Len
This is almost worth its own thread. I was about to start one that had many of the elements you put in this post. Oh well...let's roll with it.
I have been studying this breathing issue for a very, very long time. I have studied it by reading material on this style, talking to various masters, studying breathing in other martial styles, and researching breathing both in my academic specialty (systems physiology) and in sports medicine books. In a few words, the answers to the questions are complex, but the practical approaches can be made very simple.
How many breathing approaches are there?
Actually more than a few. These are the major ones:
1)
Breathe with the techniques
2)
Breathe in-between the techniques
3)
Kiai
4)
Dragon breathing. Also called
ibuki breathing. This is basically restricting the inhale with the nostrils, and restricting the exhale with the "throat" (actually the epiglottis). Note I said restrict -
NOT inhibit. In the parlance of fluid dynamics, you are creating an airway stenosis or resistance (as opposed to occlusion).
5)
Valsalva. If you read the rantings of Mr. Morris somewhere on the web, he'll tell you that people who do sanchin perform Valsalva breathing. Mr. Morris only shows his ignorance (or his insecurities) with these rantings. Valsalva is breath holding (total airway occlusion) and straining (diaphragmatic and/or abdominal wall and/or intercostal muscle contraction). It's something a physician has you do in his office to test autonomic nervous system responses. It's something that some folks do when taking a dump on the toilet. I'm sure Dr. Freud would have something to say about Mr. Morris' obsession. Valsalva has absolutely nothing to do with martial arts.
When is each type of breathing used?
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Breathing with techniques.
Physiologists have a name for this: entrainment. Complex analyses of runners and racing horses show that these creatures - when performing a repetitive physical activity in an
aerobic fashion - will often breathe in a pattern similar to the physical motion. Thus a slow jog may be two steps for the inhale and two steps for the exhale. A half-mile race may be one breath per step. Horses similarly follow variable patterns of entrained breathing depending on their oxygen demand and the activity being performed. So...it is a natural phenomenon.
Many martial arts styles - and some boxing coaches - teach students to exhale with thrusts. These are usually styles that have a "one shot to kill" attitude about their fighting. Each technique is thrown with maximal power, and little deference to the next technique being thrown. Some martial arts instructors will carry this a bit further and have students inhale on a block and exhale on the subsequent thrust. Does this make sense? Absolutely. What happens when you are surprised? The noise some people make is the sudden inhale caused by a diaphragmatic contraction. If we program in a blocking response to a sucker punch, then the "surprise inhale" will essentially be exactly what we naturally do in such a situation. This then is easily followed by the explosive exhale and thrust.
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Breathing in-between techniques
Technically speaking we can breathe in-between techniques in a regular fashion, and have "entrained breathing". This is actually something I do in the "body" of my sanchin kata. I breathe in regular intervals, and thrust in-between the breaths.
Any type of regular breathing (with or in-between techniques) helps a person meditate. Books can be written on state of mind and learning, or state of mind and facing a threat. Suffice it to say it is interesting and important.
But the most important reason to breathe in-between techniques is to
de-couple the breathing from the physical activity. Thus one may choose to breathe at either regular or irregular intervals. Breathing in an irregular fashion is the more advanced version of this type of breathing, and actually what happens naturally when we don't think about it too much.
Why would we want to de-couple the breath from the physical activity? I've heard lots of reasons, and I'm not sure I agree with all of them. Dollar writes <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote
Uechi ryu karate is practiced by holding the breath until after the completion of a strike. This aids in muscle tension and focuses all exertion into the strike. Holding the breath during a maximum effort strike is similar to a weight lifter holding his breath until the completion of the lift. This directs all energy into the execution without losing power through the exhale.
Some of this I agree with, and some of it I don't. First of all, I personally do
not hold my breath when I lift weights, for the very reasons that Mr. Morris rants about on his web page somewhere. It isn't healthy. I'll talk about this later. Furthermore, others have used the same argument (putting more power into the strike) as a reason to exhale
with (rather than after) the strike or thrust. And...I actually might agree with them.
When you practice and get coordinated, you can walk and chew gum at the same time. It is possible to maintain the trunk firmness while exhaling. I do it all the time when I squat with hundreds of pounds on my back. If ever there is a time to have a firm trunk, that's the time. But it takes time to develop that kind of hard/soft coordination. And yet it's no different than demanding that the student contract the latissimus and forearm muscles while relaxing the biceps and posterior deltoids during a thrust.
So what is my reasoning? It has to do with your stylistic approach to fighting. Some folks like to go for the home run; others like a series of batters to hit base hits and eventually get one of them to score. George Foreman and some of the old Cuban boxers were "home run hitters." Muhammad Ali - someone who openly admitted he couldn't thrown a "knockout punch" - fought with flurries of techniques. One way or another, you get the score.
If you want to know why someone would breathe in-between techniques, try this simple exercise. Do a karate punch in your stance of choice. Do it with and without a breath. You will probably feel that you can get a little more
oomph if you exhale with the punch. Now...perform a double punch. Then do a triple punch. What is the most natural thing to do? If you exhale during the entire triple punch...it doesn't make sense. If you exhale with each punch in the sequence...you'll be there all day. The easiest way to throw three techniques in a row with optimal power
and speed is to throw them while waiting until you are done to take a breath. And if you do it fast enough, it's no big deal finding the time to breathe. A good fighter always fights with variable timing; there's always time to breathe. Look at the advanced Uechi kata; they are filled with technique flurries. But there are other elements too; one must not get obsessed with any one way.
Another good reason to de-couple breathing is because you may not
need to put maximal, whole-body power into a technique. Uechi's signature technique is the shoken. It's less sledgehammer and more surgeons scalpel. In fact its best use is probably in the slow but methodical manipulations of a clinch or grapple. While the wrestler is attempting to restrain you and slowly take you out with either a "choke" (lateral vascular neck restraint) or a joint hyperextension, you find an "owie point" and just dig in. The PPCT folks (like Bruce Siddle and Jim Malone) also teach such manipulations to policemen and guards to bring a subject into control. Usually they will do the manipulation, and immediately follow that with a command to the prisoner. Breathing with the technique just confuses things.
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Dragon breathing
This is my personal label for this type of breathing, and I'm sure I'm not the only one to use it. Basically one restricts the inhale with the nostrils, and restricts the exhale with the throat or epiglottis. The dragon reference makes note of the noise one makes when performing this type of breathing. It's important to do both types of restrictions in the same breath cycle when doing more than one breath in a row using this method.
What is the functional benefit of this type of breathing?
The first one is exercise of the muscles involved in breathing. Restricting the breath creates a load on the muscles (diaphragm, intercostal, trunk) that are used in breathing. Resistance training improves strength. There is no weight machine that directly exercises the breathing muscles. But breathing with a restricted inhale and exhale when you do weight training will provide natural, internal resistance.
The second benefit is similar to what Dollar wrote about above. Yes, you can firm up all the trunk muscles by holding the breath and straining a bit. But is this wise? Not for any length of time, and not with too much strain. So consider the epiglottis and the nostrils to be like the calibrated weight on the pressure cooker. The goal of the weight on a pressure cooker is to put an upper limit on the pressure that can be achieved within the cooker. This keeps the thing from blowing up. Similarly, offering a resistance like this to an inhale and exhale will limit the maximal positive (on exhale) and negative (on inhale) intrapleural (inside the chest) pressure. These pressures are conveyed to the cardiovascular system across the elastic vena cava. Thus we keep the blood pressure swings with respiration - a natural phenomenon - from being too large.
A third benefit is actually a carryover from what I just discussed. Goju sanchin - with its
ibuki or
dragon breathing, is designed to exercise the body. With this breathing, one exercises the breathing muscles. But one also pumps blood through the body. The alternating positive and negative intrapleural pressure that is a response to the restricted exhales and inhales will cause a kind of pumping action on the vena cava. When you restrict the inhale, you ****** de-oxygenated blood from the body into the vena cava. When you restrict the exhale, you squeeze this vena cava blood into the heart. There are also various autonomic nervous system processes (Bainbridge reflex) and cardiac muscle properties (Starling law of the heart) which enhance this mechanical pumping activity.
Is there a martial application other than exercise? I think so. Like the weight lifter, I like to breathe when doing a high-resistance motion in my kata. Thus in the double-shokened lift/turn/thrust in seisan, I do a restricted inhale and exhale with the motion while creating an artificial resistance in my muscles with dynamic tension to simulate the body I am allegedly moving. When I throw or push someone, I exhale as if moving a weight in the weight room.
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Kiai
Actually I believe the kiai is kind of like a cross between exhaling with the thrust and doing dragon breathing. It is a special type of exhale done with maximal effort. It is very natural to let the air going through the lungs vibrate the vocal chords. Some restriction of the breath is naturally involved with that. In the weight room, a kiai is done naturally when doing a maximal effort. In the fighting arena, the kiai charges the spirit. It is a touch of drama that puts our mind into the mood. Kiais are also an effective self defense technique. Shouting is indeed something found on the force continuum of modern self-defense gurus.
So...what do we do in Uechi
Some might be surprised by my own personal opinion. I have been exposed to all this in my various martial arts. My personal belief is similar to Uechi Kanei's. In a sentence, do what is natural. There's a time to breathe with the technique and a time to hold the breath. There's a time to hiss and a time to shout. Whatever you do, you should understand
why you are doing it. It should make sense to you, and you should practice as you want to perform.
As much as I try to get people to snap their heads to attention when the T.C. folks exhale with their sanchin strikes, a part of me is glad this is happening. All along we Virginians (my students) have been playing with
all these types of breathing. I'm glad folks like Van Canna are experimenting. When I worked with Mr. Takamiyagi in the eighties, he preached that kata should have fast parts and slow part and tense parts and loose parts. Kata should be like life. Kata should display our entire dynamic range. No single method works under all conditions. We should be ready for whatever comes our way.
- Bill
) I said that it depended on them and could be a few years or never... no guarantees. Naturally, I was told that the Mc-school a few towns away guaranteed black-belt in XX time. (Fine, go there... 
)
