This Breath restoration program below works best if you have already stopped smoking.

If you’ve spent much time smoking cigarettes, shisha, marijuana, hash, cocaine, opium, or other flammables you have inevitably done some damage to your lungs and changed the quality of your breath. How can you check if that’s true for you?

Get in a quiet place and take a series of long, drawn out breaths in and out your nose while paying close attention to the sound of your breath and the gradual increase in the volume of your chest.

A healthy, good quality breathing pattern will sound completely ‘even’ as you inhale and exhale. Your breath shouldn’t ‘flutter’, hesitate, or ‘catch’ as you draw it out longer. You should feel the volume of air gradually increase with a slow and steady pressure that matches the speed of your inhale. The rise and fall in your chest from the inhalation shouldn’t ‘jump’, ‘hitch’, or ‘stick’.

If you’ve spent enough time smoking then it your breath will be doing some or all of these things.

Here is a list of common stuff that occurs during the initial period of healing as your body re-adjusts to not smoking:

  • Sinus Congestion – This is caused by a clearing out of the sinuses. This symptom may last 2 to 4 months.
  • Cough, Throat Clearing – This is due to a cleaning and clearing of the reactivated cilia in the lungs; your body is clearing out the debris, tar and phlegm. This may last from a few days,  several months, to several years.
  • Phlegm – This can last several months.
  • Hoarseness – The tissue in your throat is regenerating. This may last several months.

Breathing exercises should be done three times daily. More, in this case, is better.

Sit on the edge of a chair so that your spine is straight, place one hand on your chest and the other on your abdomen. When you take a deep breath in, the hand on your abdomen should rise higher than the one on your chest. This insures that the diaphragm is pulling air into the base of the lungs.

1. After exhaling through the mouth, take a slow deep breath in through your nose for a count of 4 (or as long as you are able, not exceeding 4)

2. Slowly exhale through your mouth for a count of 8. As all the air is released with relaxation, gently contract your abdominal muscles to completely push the remaining air from the lungs. It is important to remember that you deepen respiration not by inhaling more air but by completely exhaling it.

3. Repeat the cycle eight more times for a total of 9 deep breaths

In general, exhalation should be twice as long as inhalation. The use of the hands on the chest and abdomen are only needed to help you train your breathing. Once you feel comfortable with your ability to breathe into the abdomen, they are no longer needed.

Here is a video showing the technique:

Buddha Belly breathing sequence – YouTube.

There are a million videos out there showing variations on this technique, most of them containing psycho-spiritual mumbo-jumbo and overly complicated instruction. The rule here is: Keep it Simple. Impose a simple demand on your body and it will make a simple adaptation.

What you want to do is return to a healthy state of breathing, it needn’t be more complicated than taking a breath.