Breathe

[Bill Mattocks]

Another good post Bill. When I studied TKD I don't remember being taught any breathing other than when winded, breathing in while move one foot forward, and raising our arms sideways, then reversing for several repetitions until we had our breathing more normal. Sounded silly when I was first told to do it. I quickly found out that I was silly as it worked very well.

In the Hapkido I studied, part of our warmup preparations was meditation and breathing. With our hands at our hips, we breathed out as we moved our hands straight out, and breathed in as we brought them back. Then the same breathing but the hands were moved up, then out from the shoulders and in front of us with our arms straight, then hands were moved down slightly to our inner thighs, same breathing. All the time concentrating on our Tan Jon (the area about three inches below our belly button. I don't know what it did for anyone else, but as time went by it helped me gain gi.

Breathing out when you are about be struck, especially in the stomach/solar plexus area, with a loud kiai does aid in resisting the blow, and as importantly, or rather as part of it all, not having your wind knocked out of you. I was also taught to kiai on landing from a throw, again to resist any damage.

As you say, breathing is indeed one of the most important things we can learn in martial arts. Thanks again for teaching all of us again. Reverse breathing looks interesting and I need to practice it to see what I can learn from it.

We call it the tanden or dan tien. Same location. Some take it further than this set of basics and begin to speak of qi or chi breathing, but that is more than I intended here. And in that area, I have so much to learn, I cannot really speak of it.

 

[dvcochran]

My Yang shifu use to always say the same thing his shifu said when asked about breathing "Yes you should"

Had a Xingyiquan Shifu who said if you tie your breathing to your striking, he was referring to exhaling with striking, he will attack you right after you exhale because you have no power on the inhale....same would be true if you ties inhaling to striking.

Basically train yourself to breath normally at all times, this is an Internal Chinese Martial arts thing (Xingyiquan, Baguazhang, Taijiquan, Yiquan/Dachengquan and possibly LiuheBafa too)

And a note on "Reverse Breathing", also called Taoist Breathing, to a person who trains Chinese martial arts, I understand this does not apply to styles of other cultures. Reverse breathing means on the inhale pull the stomach and on exhale relax the stomach and let it out, all while remaining relaxed. The other is Buddhist breathing, inhale, expand the stomach, exhale contract the stomach. It all falls under belly breathing, never over expand and never let to much out. But this is a ICMA perspective

One of my favorite sayings; "If you don't breathe,,,,,You die!"

 

[Bruce7]

Everyone is different. And more power to them.

But, there's some things in life I just won't do. I'll never play cards with a man called Doc, never eat at a place called Mom's, never sleep with a woman whose troubles are greater than my own and I'll never inhale when I punch.

That was fun, I liked that.

When I train in Long Fist I was taught to breath like Xue Sheng said to be in control of your breathing. I came from TSD/MDK,
I think my breathing out was one of my tales. My teacher knew what I was going to do before I knew.

While in Horse stance humming we would exhale and bring our stomach in and when we inhale we would push our stomach out.
As my teacher spoke no English, I can only guess as to why we did that, maybe if we thought about the breathing we would forget the pain of the horse stance, Maybe it was good for our health, maybe it help us mediate, I really don't know.

I still grunt to break things, it fells like I have more power. It may be an illusion I don't know.

 

[Xue Sheng]

Everyone is different. And more power to them.

But, there's some things in life I just won't do. I'll never play cards with a man called Doc, never eat at a place called Mom's, never sleep with a woman whose troubles are greater than my own and I'll never inhale when I punch.

But will you
tug on superman's cape
spit into the wind
pull the mask off that old lone ranger
And then mess around with Jim

 

[Bruce7]

But will you
tug on superman's cape
spit into the wind
pull the mask off that old lone ranger
And then mess around with Jim

The horse stance breathing thing we did it in every class, is that normal or was that something this teacher like to do.

 

[Xue Sheng]

The horse stance breathing thing we did it in every class, is that normal or was that something this teacher like to do.

Different teachers, different styles, different normal

 

[Buka]

But will you
tug on superman's cape
spit into the wind
pull the mask off that old lone ranger
And then mess around with Jim

Well, back home they do call me Slim. Amongst other things, of course.

But, man, I still hate getting my Cape tugged.