Breathing

Yes we should be breathing! Besides sustaining our life, breathing in slow rhythmic patterns can do other things for us. For one thing, if you are doing slow controlled rhythmic breathing, it will shift the mind's attention to breathing and away from pain. Hence it is a great pain reliever. But it also means that you are getting more oxygen into your lungs, into your blood stream and out to the cells. Hyper-oxygenating cells provides a healing environment. This is why we use hyperbaric chambers to heal wounds that are not healing.

Now your breathing in a slow rhythmic pattern will not provide the same kind of oxygenation as the hyperbaric chamber, but it will increase the amount of oxygen available to cells. The thing to remember is to do this several times a day. You can do this when you're sitting at a stop sign, or when you sit down to eat, take a couple of minutes to do some slow rhythmic breathing.

Those of you who take pilates, yoga or tai chi have been taught if not the importance, at least how to do slow rhythmic breathing. If you are someone with arthritic pain, consider getting into a yoga or tai chi class to learn the rhythmic breathing and you will find some relief for that arthritic pain.