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*During normal inhalation, an average person takes in about 500 cubic centimeters of air ; during deep inhalation the intake of air is about six times as great, amounting to almost 3000 cubic centimeters. The capacities of individuals vary according to their constitution. The practice of pranayama increases the sadhaka's lung capacity and allows the lungs to achieve optimum ventilation.
*The second chapter of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika deals with pranayama. The first three verse state: 'Being firmly established in the practise of asanas, with his senses under control, the yogi should practise of asanas, with his sense under control, the yogi should practise pranayama as thought by his guru, observing moderate and nutritious diet. When the breath is irregular, the mind wavers; when the breath is steady, so is the mind. To attain steadiness, the yogi should restrain his breath. As long as there is breath within the body, there is life. When breath departs, life also departs. Therefore regulate the breath'.
*The fresh oxygen which is sucked in percolates the minute sacs (the alveolar sacs) which form the basic unit of the lungs. The membranes round these alveoli convey this oxygen into the blood stream and then the carbon dioxide from the blood into the air of the lungs for its disposal through exhalation. The blood with fresh oxygen is carried by arteries from the left side of the heart to cells in every nook and corner of the body, thus replenishing their store of lifegiven oxygen. The waste products (mainly the carbon dioxide) thrown out by each sac are then taken by the venous blood stream from the right side of the heart to the lungs for disposal. The heart pumps this blood through the body at an average rate of seventy times per minute. Hence to breath properly we need the smooth co-ordination of all the relevant parts of the body, the power or controlhouse (the nervous system), the bellows (the lungs), the pump(the heart) and the plumbing system (the arteries and veins), besides the driving motor of the rib cage and the diaphragm.
'''THE CHEST'''
*The chest is the cage formed by the ribs in which the lungs and heart are located. It is shaped like a turncated cone, narrow at the top and winding below. The top is closed off by the muscles of the neck attached to the clavicles. The wind- pipe (trachea) passes through it on its way from the throat to the lungs. This turncated cone is slightly flat from to back. Its bony surface include the thoracic part of the vertebral column in the midline at the back and the breast plate in the front. It has twelve pairs of flattened ribs which curve across the gap between the spine at the back and the breastbone in front to form semicircular bridges on each side. The spaces between the ribs are filled by internal and external intercostal muscles. There are, in additio, muscles joining the twelfth rib to the pelvis and the first one to the cervical spine. There are eleven pairs of muscles in all. The expansion and contraction of the chest are controlled by these muscles and the diaphragm. The thoracic dorsal area is like the broad mid-section of a banana leaf, the spine being the stem, the evenly spaced ribs being the veins and the tail bone the thin end of the leaf.
'''THE LUNGS AND BRONCHIAL TREE'''
*The right and left lungs differ in shape and capacity. In most of us the bulk of the heart, which is about the size of a fist, is on the left side. Consequently, that lungs is smaller. It is divided into two lobes, one above the other; Whereas the right lung has three lobes.
*The lungs are covered with a membrane called the pleura ans due to their shape expand rather like the bladder of a football.
*The dome of the right diaphragm is higher than the left. Beneath it is the liver, the largest solid abdominal organ, less compressible and depressible than the stomach and spleen lying below the left diaphragm. In full inhalation, when attempting to fill the lungs, most people can feel a sense of increased resistance below the right side of the diaphragm, where the liver is, when their attention is drawn to the area. In order to equalise the filling of both lungs from base and side, special effort and attention must be directed to diaphragmatic and chest wall movements on the right side.
*The bronchial system, connecting the windpipe and the alveoli, is in the thoracic cage. It resembles an inverted tree with its roots in the gullet, while the branches spread out downwards the diaphragm and the side walls of the chest cavity.
*The windpipe in the throat is a tube about four inches ling and less than an inch wide, which branches out into two primary bronchi, one leading into each lung. Both then branch out into numerous tiny air passages called the bronchioles. At the end of each of these bronchioles are the alveoli, the tiny air sacs clustered like bunches of grapes, some 300 million lining each lung, their surface covers about eighty to one hundred square yards – forty to fifty times that of the human skin.
*These alveoli are small, multiple sac-like chambers with an incomplete lining of cells. The gap between the cells (the interstitial space) is filled with fluid. Around the outer wall of the alveoli lie minute blood vessels (the capillaries). Exchange of gases takes place between the alveoli and the red blood cells and plasma of the blood via the fluid in the alveoli or interstital spsce.
*The air in the alveoli contains more oxygen and less carbon dioxide than the blood passing through the capillaries in the lungs. During the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide, the moleclues of oxygen diffuse into, and carbon dioxide out of, the blood.
'''THE SPINE'''
*The spine should be kept firm like the trunk of a tree. The spinal cord is protected by thirty-three vertebrae. The seven vertebrae in the neck are called cervical. Below them are the twelve dorsal or throacic vertebrae which are connected to the ribs, forming a cage to protect the lungs and the heart. The ten top ribs on either side are joined in front to the inner side of the berastbone, but not the two floating ribs below. The floating rib are so called, as they are not anchrored to the breastbone. Below the dorsal are the lumbar vertebrate and lower still the sacrum and coccyx, both formed of fused vertebrae. The lowest coccygeal vertebrae curls forward.
'''THE BREASTBONE'''
*The breastbone has three parts. In breathing, the top and bottom should be kept perpendicular to the floor. Use it to act as a support for lifting the side ribs like the handle of a bucket, and so create more space through the expansion of the lungs sideways ans upwards.
*The lungs open sideways and space for expansion is created with the help of the intercostal muscles. Keep the interior intercostal muscles at the back firm. If the skin at the back does not co-ordinate with the intercostal muscles, breathing becomes shallow, reducing the intakeof oxygen, causing physical weakness and lack of bodily resistance.
'''THE SKIN'''
*As a drummer tightens the skin of his drum to get resonance and a violinist tightens his strings to get clarity of sound, the yogi adjusts and stretches the skin of his torso to create maximum response from the intercostal muscles to aid the respiratory process when practising pranayama.
*The floating ribs, not being fixed in front to the sternum expand like a pair of calipers to create more space in the chest. Laterally, the thick middle ribs can also expand laterally, thus widening and lifting the rib-cage. This does not affect the top ribs. To fill the upper most reaches of the lungs requires training and attention. Learn to use the upper inner intercostal muscles and the top part of the dternum. Expand the rib-cage from the inner frame outwards, as this will stretch the intercostal muscles.
'''THE DIAPHRAGM'''
*The diaphragm is a large dome-shaped muscle -like- partition which seperates the thoracic cavity from the abdominal one. Anchored all around the circumference of the lower yhoracic cage, it is attached at the back to the lumbar vertebrae, at the sides to the lower six ribs and in the front to the dagger-shaped cartilage of the breastbone. Above it are the heart and lungs and below it the liver on the right and the stomach and spleen on the left.
'''ACCESSORY MUSCLES'''
*The respiratory muscles of the throat, torso, spine and abdomen are the accessories used in breathing, which is ordinarily dominated by the diaphragm. Besides the muscles already described, those of the neck, espically th estrenomastoids and the scalenus, play their parts. They contribute very little to quiet breathing, but become active when the rate or depthis increased and rigid when the breath is held.the use of accessory respiratory muscles varies from one individual to another. It also varies from time to time in the same person depending on how powerfully he exerts in his breathing and how efficiently and how tensely.
*We all breath, but how many of us do so correctly, with attention? Bad posture, an ill – shaped or carved-in chest, obesity, emotional disorders, various lung troubles, smoking and uneven use of the respiratory muscles, lead to improper breathing, below one's capacity. We are aware of the discomfort and disability which then arises. Many subtle changes take place in our body as a result of poor breathing and bad posture, leading to heavy breathing, inadequate pilmonary function and aggravation of heart disease. Pranayama can help to prevent these disorders and help to check or cure them, so that one can live fully and well.
*As light radiates from the disc of the sun, so air is spread through the lungs. Move the chest up and out. If the skin over the centre of the breastbone can move vertically up and down and it can expand from side to side circumferentially, it shows that the lungs are being filled to their maximum capacity.
== References ==
