Customer Reviews

Anatomy of Breathing

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is well written and interesting.
The anatomy of the breath is explained in layman's terms and illustrated so that even a child could understand its basic concept.

The book chapters are:
1. Initial observations about the act of breathing
2. The skeleton's role in breathing
3. Respiratory organs
4. Respiratory muscles
5. The principal forces involved in breathing
6. Forces affecting respiratory volumes
7. Relationships among anatomical structures involved in breathing
8. Analysis of the principal types of breathing
9. Practice pages

Practice pages include exercises for lamaze, costal, diaphragmatic and abdominal breathing amongst others.

Strongly recommend it to people involved in body work teaching. Even if you already know this stuff, the book may help you find ways to explain it to your classes more simply. At least this is what it helped me for.

As a teacher of the F. M. Alexander Technique I am always looking for good resources and material about breathing for my students and teacher trainees. I found this book to be very helpful in sparking discussion about breathing and how to think about breathing mechanics. The drawings are generally very helpful although I found that the arrows are sometimes confusing and unclear.

Many techniques and types of breathing are presented in the book which are wonderful to explore. It would be great if there was more of a point of view about the best and optimal breathing coordination.

My experience is that when breathing is optimal the breath comes in and out by itself and no sucking or pushing is necessary on either the inhale or the exhale. When one works too hard to breathe it shortens the neck and basically pulls the whole body down -- thus restricting the breathing potential. Basically one has get out of the way and allow the breathing to take place. It would be great to hear about that option in the book.

Blandine-Calais has again written a book of exceptional clarity: the descriptions of the body parts related to respiration and the exercises given are simple, clear and easy to follow, yet bring a depth of understanding to the reader.

I'm a yoga anatomy teacher and purchased this book to use for reference material when teaching the anatomy of the breath. The illustrations are good, although not as detailed as most books. The author breaks down the concepts of respiration into language that's easy to understand. I'm only giving this 4 stars because I would have enjoyed just a bit more detail. Definitely worth investing in though!

Perhaps both the strength and the limitation of this book is that passion for the subject is avoided. This doubtless helps avoid mistaking ideas about breathing for actual breathing. On the other hand, someone stumbling upon this book may under-appreciate the benefits of better breathing. Some may consider the discussion of smaller muscles and the smaller movements unimportant and diluting the interesting parts. However, if one wants to really change breathing then it is beneficial to know every part because in effective breathing, everything works in harmony. Changing my breathing has helped change my life, and it was this book, not my first book on the subject, which gave me clues on how to change my tendency to paradoxical breathing. (I had to find a way to stop my lower ribs from pulling up and flaring out in disproportion when my diaphragm pulled on them, so that the center of my diaphragm could instead pull itself down.) Together with a book that covers the motivations and goals of better breathing, say by Dennis Lewis, this book is well worth it the cost and the study.

must have book if you deal with bodywork in all shaps
cant stop read it- don't wait just buy it
helped me understand and teach gyrotonic and gyrokinesis and pilates too

I bought this book is because of I would like to learn the techniques of different types of breathing. In addition, understand more about the theory behind. Only the chapter 3 is difficult for me to understanding as I don't have medical background. I start to review the practice page, then, I find it is easier to understand the anatomy page.