretching (expansion or dilation) and shrinking (constriction) of their lungs. Hence, their inhalations and exhalations should be limited (not maximum) in their amplitude and velocity. This relates to people with:
- Respiratory disorders involving the lungs (asthma, bronchitis, COPD, emphysema, cystic fibrosis, pneumonia, tuberculosis; pulmonary edema; etc.)

Other specific situations include:
- Presence of transplanted organs
- Pregnancy