Nan Huaijin on Bottle Breathing — "Strengthening the Lungs" Works Wonders

Bottle Breath strengthens the body and heals illness with swift, tangible results because within just four or five days it dramatically elevates and fortifies our lung function. As lung function improves, red blood cells throughout the body absorb more oxygen to meet the needs of every cell. Once the cells receive sufficient oxygen, every tissue, organ, and limb can operate normally, and the body is far less likely to fall into a state of oxygen deficiency. When the limbs are starved of oxygen, they feel weak; when the brain is starved of oxygen, the mind grows dull and sluggish; when the heart is starved of oxygen, the chest feels tight and the spirit turns gloomy—you simply can't be happy, and any forced laughter looks unnatural, the hollow kind of smile that never reaches the heart. So if you want to safeguard your health, strengthening the lungs is the essential first step.

The simplest way to practice the Bottle Breath is this:

Take a breath in, then draw in your abdomen and tuck in your chin, keeping your head upright so the air stays held within the lungs. Hold it for as long as you possibly can; when you truly can't bear it any longer, slowly exhale through the nostrils. Even someone just starting out can usually hold the breath for about fifteen seconds, while someone more practiced can easily manage sixty. You can gauge everyday health by how long you can hold the breath—it can't be faked. If someone can only hold it for a few seconds before giving out, that person's body is surely unwell, and both their resistance and endurance are bound to be poor. I can state this with absolute certainty.

A more refined method of the Bottle Breath is this:

Take one breath and hold it. When you can no longer bear it, don't exhale right away. Instead, take a second breath so the lungs become even fuller, then continue holding for another ten or twenty seconds. When that becomes unbearable, take a third breath and keep holding. There's no fixed limit on how many times you may inhale this way; the principle is to breathe in until you can't breathe in any more, and hold until you can hold no longer. Only then do you slowly exhale through the nostrils. This is segmented breathing—you take the air in stages but never let it out. Most healthy people can comfortably hold for sixty seconds using this method. The practice drives the lungs to absolute fullness, leaving every single alveolus filled with air. There's no need to worry that breathing in so much will cause the lungs to burst. If that were really the case, I'd have exploded long ago, since I've been practicing for twenty years—yet here I am, alive and well.

The most refined method of the Bottle Breath is this:

First, take a full breath. Then press one nostril closed with a finger and forcefully expel the air from your lungs through the other. Once it's all driven out, immediately take another full breath, press a nostril closed again, and expel the air completely. Repeat this three times—three breaths in, three forceful exhalations out—until the lungs are emptied. Then begin holding the breath. After ten seconds, or perhaps twenty or thirty, the whole body will feel extremely uncomfortable. At this point you may gently take a small breath and then resume holding. After holding for a while the discomfort returns; when it does, don't exhale—take a second small breath, then hold again. Inhaling in segments while never exhaling, after roughly three to five such intakes you'll find you can inhale and hold no further. Only then do you let the air out. This counts as one round of Bottle Breath. This last and most refined method I've just described can, with comparative ease, allow you to hold the breath for over a minute. Its special advantage is that, before holding, it thoroughly purges the carbon dioxide that has accumulated in the lungs, producing a marked cooling effect—greatly beneficial for those who are normally prone to excess internal heat.

Tibetan Tantric practitioners do one hundred and eight breaths—or, as I call them, one hundred and eight rounds—per session. They may practice up to six sessions a day, totaling six hundred and forty-eight rounds daily. Perhaps it's precisely because they devote so much time and energy to this practice that they tend to achieve remarkable progress. To suit the busy rhythm of modern industrial and commercial life, I ask patients with chronic conditions to practice at least once a day, and those who can spare a bit more time, I encourage to practice twice. For adults, I ask for ten rounds per session; for children, only three. If each round takes about a minute, plus a little time for changing breath between rounds, ten rounds take no more than a dozen minutes, and three rounds at most five minutes. No matter how busy someone is, surely they can spare that much time.

The Bottle Breath is a genuinely remarkable method capable of treating a hundred ailments. The reason I advocate it so earnestly is that I cannot bear to watch so many sufferers in the world struggling in pain. The practice itself is wonderfully simple, the effects wonderfully reliable—just set aside a little time each day and devote yourself to this single technique. Why not?

I often tell my patients that the most basic benefit of practicing the Bottle Breath is stronger immunity. With stronger immunity comes far less fear of invading viruses and germs, and a very visible sign is that people who practice the Bottle Breath catch far fewer colds. If a cold does come on, the symptoms are noticeably milder than in others and far easier to cure. As for a young student, I believe that even just three to ten rounds of Bottle Breath a day yields considerable benefit, and they can easily go an entire year without catching a cold.

Beyond preventing colds, I consider the prevention of cancer to be one of the most important benefits of practicing the Bottle Breath. Cancer has many causes, but a very significant one is oxygen deficiency. Cancer cells can multiply without oxygen, so if our blood is starved of oxygen, we provide exactly the conditions cancer needs to grow. Therefore, to guard against cancer, we have every reason to practice the Bottle Breath diligently. What makes cancer truly terrifying is the intense pain it produces. Without that pain, cancer wouldn't seem nearly so fearsome. Pain is the greatest torment in human life, and its torment isn't a matter of two or three days but of months—half a year, even a year. I've personally witnessed many cases of people suffering from cancer, and avoiding the disease has become one of the most important aspirations of my life. Of course, I never fail to remind my patients that the Bottle Breath can help prevent cancer.

There are already countless cases in which diligent practice of the Bottle Breath has brought swift improvement to a wide range of chronic illnesses and even cancer, turning danger into safety. So I urge everyone who has read my articles or watched my videos to make up their mind right now and set aside at least ten minutes a day to practice the Bottle Breath. Setting aside its ability to strengthen immunity, ward off colds, and improve every chronic condition, the single fact that it can help prevent cancer is more than reason enough.

If you've resolved to practice the Bottle Breath every day, I suggest you buy a digital timer, so that the length of each round's breath-holding is absolutely clear to you. If you haven't yet bought a digital timer, using a watch to count the seconds of each hold will do for now. It's best not to try counting the seconds silently in your head, since it's difficult to be perfectly accurate that way.

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