The Science of Breathing

What is the first action a newborn baby takes upon his or her introduction to life on Earth?

Taking a breath is that essential first action. Failing to accomplish that action means life is quickly over.


Since activating kundalini in the early 1970s, I've wondered why so little was known about the science of breathing (if I may call it a science). Had I not learned how to breathe correctly, I would never have awakened kundalini. Had I not activated kundalini, my physical imperfections would never have been corrected. What I learned was the result of empirical research in the laboratory of my own body.

I learned breath is not only an important factor governing worldly accomplishments (ability at music or sports, for instance), it's the key to your adherence to the blueprint of your perfect body, the blueprint for your unique incarnation. What is this blueprint? It's a perpetually updating, mutli-dimensional plan for your embodiment that includes your physical as well as your energetic bodies.

At the moment of conception, the moment the sperm and egg collide, Consciousness creates a blueprint for hominization, a concept that even Catholics recognize as "the unfolding of a pre-existent pattern (blueprint), a making explicit of what is implicit." While in the  womb, the blueprint manages the hominization process, which, during this time focuses on maintaining symmetry. Even before birth, temporal forces can affect symmetry, creating a separation between the blueprint and your actual embodiment.

"Up to the moment of your birth, it stays one step ahead of your actual embodiment, carefully matching your anatomy to the three-dimensional form as conceived by your blueprint. At birth, this metaphysical superintendence sleeps, allowing the materialistic factors of heredity and environment to guide and manage your growth through life."

~ Deciphering the Golden Flower One Secret at a Time - JJ Semple

The key to preserving bodily symmetry, or adherence to the blueprint, is breath and breathing, an autonomic process that activates at birth. Up to that point the formation of the embryo, the fetus, and the physical body takes place in the mother's womb.

"From the moment you’re born, any one of thousands of stimuli — within or out of your control — can alter your growth, assuring degrees of deviation from the blueprint for your unique embodiment.

"After activating the Kundalini-Life Force, I was able to see the blueprint of my perfect body and compare it to my actual state. Amazingly, the Kundalini Life Force recognized a deformity and immediately began to correct it. I witnessed it slowly reshape my body to the exact proportions in the blueprint."

~ Deciphering the Golden Flower One Secret at a Time - JJ Semple

What is the purpose of the blueprint? The blueprint acts as a template overlay for your growth through life — a continuous indicator of your actual versus your intended form.

The key feature of the blueprint is its perfect symmetry. Every creature that breathes is meant to be symmetrical, from the beginning to the end of life. It's part of the evolutionary master plan, bequeathed to energetic life forms by Consciousness.

The blueprint and your actual form are not supposed to lose sync. But what you do to yourself and/or what is done to you during your lifetime can cause the two to go out of sync.

To maintain bodily symmetry, and through symmetry, synchronization with the blueprint, one essential apparatus must function as perfectly as it did at the moment of birth. What is this apparatus, this indispensable mechanism?

It's your ability to breathe correctly, in short, how you apply the science of breathing to your breathing.

That's right, the key to life is breathing. Before aerobic workouts in the gym, doctrinal dissertations, football games, personal wealth, marriage and divorce there was breathing. Consciousness wants you to be symmetrical; symmetrical beings are highly energetic beings, and, therefore, more productive. And, to evolve, you must be productive in the ways you manage your energies.

When I started looking for answers to my breathing issues in the late 1960s, the only information I found came from ancient, esoteric yogic texts. As a result, I started practicing the breathing techniques in The Secret of the Golden Flower — Golden Flower Meditation. Not only did I learn the mechanics of correct breathing, such as regularity, inhaling and exhaling, breathing through the nose, I discovered the pranic energy inherent in each breath, a phenomenon that takes breathing far beyond the mere exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide.

As I worked my way through this meditation, I had the feeling there was a body of valuable knowledge I knew nothing about. Information pertaining to the anatomy of my breathing apparatus. After kundalini awakened, energy streamed into my skull and started pushing outwards against all the inner surfaces of my skull, especially my jaw where it appeared mandated to change the configuration of not only my jaw, but my teeth and my skull as well. This went on 24 hours a day, the intensity increasing and diminishing according to the time of day.

Much later, I would learn from reading James Nestor's book, Breath, that the skull and its contents are malleable; they can reconfigure if the right solutions are applied.

I realize mentioning concepts like prana and pre-existing blueprints may sound crazy to some, but they are as real as the material world of the senses. And they have nothing to do with religion.

Kundalini, the instrument of Consciousness, corrected my physical imperfections, bringing my being into alignment with my blueprint.

What about people who have not activated kundalini, know nothing about it, and even if they did, would never believe it is real.

Trouble is, even if they did practice some form of meditation, there is no guarantee of a meaningful or successful outcome. Why? Because every kundalini experience is different.

Fortunately, researchers, not affiliated with any religious or spiritual belief systems, are now exploring many neglected aspects of the breathing process.

This is great news, a real boon to meditators and practitioners of energy cultivation techniques — a stark contrast to the limited sources I had access to. Today, the Internet makes vital information on breathing easily accessible.

The first item to catch my attention concerned Cone Beam 3D imaging,a scan of the airways: mouth, skull, and teeth that reveals the condition of the breathing apparatus. These scans are done by special dentists and they show the effects of a lifetime of chewing on bad foods and breathing through the mouth. You might think the resulting data worthless in the grand scheme of things. After all, you chew, you breathe. So what's the big deal?

Most people take breathing for granted, and that's the problem. Given the many respiratory issues affecting the lungs that people today suffer from, a scan is the first step in informing the individual about his/her condition, be it the effects of COPD, asthma, infections like influenza, a deviated septum, pneumonia and tuberculosis, anatomical irregularities like malocclusion, sinusitis, allergies, and even lung cancer. 

Incidence of Respiratory Illness (70 years)

A scan also allows the dentist to devise corrective measures for treating and neutralizing respiratory conditions.

“All the modern skulls showed some degree of crooked teeth. Of the 5,400 different species of mammals on the planet, humans are now the only ones to routinely have misaligned jaws, overbites, underbites, and snaggled teeth, a condition formally called malocclusion.”

Excerpt From: James Nestor. “Breath.” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/breath/id1487371974

Next month, I'll go into greater detail on how the science of breathing research fits in with the ancient traditions of yoga and meditation, and how the two can work together to facilitate kundalini work.