Aikido Key Breathing Techniques

Video Transcript

"Now, in aikido we refer to this as key breathing. Key breathing is relatively simple, it doesn't use a lot of complex methodologies. There's two forms of key breathing. There's meditative as well as, what I would refer to as action, or combat breathing. Now, in regards to, we're going to cover meditative breathing first. Rather simple. Find a comfortable spot. Sei-sa works perfectly well. Hands in a natural position. When you breathe in, you're going to breathe in, you're going to collapse your body. To start, you're going to breathe in through, you're going to draw all the air in as you can. You're going to expand your chest. You're going to expand your lung capacity. You're going to pull all the way back. You're going to stabilize your pelvis. You're going to draw in your lower part of your abdomen slightly, and you're going to focus on the one point. Now, the one point, again, is just below the navel, and when you breathe out, you think about breathing out and reducing that one point to its smallest possible perception. Every size that you come up with in your mind, reduce it by half, reduce it by half, reduce it by half. So, breathe out through your mouth."