Breath-work is really very easy; so we do not need to “over-think” it. Simply watching and focusing on our respiration, following along with its natural rhythms, causes our breathing to deepen automatically. Very few people, however, take the time to do this. Breathing has become so automatic that some people go through their entire lives and never use the mechanism of breathing intentionally—that is, in a certain way, on purpose, at least once a day.
There is a close correlation between depth of respiration and health describe by Ilchi Lee. Our breathing is deeper when we are younger and becomes shallower with age. We observe that newborn children breathe with their abdomen, their lower belly rising and falling. The center of breathing gradually rises as children grow older. This change proceeds from what is called “abdominal breathing” to “chest breathing,” and then to “shoulder breath-ing.”
If you watch people of advanced age, or patients who are seriously ill, you will see that their shoulders rise and fall as they breathe. This indicates how shallow their respiration has become. In Korean, the shallowest respiration is called Mok-sum, or “throat breathing.” When respiration becomes shallower than this, a person dies. His or her Mok-sum, or “throat breathing,” is cut off.