A:  What do you mean by transferring the weight from one side to the other?

 
E: For example what we do in Healing Dance, the Pendulum Sideways.  A weight transfer front to back or side to side as in the Accordion.  So they get the benefit of healing with the pleasure of being moved, not only standing in the water for half an hour without doing anything.

 
If we are talking about people who have a reduced vital capacity from asthma and other sorts of lung deficiencies, it was usually said that it's a problem to put them in the water--they can only do surface moves and very basic things. But the core of most breathing deficiencies is due to improper breathing.

 Maybe 80% of us breathe improperly. We are not using all of our lungs and all of the muscles that are involved in proper breathing. People who come to learn freediving can also be asthmatic and cannot go scuba diving with tanks; they cannot feel the asthma until there is a 50% narrowing in the passages.  So they cannot dive in this way. They come to us asking, "How can we freedive if we cannot breathe? We have only 30% lung function."  They have only 30% function because they are not using their lungs properly. And then they learn how to breathe, to separate the action of the diaphragm from the intercostals, and to breathe through the nose separate from the mouth. It takes a few days to go over the technique of proper breathing.

 It might take weeks or months until people fully grasp conscious breathing, but when they do they really make a giant leap.  I had people coming to do a freediving course with 30% lung function and after a month they had 50% to 60% function. No ventilators or other inhalers could do that for them. It's only conscious breathing, being aware of what you are doing and knowing how to do it. No doctor will tell you, "Listen you have to breathe from your diaphragm and then continue until the middle…" They'll just give you an antihistamine and an inhaler and tell you, "Okay now take it and you'll feel better."  There's a whole theory, by the way, about breathing and health. A doctor Konstantin Buteyko was talking about lung diseases and saying they were caused not because we breathe too little, but because we breathe too much.  If we look at our breathing, people normally breathe between 12 and 20 breaths per minute.  So it's shallow breathing, but breathing quite a lot.  But when you have this situation where you see something interesting, not normal, your breath ceases or you start breathing much less.

And if you want to concentrate you naturally breathe less or stop breathing. It doesn't interfere, you don't feel worse; you feel strong.  This is what I really like about WaterDance. You start being aware of your breath and breathing less. People come out of the session very vital, they come out very strong, but they breathe less.  They didn't breathe for almost an hour. They take a breath, another breath and stay under for a few seconds, it can be ten, it can be twenty, it can be two minutes. They come up, take another three breaths and then go down again. They don't need time to recover, because the body has enough oxygen and energy to sustain itself for a very long duration. The people who came to me with severe problems in the lungs were usually with paralyses, like this guy I mentioned before. By the way, there's a big difference between men and women in breathing.  

 
A: Really?  What's that?

 
E: You have two kinds of breathing.  You have diaphragmatic breathing and breathing from the intercostal muscles. Men usually breathe more from the diaphragm. Why do women breathe from the chest? Because they have a womb, much more in the abdominal cavity, so it's harder for the diaphragm to work.  Plus, it’s a matter of education.  If you look at a baby from the age of one or two who sits at the table like this, he won't be able to work his diaphragm.  A child who is active and runs around will more probably breathe from his belly. So we teach people.  A man who has been in a car accident has been used to breathing from his belly.  Now he is quadriplegic. His diaphragm is not working any more, or only partially.  For him it is very, very difficult to live, to simply breathe. Instead of giving him medicine, you just need to teach him to be aware of other organs involved in breathing. You teach him to use his intercostals, to work with his upper musculature and breathe higher up.  Within a relatively short span of time you see a big improvement.  And if you combine it with water work such as WaterDance, it obliges him to hold his breath, to be aware of the muscles doing the work and he progresses even more quickly.