What can we do to strengthen your lungs?

Running? Perhaps maybe cardiovascular sports, breathing clean air, but what about our lung tissues themselves? And what can we do to train our breathing to mindfully activate our full lung capacity in a gentle and relaxing way, while at the same time, making them stronger and healthier? Welcome. My name is Mike Popovici, and I am a White Tiger Qigong instructor. And in today's video, we're going to experience a powerful yet gentle practice for activating your lungs, supporting their health, their strength, and their vitality, while at the same time detoxing your body. This is Qigong to strengthen your lungs

Can qigong strengthen your lungs?

Now, whether you're someone looking for better ways to expand your lung capacity, and feeling of ease and wakefulness in your body, or you're someone that's active and looking to get even more performance out of yourself, or perhaps you're someone that is looking to support the lungs health after years of smoking, regardless of which one of these you are, this exercise is perfect for you. Now, remember to always consult your physician and listen to your body, honor where you are, and stop if there's any pain or lightheadedness.

Before we get into the lung exercise

Now before we get into the exercise for lung health itself. It really helps us to understand what we're actually affecting when we're talking about the health and strength of our lungs. Because if I just showed you the exercise, it wouldn't really help you understand how to be good to your lungs daily or wouldn't help you understand how profound this technique really is. And remember, Qigong has three aspects to it. That makes Qigong, "qigong", its movement, breath, and intention. And it's our awareness of what we're doing that helps us get our mind and intention into the exercise itself, which then makes it Qigong.

Parts we need to nourish to strengthen your Lungs

Now our lung health and strength depend on the elasticity and integrity of the fascia that surrounds them. And if you're not familiar with what fascia is, think of fascia as the structural film that lines all of our tissues in our body, like a coating that keeps what's in "in" and what's out, "on the outside". It coats everything, our organs, our bones, our muscle fibers, and it connects organ to organ, muscle to bone, and bone to bone. It's throughout our whole body. So how do we strengthen and heal our lungs while it's by creating movement? The fascia gives our lungs their shape and their strength and holds them in place. And we can do this through very specific breathing. Now the lungs are quite delicate, and it's this fascial covering that gives them strength and allows them to work.

How to strengthen your lungs?

Our lungs sit in bags called the "pleurae". This is a fascial covering that allows them to shift around as our body shifts and to sit comfortably within our own ribcage. So keeping these bags of fascia healthy is incredibly important. Now when it comes to fascia, healthy means elastic, supple, and mobile and these bags of fascia transition seamlessly into the fascia that goes inside of our lungs and creates the tiny pockets that in turn, allow oxygen exchange. These pockets are called the alveoli. So you can see that our lungs have fascia right down to where the oxygen exchange happens with our blood. And because fascia requires movement to keep it healthy, to have healthy lungs, we need to create proper movement.

The Movements

Now, this movement can be big like in the 8 Trigram form movement called Rabbit Springs. It's a beautiful movement that opens up our entire internal fascial netting and helps make it all supple and nourished with healthy fluids. But the movement can also be smaller as well moving that we can do every day at any time of day, regardless of where we are, or what clothes we have on us. And of course, this is proper breathwork now don't go off and say okay, I just got to do a bunch of breathing like everyone says I should we need to understand the proper breath to activate the full range of lung expansion.

Qigong to Strengthen Your Lungs: Breathing Exercises

Now breath also involves our diaphragm as all breath does, which is the muscle that gives us the ability to breathe, to begin with. Now it's connected to our ribs of course and through its own fascia to the fascia of the lungs and the diaphragm is also connected to the fascia of our abdomen. So we are going to practice the three-stage balloon breath and the sipping breath, activating the abdomen, the ribs, and the upper chest and practicing expanding our lungs the right way and to a more complete range of breath, This will wake up our fascia through the entire lung structure and bring it vital healing flow.

Balloon breathing

So let's get going. Now we're going to start our practice with the three-stage balloon breath. And then we're going to add the sipping breath in the end. And with the three-stage balloon breath, we're not just breathing through the front of our body, which is what we normally do when we're not thinking about it. We're also breathing in through the back and from the sides as well. That's why it's called the balloon breath. And what this does is it helps us expand our lungs. Inhale our lung capacity, through the full range of available space. And we're starting with the abdomen, and with the abdomen, I'm going to invite us now to practice with me.

Strengthen your lungs with balloon breathing

We're going to start with an exhale. So exhale, right now, and do that with me as well. Exhaling, feeling the exhale into the abdomen, the squeeze gently, and now inhale, feeling the abdomen push out. And as that happens, the back also pushes gently out as well. So you breathe into your back and into your sides. And now exhale, of course. And you don't have to go at my pace, go at whatever pace honors you.

Now, one more time, breathing in, expanding in the front, feeling back, expanding the sides expand as well. And relax. And we're going to allow that to rise now. So again, starting from the belly, breathing in, expanding, and feeling that expansion coming up the front to the sternum and that expansion also expands out to the back at the same level and to the sides. And now exhale, bring that back. Once again, in expanding through the sternum through the back, the kidneys, the sides, and feel that rising up into the chest, into the back, the upper back the upper chest, hold for a moment, and then exhale, chest down to the sternum down to the abdomen, exhaling fully.

We can take regular breaths here just to relax and rest. And one more time. Breathing in through the abdomen, the back, rising up, keeping the abdomen expanded as the rest rises up above it. expanding to the upper chest. upper back. And now exhale, chest and upper back, and relax. sternum, mid-back, abdomen, lower back, relax. Okay, one more time.

Qigong to Strengthen Your Lungs: Sipping breath

Now, breathe in when you get to the top, holding for a bit, and sipping into the mouth and again sip and now exhale, upper chest, upper back, mid, back, mid-front and then abdomen, lower back and here sipping out as many times as you sit in and relax the breath. Alright, so just pause for a moment, relax, allow the body to relax, and catch your breath if you need to.

What we're doing with the sipping at the end, so the three-stage balloon breath really expands our lungs to its entire range of motion, creating that full range of motion through the fascia that we talked about. And then when we do the sipping breath, we make sure to get in even more air-filled out even more of that space that we didn't know we had.

Practice Qigong to Strengthen Your Lungs

The more we practice this, the more the lung capacity expands, and the more we move the fascia through its full range of breathing motion, creating healthier, stronger, more supple fascia healthier, stronger lungs. And with this, we also detox the body because this pushes the fluids through our body and creates a beautiful pump of cleansing. So let's practice this one more time. Breathing in through the abdomen.

Starting with an exhale in the abdomen, exhale all that air out. And now breathing in the abdomen lower back, and sides. mid back mid-chest, sides up into the upper chest, upper back. Feel the full expansion around hold and now sit in for me in one more and now exhale, upper back, upper chest, relax mid-back, mid-chest, abdomen, lower back. And now sipping out and again and relaxing. So feel free to practice this as often as you like, and as often as feels comfortable, and the more you practice it, the healthier and the stronger your lungs become.

Follow for more techniques for Qigong to strengthen our lungs!

Now there you have it, a breathing technique to heal and strengthen your lungs. And if you liked this video, don't forget to hit that like button below and subscribe to the White Tiger Qigong channel if you're not already subscribed, and check out more of the amazing videos we have here for you from the fantastic white target Qigong instructors much love and we'll see you in the next video.

Check out Tiger Qigong from the 5 Element Qigong to strengthen your lungs for more exercise.