Just Breathe! the ezine of The International Breath Institute (IBI), is sent to you from Dr. Tom Goode. IBI shows you how to be fully alive and in optimal health through lifestyle management—learning to live in alignment with your holistic nature. We provide shortcuts from science, tips for your health, and reminders about your breathing.

Content
IBI's web site focuses on Full Wave Breathing because it is the single most important exercise for your health. Use it to become fully alive--get well, be well and do well.

Healthcare
You either take care of your health or you don't. If you don't, you become a participant in what is known as "Healthcare," a system predicated upon the study of sick people and focusing on how to "fix" them. It addresses symptoms rather than causes and treats disease as an enemy to be eradicated.

Self-Responsible Self Care
If illness were not your enemy, and instead was a message concerning stressors in your mind and body, how would you treat it? Likely you would cooperate with the body using principles based upon natural health. The first place you might start is with the most basic foundation of life, your breathing.

Your mind and body work pretty well until you start storing stressors in your breathing muscles. Then you become a shallow breather, creating chronic tension that wears down your immune system. Your blood becomes toxic, and lacking oxygen and energy, your body is unable to defend itself against environmental stressors. The result is disease.

Holistic Practices
The foundation of all holistic health practices is deeper, effective breathing, which affects your respiration, circulation, vitality, digestion, assimilation, and more. Breathing affects your entire system. Master your breathing and you master the ability to stimulate your healing resources.

Use your breathing to promote the unimpeded flow of consciousness through every cell in your body. Healing takes place on all levels. Your breathing determines your physical vitality, your emotional calmness, your mental focus and your spiritual awareness. Practice Full Wave Breathing for 30 days, and you will see your life improve.

The Duh Factor
Sat Sep 2, 6:40 AM ET
WASHINGTON – Federal researchers announced that (somehow) silver fillings used to patch cavities aren't dangerous even though they expose dental patients to the toxic metal mercury. Charles Brown, a lawyer for the anti-mercury group Consumers for Dental Choice says, “There is no safe level of exposure.,"

Watching Your Weight?
Sept. 5, 2006
WebMD Medical News reports that eating protein triggers a natural weight-loss hormone according to British researchers. Another study found that 80% of overweight tots became overweight children and did not outgrow their chubbiness. Find out what you can do about the problem in in the Holistic Guide to Weight Loss, Anti-aging and Fat Prevention.

What About the Flu
The bird flu has killed 127 people worldwide since 2003. Yes, it is tragic AND AIDS claims the lives of 2.8 million people worldwide each year, cholera kills over 100,000 and 300,000 people in the US die every year as the result of obesity. Ordinary flu kills 36,000. Boost your immune system, stay away from airports and wash your hands frequently!

Your Healthy Heart
(Excerpted from my new book on heart health, titled, The Love Prescription :)

Shallow breathing stress results in higher blood pressure from sodium retention and higher blood plasma volume. Ordinarily with correct breathing, the heart rate increases with an inhale and decreases upon exhale. This small change provides exercise for the blood vessels, keeping them elastic and supple, and the rise and fall of pressure provides a massage for and cleansing of the blood vessel walls.

With chronic shallow breathing, though, the heartbeat becomes steadier and arteries no longer expand and contract normally. Breathing rate, heart rate and cardiac output increase. Then less blood is oxygenated and blood pH is altered, constricting blood vessels. Over time this leads to a narrowing of the arteries, palpitations and chest pains.

Healthcare Update
Physically, what do you know that is good for:
• Hypertension
• Asthma
• Arthritis
• Gout
• Back pain
• Menstrual cramping
• Menopause flushing
• Insomnia
• Colitis
• Fatigue
• Appetite control
• Metabolic enhancement?
• Disease Prevention
• Bad Breath

Emotionally, what do you know that is good for:
• Anxiety
• Depression
• Sadness

Mentally, what do you know that is good for:
• Creativity
• Clarity
• Concentration

Spiritually, what do you know that is good for:
• Connection
• Congruence
• Clearing
• Communion
• Yep, breathing!

Put Full Wave Breathing to the test. If you have any of these conditions, invest 15 daily for the next month. Write me and tell me of your wonderful results.

Longevity
There are an estimated 70,000 Americans living today who are over 100 years old. How do they do it? Aside from the common sense answers like a healthy diet and appropriate exercise, the one factor that stands out is having work that you love.

How’d you like to learn to love to your work? Check out my new mentoring program to see if there’s a solution for you there. Like to be fully alive? Check out my new Fully Alive! ebook

The End of Days—More Reasons to Breathe
The mainstream media keeping mentioning the end times with themes like Nostradamus’ predictions, interpretations of biblical quotes, Hopi prophecy, and the like. They are really talking about an astronomical event that is absolutely guaranteed.

Every 2 million years or so there is a major cycle that repeats itself as stars and planets line up in specific arrangement. In (approximately) the year 2009 this great cycle concludes along with a 50,000 year cycle, a 26,000 year cycle, a 2,000 year cycle, a 35 and a 44 year cycle. In 2009, they all coincide and has given rise to fear and trembling, anticipation and expectation.

Your job is to stay centered as the date approaches, entertaining neither the doomsayers nor evangelical celebrants. Yes, our mindbody system is affected by these cosmic influences. Beware of the Y2K-like fears and projections. Instead, focus upon the love within your heart, nurture the place of quiet within your mind and enhance your health using all of the tips shared with you in this ezine.

The next surge of energy, affecting your emotional energies, is scheduled for mid-October. You have already noticed the increased intensity of your life throughout the earlier part of the year. It is important to keep up with your breathing to get ready for the next wave and stay grounded. You may also benefit from my coaching services. Find out if you qualify.

What is a Healthier, Happier Life Worth to You?
Imagine that you are an energetic being living in an energetic world. Imagine also that Joy is an energy that balances your system, stimulates your repair functions and positively influences everything in your life. You’d want more of it, wouldn’t you?

Now imagine that Joy is your nature and that it got covered up, buried in the expectations of others—your parents, teachers and culture. Where did it go? Nowhere? It is still within you!

Your task and function is now to uncover it. The good news is that it isn’t lost. You can use your Full Wave Breathing to recover it.

For the next month, dedicate at least one Full Wave Breathing session to your joy. Intend it, feel it and make it real in your body. Imagine that you are breathing it in to your heart and distributing it throughout your body.

What results can you expect? Let’s start with feeling better—about yourself and your life. Also you can expect that the high frequency energy of Joy would transmit to others around your without effort. Would this improve your life? You bet…and don’t take my word for it. Put the practice into action and see for yourself what happens.

It will either work or it won’t. When it does, you will have a method for managing your thoughts and emotions that produces a reliable result. If it doesn’t work, you will be able to conclude that you are wasting your time with the process and can look for something else. (Hint—it will work if you do.)

More Say on Soy
Soy is linked to heart disease, having compounds that mimic the hormone estrogen. And, contrary to advertising claims, is not a healthy alternative for you. It increases homocysteine and fed to mice results in heart disease and failure. As I point out in both of my most recent books, the only healthy soy products are the fermented ones, including tempeh, miso and natto. Want a burger, choose Ombega-3 and CoQ10 rich grass-fed beef and bison.

Toward a Healthy Future
Dr. Rober Lustig, a renowned obesity expert at UCSF therorizes that the obesity epidemic is caused by a "poisoned" food supply. Processed foods cause Americans to eat more and move less. Dr. Lustig came to the conclusion based on results culled from thousands of obesity studies.

Loaded with sugars that convince your body that it is hungry, processed food is not your friend. More sugar causes your body to produce more insulin that blocks the hormone, leptin, which would normally tell you when to stop eating. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention note that two-thirds of American adults are overweight, and one-third are obese. It may be some time before doctors, community leaders and consumers force the government and the food industry to get sugary foods out of the mainstream American diet. For your part, eliminate processed food and excessive sugar consumption and banish:
• Bulging belly
• Cholesterol-choked arteries
• Brain failure and fatigue
• Weakness and impotence
• Frozen joints or back pain
• Spotted, decrepit skin
• Tumors taking over your body
• Parkinson's tremors
• Menopausal miseries
• Fading, cloudy vision
• And all other indignities of aging!

I suggest you avoid grains, corn and potatoes in both my Fully Alive! and the Holistic Guide. The reason is that they are starches—even whole grains—and create huge amounts of blood sugar eventually leading to insulin overproduction and the cascade of problems mentioned above. I also suggest a low-glycemic diet. You can pull information from the web @ http://www.glycemicindex.com

Product Updates
The Fully Alive! ebook is a complete guide about what to do for a longer, livelier life. The price is only $10.

The Holistic Guide to Weight Loss, Anti-Aging and Fat Prevention is a soft-cover, practical how-to. The price is $18.50 plus shipping.

The Cosmic Waltz is one-hour of restorative, calming heart music for breathing or quiet listening. The price is $18 plus shipping.

The Cosmic Waltz Inner Harmony is a home-study program including 5 hours of music to open, balance and harmonize your energies plus a complete CD data manual of instruction. The price is $120 plus shipping.

Use the Cosmic Waltz Inner Harmony program to engage your hypothalamus, which regulates hormones and is part of the limbic system, which is the brain's center of emotions. The differing musical keynotes are designed to harmonize your endocrine system, improve your mood and enhance your ability to think more clearly. Overcome your past and embrace the future!

Behind The Curtain
How would you like to live your life knowing there is nothing to fear. How would your life work if you were free to be yourself? Learn how to be your own super-hero with these powers:
1. The Power Of Self Direction
2. The Power Of Past Resolution
3. The Power Of Self-Confidence

Your human nature is not fixed, but can be transformed. Each of us has the power to choose the course of our destiny. Our Being is constantly unfolding. You influence how it unfolds with your life choices.

In order to design your destiny, you must first learn how to go within where your future is being created. Helping you find that place and learn to trust and rely upon it is part of my job (Joy Of
Being). Now, in addition to the Consciousness Coaching Program. I am offering a Spiritual Mentoring Service to Just Breathe! subscribers. Click here to see if you qualify.

So Good It’s Now Available As A Drug
Yes, that’s right! A natural remedy effectively utilized for decades is so potent a healer that you can now obtain it as a prescription medication—at as much as 3 times the cost of the over-the-counter variety.

The Omega-3 Fatty Acids in Fish oil lowers triglyceride levels, reduces back and neck pain, lowers inflammation, improves mood, is heart protective, inhibits cancer, and boosts bone health. Purchase the best quality you can and you will still save around 80% compared to the cost of the prescription variety.

If it were my body, I’d begin with 2,000 units per day, increasing the amount up to 5,000 units daily as my body and bowels learn to tolerate the added amount. I’d also take mine in doses throughout the day—and I do.

The Ad Says:
”Ten years from now, the concept that inflammation is at the root of virtually all major disease could be common knowledge.” Isn’t it? What can you do other than take your antioxidant supplements and fish oil? Stimulate your lymph system to eliminate the toxic waste through Full Wave Breathing. No movement in your body usually means little if any lymph movement leading to sluggishness. The lymph system has no pump like the cardiovascular system to keep things moving. That’s why exercise is so important…and the single most important exercise for your health is Full Wave Breathing! It may also be the easiest.

The Alternative
According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), there are only two types of treatments are available to people with anxiety disorders. Those are either talk therapy or medication. Does no one breathe? There are 6 types of anxiety disorders:
1. Panic Disorder—affects about 6 million adults in the US.
2. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder—affects about 2.2 million American adults.
3. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder—affects about 7.7 million adult Americans.
4. Social Phobia—affects about 15 million adult Americans.
5. Specific Phobias—to insects, heights, animals, etc—affects over 19 million adult Americans.
6. Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)—affects about 7 million adult Americans.

While each disorder has unique characteristics, all have irrational fear and feelings of dread in common. By balancing their energy through breathing, anxiety sufferers neutralize negative emotions and may obtain permanent relief without drugs.

Toward a Healthier Future - repeated from last month - use it!
Each time we discover what darkens our path we can progress toward the Light. For example, let’s imagine there were a situation or circumstance that is bothering you. Become aware of how you feel about that, choosing a one-word descriptor: sad, fearful, annoyed, depressed, and so forth. Now you’d feel it that problem no longer existed in your world? Relaxed, peaceful, joyful, happy, etc.

Next take 3 Full Wave Breaths as you hold this new feeling. Stay with the feeling for as long as you like; return to it as often as you like.

In performing this simple act you are changing your vibration and attracting the situation you desire instead of its opposite. Repeat this exercise as often as you like.

Keep breathing!
Tom

EXERCISE CORNER:

Full Wave Breathing is a natural, drug-free, and dramatically effective way to experience health, joy and aliveness that mobilizes and supports your progression toward balance and wholeness. It is a method which accelerates and complements modern healthcare and treatment practices. Use it to inspire yourself so you can inspire others!

The Single Most Important Exercise is Full Wave Breathing

There are 3 Steps, simple as A B C: Abdomen, Belly, and Chest. First, breathe into the lower abdomen and keep your focus there until you can comfortably fill and relax that area of the body. Use your muscles to expand your lower abdomen, beginning at the top or your pubic bone. Second, after filling the abdomen (A) shift your focus to your entire belly (B) or midsection, stretching and distending your diaphragm and ribs as you inhale. Relax everything as you exhale. Use your muscles to push out the lower abdomen, then expand the area just above.

Third, filling A & B, shift your focus to your chest (C) and above. Having expanded the lower portions of the body, stretch up into the chest and back. Make all of your physical movements gentle and slow. All the movement to become very subtle and gentle as you alternately inhale and exhale without pause.

You may find it more comfortable to begin with distinct movements of your body. Allow the process to become like a dance of movement from bottom to top, top to bottom. Later, allow your body to remain completely relaxed as you visualize the movement of energy through you.

Repeat often for the most dramatic results. For more detailed instruction, read below:

Step One of Full Wave Breathing

Place one hand on the abdomen below the navel and the other on the chest. As you inhale, hold the chest still; allowing the abdomen to expand as if you is filling a balloon. Stretch and extend the lower belly. Relax completely into an inhale at the point where the abdomen is distended fully and the lungs are filled. After exhaling, inhale immediately. The chest does not move at all.

Continue breathing with no pause between inhales and exhale. All of the emphasis is upon your inhale. The exhale is a release of the tension created during your inhale. So you will Inhale and relax...inhale...and relax. Continue as you read this instruction to see how simple it is to perform. Breathe through your nose or mouth as you desire. You increase oxygenation by over 50% when you breathe through your mouth because of the normal restriction in nostril breathing.

Close your eyes as you are breathing and then relax for a few minutes when you are done. Allow your breathing to normalize before continuing with your activities. You may perform this exercise while sitting at the computer, riding in the car, or even watching television. Start practicing this exercise today and you'll be pleased with your result!

To help you stay focused on your breathing, place a book or weighted bag on your lower abdomen when lying down and performing the exercise. If you are sitting, to keep your spine erect, imagine that a rope is attached to the middle of your head. The rope rises into the air. In your imagination, allow the rope to gently lift you up until your spine is erect. Sit straight, be open, and breathe.

Step Two of Full Wave Breathing

Continue breathing with no pause between inhales and exhale. Inhale and Relax...Inhale...and Relax.

Count 1 as you inhale and expand your lower abdomen in Step One. Count 2 as you lengthen your inhale and push out the middle of your torso at the solar plexus. Release tension and allow the body to exhale and repeat. Perform this exercise anytime to relax. Do not perform connected breathing when driving or operating machinery.

When lying down, place a pillow under your knees, not under your neck. When sitting, allow yourself to stretch and open your spine as you sit and breathe.

Close your eyes as you breathe and then relax for a few minutes when you are done. Allow your breathing to normalize and return to your tasks.

Step Three of Full Wave Breathing

Continue breathing with no pause between inhales and exhale. Inhale and relax...Inhale...and relax.

Count 1 as you inhale and push out your lower abdomen. Count 2 as you raise the breath and energetic focus to your solar plexus. Count 3 as you move your breath and muscular focus up into your chest, stretching your intercostal muscles, shoulders and back of the neck. Relax completely when you exhale, allowing the muscles to soften. There is no effort or tension involved in your exhale.

Close your eyes as you breathe and then relax for a few minutes when you are done. Allow your breathing to normalize before continuing with your activities. Perform this exercise anytime you are sitting passively to provide a quick and effective energy boost and relaxation.

Keep your spine straight if sitting and allow to your body to move as you breathe and relax. Feel the wave of inhale as air enters your body and the wave of exhale as it leaves. Increase the volume of air and pace of breathing and feel how it affects your experience.

Since resolving stress at the cellular level is below our awareness, there are times when the breathing is accompanied by laughing or crying as old chemistry breaks up. Simply keep breathing! Allow your body any movement that arises and remember to relax fully when you exhale, softening all your muscles. Continue breathing at your own pace, deeply and fully.

Maintain your own pace and be willing to experiment. Your pace will normally change from day to day and during a session of Full Wave Breathing. Playing music as you breathe helps keep you focused in a gentle rhythm. The Cosmic Waltz, offered by Inspired Living, is the best I know of for this purpose. It focuses on the heart center and expands relaxation throughout the body.

All material in this ezine is presented as information only and should not be constructed as medical advice or instruction. Readers should consult with appropriate licensed health care providers on any matter relating to their health. The information provided is believed to be accurate and based on the best judgment of the author. None of the statements in this ezine have been approved by the FDA.

"How things look on the outside of us depends on how things are on the inside of us."