Abstract / Summary
The third paper of the series After Buteyko, following No. 2, Buteyko never said shallow; the series begins with No. 1, The invisible breath. Buteyko's picture of healthy breathing is a person standing naked in front of a mirror with nothing in the reflection to show that he is breathing; the posture is in the picture and never in the theory. Lying down from sitting, the lungs give up about 0.8 litres before anyone decides to exhale, and from standing more than a litre. Standing up turns it round: the viscera drop, the diaphragm goes with them, and air comes in before anyone has decided to breathe. End-tidal carbon dioxide falls within 150 seconds of standing, chiefly because the breaths get bigger, and that is the deep breathing Buteyko fought, produced by gravity. The paper describes the counter-measure of the body, the tone of the abdominal wall that limits the rise in lung volume on standing and widens the lower rib cage, and the case of tetraplegia, in which an abdominal binder restores lung volume and voice where the wall is lost. It reads Buteyko's control pause, a breath-hold after a normal exhalation, seated, as a measurement taken at exactly the lung volume that posture and abdominal tone set. Buteyko found the over-breathing of the upright human, measured it with a test that measures the upright human, and named the diaphragm and never the wall in front of it.