Excerpts

Are you wondering about the health consequences of this focus on the active, spine-stretching outbreath? Here’s what anesthesiologist Mike Ramsay, MD has to say about his own experiences:

“I have been an anesthesiologist for forty years and have controlled the breathing of thousands of patients undergoing major surgeries, such as liver, heart, and lung transplantations. The breathing focus in the operating room (OR) has always been on inspiration created by a mechanical ventilator to ensure that both lungs are inflated properly during surgery. In my OR experience, there is really very little thought about expiration, unless there is wheezing or air trapping. During lung transplantation, it is always such a thrill to see the surgical clamps come off the new, donated lungs as I slowly and gently reinflate the organ that had spent the previous four hours in an ice chest. The lungs come to life, expanding to fill the open human chest—a wondrous sight. The ventilator is switched on and connected to the patient’s airway. The new organ expands and relaxes like the wings of a manta ray. In the OR, our focus is on gentle inflation and observing the lungs rise up in the open chest. We would only be concerned with expiration if the lungs did not empty properly.

“So the BreatheOutDynamic system (BODs)—with its focus on breathing out—challenges my forty years of medical practice. It has made me rethink all my ideas about breathing. Adjusting to active expiration leading to passive inspiration takes time. When I started using BODs, it did not feel natural to me. I had to apply my mind to a process that up to now had been mindless. BODs takes me into a different zone and makes the clinical scientist in me start to think about the physiology of this change in focus.

“I remember my early physiology training and the famous Textbook of Medical Physiology by Arthur C. Guyton. The author uses the term vis-a-tergo—a pushing, accelerating force—to describe the movement of blood to the heart from the extremities of the body, a force generated by expiration. Now, I use this logic to think about the movement of air in the human body. As we expire air from our lungs, a negative pressure, or suction, develops in the chest cavity, which is then used to passively draw air back in during inspiration. This force will also pull venous blood, depleted of oxygen, back into the chest. This force from behind—vis-a-tergo—applies, I realize, not only to blood filling the heart and then being pushed into the capillaries surrounding the lungs, but also to movement of gases in the respiratory system. This movement of air and blood makes it possible for the lungs to unload carbon dioxide and pick up vital oxygen that will keep every cell in the body energized and ready to perform its job. When I think of it this way, it all starts to make sense.”

From the Just Breathe Out foreword, written by
Mike Ramsay, MD
Chairman, Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Management
Baylor University Medical Center
President, Baylor Research Institute
Dallas, Texas

Excerpt Two

The BreatheOutDynamic system (BODS) is a powerfully effective means to accomplish your personal focus on wellness. Here’s why:

• BODs maximizes the extraordinary capabilities of breath, connecting each cell in your body and linking you with the environment beyond—the source of energy.
• BODs is fun to learn and easy to teach because it uses images like the bellows and pinwheel. Muscles learn best when you envision the picture of a task.
• BODs can be incorporated into daily life, enabling everybody to benefit even when talking, giggling, laughing, humming, or grunting. The Seven Dwarfs must have been focused on BODs—whistling while they worked.
• BODs outbreath has a calming effect that makes you strong.
• BODs is cost effective. There is nothing to buy. All you have to spend is time—learning and using BODs.
• BODs is energy efficient because it utilizes natural forces like suction and gravity, and allows the diaphragm to do its most important work in a relaxed state. The result is less energy needed for breathing and more energy for living.
• BODs is nonjudgmental and introduces you to the art of listening to your own body’s intelligence. It’s not about breathing the right way. Rather, it’s about youdesigning breathing cycles that are effective and efficient for your life.
• BODs presents you with the gift of self-knowledge, the gift of personal control, and thegifts of balance and well-being.

Excerpt Three

Every day you carry around lots of weight, no matter how much you weigh. It’s your body! How do you feel about your body? Do you like, or even love, your body? Are you motivated to take good care of it? Read the next Just Breathe Out excerpt and you will discover a positive side effect of using the BreatheOutDynamic system.

Just Breathe Out: Using Your Breath to Create a New, Healthier You helps you, the reader, learn an empowering breathing system that gives you the opportunity to develop a user-friendly body. We’ve all heard about user-friendly computers. Now you’re going to learn to develop your very own user-friendly body.

The BreatheOutDynamic system (BODs) is a refreshing and profound way to take charge of your health with a readily available source of information and self-motivation—your incredible body. Think of me, the author, respiratory therapist Betsy Thomason, as your guide on this journey.

BODs, the core of this book, is the revolutionary breathing method designed by Olympic cycling coach Ian Jackson. He questioned everything and welcomed challenges as a means of gaining inner peace. BODs benefits all human beings, regardless of age or physical status. It is out-of-the-box thinking at its best. It redefines breathing from sucking air in to pushing air out.

But you ask, “Why is it necessary to change the way I breathe? The whole world has been doing it for so long, and it seems to work.” Here’s why: Breathing is actually the process of breathing out, not in. The outbreath energizes and relaxes the human body. Who knew? Well, ancient yogis knew but reserved this wisdom for the military and those with money. Now this information is available to all, just for the modest price of this book.

The BreatheOutDynamic system, with its focus on the active, spine-stretching outbreath, enhances your ability to listen to your body and trust it. When BODs becomes part of your daily routine, you will feel energized and relaxed at the same time. You will start to understand your body’s messages. As you learn to rely on your outbreath for strength during daily exercise, you’ll be tapping a new source of inner peace. The net result is a deeper appreciation of your body, clearer thinking, and improved physical stamina. The time you spend learning BODs and moving your body is not lost or wasted; rather, time is returned to you through improved efficiency and insights all day, every day.

Life is about continual change. BODs is the tool that makes positive, healthy change possible with every breath you take. It changes the way you think about the breathing process, challenging the assumption that breathing is an in-out process. When using BODs, you turn the breathing process upside down, making breathing an out-in process.

Are you ready to rely on age-old understandings about the design of the body, gravity, and changes in air pressure? Do you desire a more comfortable and functional body? Are you willing to allocate time every day for your own health care?

If you are ready to orchestrate your own well-being, Just Breathe Out is the book for you.