Breathing for Pain Management

Why Bother with Breath?
The Body of Energy….Energy….Energy

In order to apply proper breathing for pain management techniques, it is important to learn how to breathe. Many readers will be amazed at finding a page dedicated to breath and breathing. The study of breath has not received much attention in the Western world of medicine.

Breathing is a vital process. If you don’t breathe, you don’t live. It’s quite that simple. Breathing for pain management is paramount for the immune system's wellness.

In the Eastern traditions, there have long been those who have studied breathing for centuries. In fact there are monasteries where most of the focus centers around breathing, and are said that most of the so-called miracles performed by yogis are based primarily on the control of breath. However, why would so much emphasis be placed on an ordinary, everyday process like breathing?

The Mind and Body Problem – Or Is It?

In the Western world, our perspective is based on the material phenomenon. We take solid things and analyze them physically and chemically. It’s based on the measurement and manipulation of matter. Our physicians are trained in anatomy and physiology. Our philosophy is basically materialistic.

Our approach to understanding the human being is primarily physical. However, in the Eastern world, meditation is a method that deals with those levels of human function operating beyond the mind that we call “higher consciousness.” Meditation is not the only aspect of yoga to be used. Yoga also includes physical postures (asanas), which teach the practitioner to regulate, control and be aware of his or her physical body. Then there are practices that have to do with the manipulation and regulation of purely mental functions….concentration for instance.

Fortunately in the East and in particular the practitioners of meditation, the relationship between body and mind has been thoroughly explored and found to constitute a link relating the body and mind. It has its own properties and its own topography. This level has to do with ENERGY.

We’ll discuss the Eastern concept. Their philosophy insists that each of the levels of being evolves out of the one above it. Out of consciousness comes mind; out of the mind comes the physical universe. Mind desires physical existence and so a body in which to manifest itself.

This is a vastly different way of looking at the world. It implies that the essence of our being lies beyond the physical and mental cosmos. It implies that we are all manifestations of an almost inconceivable form of consciousness which lies beyond the greater levels of our existence. It is from there we came and to where we will return. The entire universe flows out of that consciousness and ultimately flows back to its source, like a tide that flows in and out.

We now come to the most important point of all. Breathing is the only physiological process that is either voluntary or involuntary. Individuals can breathe consciously, making the breath do whatever they wish, or they can ignore it, and the body simply breathes on its own. This is particularly relevant when breathing for pain management. The body can’t operate without breath, so if conscious control of the breath is abandoned, then some unconscious part of the mind reflexively begins to function and starts breathing for us. In this case, breathing falls back under the primitive control of the brain, an unconscious realm of the mind where emotions, thoughts and feelings, of which we may have little or no awareness, become involved and can cause havoc with the rhythms of our breath. The breath may become haphazard and irregular when we lose conscious control of it, which is particularly problematic when controlling our breathing for pain management purposes.

“Controlling the breath, is a prerequisite to controlling the mind and body.”

- Swami Rama