Breathe Better, Feel Better: Learn to Increase Your Energy, Control Anxiety and Anger, Relieve Health Problems, and Just Relax With Simple Breathing Techniques [Paperback]

Howard Kent (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1997 | ISBN-10: 1882606736 | ISBN-13: 978-1882606733

Greater health and relaxation are only a few breaths away. Breathe Better, Feel Better provides simple breathing techniques for achieving better control over emotions, increasing relaxation, and getting to sleep. It offers exercises and routines and also includes guidance on breathing for sports, strenuous physical work, singing, and protecting your voice. Line drawings throughout.

Product Details

• Paperback: 125 pages
• Publisher: Peoples Medical Society (April 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1882606736
• ISBN-13: 978-1882606733
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 7.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,055,332 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars "Nice" but breath is life I want more than "nice"., July 3, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Breathe Better, Feel Better: Learn to Increase Your Energy, Control Anxiety and Anger, Relieve Health Problems, and Just Relax With Simple Breathing Techniques (Paperback)

Review of breathe BETTER feel BETTER The ancient Yogic axiom still applies. "Control your breathing and you control your life". The question remains. In what way do you control your life? So many people underbreathe that practically anything you do with the breath will improve someone's situation. That makes this book somewhat serviceable. There are some good exercises and suggestions. However the reverse breathing (belly goes in on the inhale) leaning of this book flies in the face of every martial art-non violent and violent, opera training, voice coaching, free diving and stress management technique I have ever heard of in 25 years of studying the breath. It is touting reverse breathing. It refers to Dr. Chandra Patel, who did the preface in the latest leading edge Respiratory Psychophysiology book and who I am surprised is allowing mention of her name, plus a leading Indian research institute, which obviously has a sympathetic nervous system bias relevant to the breathing cycle. It also states that learning some of these exercises will improve singing and pubic speaking. I guess maybe, someday, but in my experience, in a very weak way. Stress management yes. Because in the USA about 80% of illness is caused by stress That in itself is reason enough to do the practices and see if they work for you. I just think there are much better books around than this one. Donna Farhi's "The Breathing Book" for one. Conscious Breathing by Gay Hendricks another. Donna admits she taught Yoga for 20 years and didn't know how to breathe and Gay Hendricks at last contact can't sing. I told him I could teach him how. The benefits of each way of breathing very much make up how the culture thinks and feels about life. And the breathing styles are very different in the way they influence the nervous system. To deny the Hara or Tanden and its spiritual center including its keeyi (loud grunt at moment of impact), the Lower Tantien with its ability to maintain one "in the flow", or Wester Medical insights into the sacral aspect of the parasympathetic nervous system and its potentially simultaneously energixing and calming effects are a major oversight. To try and prove a reverse breathing theory with kinesiology is in my opinion stretching kinesiology's credibility and brings it unfair scrutiny. Whether you are stronger when you breathe in the ribs is, I believe, more about common weakness in the diaphragm and startle reflex accumulated tensions in the neck, throat, back, belly, rigidity in the pelvis and knees and lack of being totally in our feet Plus emotional and energetic issues surface in ways that challenge many to keep breathing MORE. Handle those and the breath naturally travels downward into its natural power and resonance. The key is WHAT to do about WHERE the blocks in the breathwave are". How do you assess an unbalanced breath? Specific self assessments, objective and subjective, exercises, stretches, postures, diet and a host of other factors make up what a full breath should be. I am addressing these in my book in progress. I suspect the insights stem largely from people recovering from catastrophic respiratory illness and so need to go very slowly. God bless them and let them do what feels right. For now. And I think I am allergic to the printers ink they used. Michael Grant White, "The Breathing Coach" Breathmike@aolcom Website soon to be: www.breathing.com

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderfully Helpful, September 11, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Breathe Better, Feel Better: Learn to Increase Your Energy, Control Anxiety and Anger, Relieve Health Problems, and Just Relax With Simple Breathing Techniques (Paperback)

This is a wonderful book. Well illustrated and easy in its approach, I have really benefitted from using it. The relaxation aspect that these techniques create have helped me to better cope with daily stresses. Bravo to Howard Kent. He knows what he's talking about.

1 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Save your money, July 6, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Breathe Better, Feel Better (Hardcover)

In "Hara, the Vital Centre of Man" Karlfried Graf Durekheim quotes a Japanese acquaintance "Chest out--belly in" a nation capable of taking this injunction as a general rule, is in great danger" I agree Michaek Grant White,"The Breathing Coach" [e-mail]