Every breath you take...

Buteyko works. What else can I say but IT ACTUALLY WORKS, and I say this from first-hand experience without even attending a real course as yet.

It’s been close to 1.5 years that I have been trying to heal my adult asthma. Not only was I on my asthma puffers, but the whole journey with asthma was about re-assessing my whole life, the speed of how I was living my life and the priorities where I was placing my energies. As a yoga teacher and practitioner, I was also trying to self-cure using pranayama or the technique of manipulating the breath, and physical asana yoga working to de-stress my central nervous system. A lot of my own healing this past 1.5 years was about re-organizing my priorities and also focusing to keep my own energies intact, my mind healthy, and really keeping my whole lifestyle balanced.

But my asthma wouldn’t go away. I was also getting conflicting information especially when doctors were saying Buteyko doesn’t work. Another friend swore by how his young son’s asthma has been manageable and that together, the whole family has learned the Buteyko technique. Only after a Skype session with another yoga teacher who stressed that Buteyko worked for him and that I must go try it. Well, I still haven’t tried Buteyko, but two months back, I finally took time to meet up with Jac Vidgen, a licensed Buteyko teacher in Asia. All we did was talk for an hour, then he gave me some tips with the words, “as a yoga teacher and someone who knows pranayama, I am sure you will understand this and manage yourself.”

I have been trying his very simple techniques and in a couple of days, I was off my puffer medications, which I had wanted so badly to eliminate and which doctors told me I will always have to be using forever.

The first principle I had to change was about “breathing more, breathing deeper.” In yoga, we are taught how to breathe deep into the belly, to get more oxygen levels in the body. But outside the mat, I needed to change this. Hyperventilating meant that we bring in as much oxygen but we lower carbon dioxide levels in the body, which causes imbalances. When hyperventilation increases, the lungs of an asthma sufferer react with constriction of airways, excess mucus production and swelling, i.e. the symptoms of asthma. With low levels of carbon dioxide, the body’s smooth muscle tissue can go into spasm or constriction, creating problems in the sinus passages, lungs, arteries, heart and digestive system.

If yoga pranayama breathing techniques are about manipulating the breath so as to affect the central nervous system and to control the fluctuations of the mind, Buteyko is about breath reconditioning, breathing less, as though one were in meditation or sleep. It’s all about keeping as much carbon dioxide in the body. This was the second principle.

Jac Vidgen told me about how the founder of Buteyko, a Russian medical doctor and scientist, Dr. Konstantin Pavlovich Buteyko, made some clinical observations and discoveries, which revealed that human breathing habits seem to have strayed from what our physiology books describe as normal. What Dr. Buteyko identified as increasingly prevalent in modern society, is low level (and mostly hidden) hyperventilation, which he discovered is a major underlying cause of human illness. He further noticed that by reducing this over-breathing to more normal respiratory volume levels, a whole range of diseases and their symptoms improved. What he developed was a program for enabling patients to retrain their breathing pattern, which has evolved into the Buteyko Technique. Now I am writing this article without knowing the method itself as I am still due to attend the course, not anymore to cure myself (as I have cured myself using the techniques shared by Jac), but to know and understand the Buteyko Method better.

The Buteyko’s Method claims significant results with a range of health concerns such as asthma and allergies, panic attacks and anxiety disorders, snoring, apnea and other sleep disorders, immune and hormone imbalance, fatigue, hypertension and diabetes.

Jac Vidgen is a senior Buteyko teacher working with the method since 1993. He has been visiting the Philippines regularly for the past 16 years, offering courses and trainings. Jac was a founding member of the Buteyko Institute of Breathing and Health, the largest professional organization representing the method throughout the world, although he is now associated with the Respiratory Health Institute of New York.

(For best results, consult your doctor.)

(For free lectures and workshops scheduled in August and September in Mandaluyong, Quezon City and Makati, check out www.facebook.com/buteykoasia. For more information visit  www.buteykoasia.com and www.learnbuteyko.info or e-mail jacvid@gmail.com.)