The incorporation of The Heather Lyle Vocal Yoga Method® breathing exercises into one’s daily daily life relieves the effects of stress on the body and mind while restoring optimum health. Listen to this CD and relax and take conscious control of your breath. Based on the bestselling book, “Vocal Yoga, The Joy of Breathing, Singing and Sounding.”
Why don’t we breathe?
Human beings have the unique ability to consciously engage the central nervous system and breathe deeply or we can breathe letting the autonomic nervous system (involuntary nervous system) control our breathing, which is what we do most of the time. So why don’t we breathe deeply, regularly, if we have the ability to do so? The autonomic nervous system that controls our breathing most of the time is also responsible for the fight or flight mechanism. The fight or flight mechanism is a protective survival reflex of the body that reacts to pain, fear and threatening external stimuli very similar to the animal kingdom. Imagine a deer in the woods and suddenly, a lion lurks nearby. The deer will freeze, bracing every muscle in its body and hold its breath to go unnoticed by the lion. We do exactly the same thing. Holding our breath and bracing our body serves as our unconscious survival mechanism. Anyone who has ever sat behind the wheel of a car has experienced it in the muscles of our shoulders and neck as we grip the steering wheel to avoid potential threats.
Strong emotional stress can also cause breath holding and body bracing. The body can experience and react to an emotional trauma as extremely as it can to an actual physical trauma. Our survival instincts will armor our body from emotional pain, no differently than it might from physical pain. The autonomic nervous system believes that if we don’t breathe, we wont feel. As the stresses of life accumulate, shallow breathing can become the autonomic breath pattern of many people. But, since we can consciously engage our breath, we can reverse the affects of the fight or flight mechanism. By doing breathing exercises we can greatly reduce the effects of stress on our body and mind and restore ourselves to optimum health. Breathing exercises stimulate all of the vital organs in the body, increase circulation and calm the mind and nervous system. Put on this CD, relax and take conscious control of your breath!
