Throat Sounds On Breathing

You've been breathing normally all your life and you've never made any throat sounds outside of talking or singing. What's the big deal here?

Well, how about this claim: in over 35 years of practice of Reichian therapy, everyone of my patients starts the therapy making throat sounds on the inhale, the exhale, or both.

You will hear both of these on the Sounds of Reichian audio. OK, what is a throat sound and why is it present?

There is a single answer to both questions. While, in fact, breathing is done with the diaphragm and the chest; in practice when people start doing the Reichian full deep breathing they treat it as though they were breathing into and out of the throat. On the Sounds of Reichian tape you will hear throat sounds still present in people who have been in the Reichian therapy for over two decades. If after two decades of therapy some people are still making throat sounds it must somehow be difficult to get rid of them.

The issue is one of control. Once people start focusing on the breathing, it is almost automatic that they treat the issue as one of control. Normally, you are not even aware of your breathing. Now you are paying attention to your breathing and that means that the breathing is deliberate rather than automatic and unnoticed. You are now focusing on your inhale and your exhale and that, almost automatically, means you have to control each action. The method of control, which everyone uses before he learns to trust the body and not control, is to use his throat as the control point. He starts inhaling to the throat and exhaling from the throat.

Interestingly, if you do the same belly-chest deep breathing through the nose instead of the mouth, this throat sound is not present. The reason why is easy to understand. Taking a deep breath through the nose you can already feel and sometimes even hear the air moving in and out, so you already have a point of control. Not so with mouth breathing. I can tell I am breathing in or out because I can hear the throat sounds. Having that throat sound allows me to know when I am inhaling and when I am exhaling. I am in control.

In reality the throat is simply a pipe from your mouth to your lungs. The vocal cords don't change that. The vocal cords are no more than a narrowing of the open tube at one point.

There are a number of exercises that are specifically designed to teach the student to allow the breathing to be done directly and solely with the diaphragm and the chest. You will get these exercises in Chapters 4, 5, and 6. There are even exercises that are impossible to do if there is even a hint of a throat sound (for example, GASP INHALE BELLY on page 99).

For the present, I would suggest that after you have read through this book the first time and prior to your beginning the second reading (as I discussed in Chapter one), that you listen to The Sounds of Reichian audio so that you can hear examples of the throat sounds and an example of breathing without throat sounds.

But before you race to listen to that audio, I want yet again to emphasize that there are no tests in this course of study. If you treat this process of therapy as a test of performance, you will thoroughly defeat the work. The issue in character-change-based therapy is to allow, not to cause. Your objective is not to eliminate the throat sound (negative objective), it is to allow the body to operate without you demanding that it do what you will it to do and in the manner you demand.

In all the issues and exercises in this therapy process there is a standard of performance, but if you convert that into a self-imposed demand that you "do it properly" you are simply imposing a superego-based demand on the therapy and that demand will defeat the therapy (the superego issue is discussed in Chapter 23).

The issue of breathing with no throat sound is addressed directly in Chapter eight. I have discussed the issue here so that you can learn to listen for the presence of the throat sound and begin the job of learning to breathe with the idea that your throat is just an open pipe leading to your lungs and has no other control function in this work.

Yawning

Most animals, even humans, yawn. During your work you may find yourself yawning. There are many scientific explanations but no one explanation explains all the reasons why yawns occur. You may have heard that yawning means that you are bored or that you are sleepy or that you do not have enough oxygen. None of these three reasons is correct here. Among the explanations advanced to explain yawning, the one applicable here is that it indicates relaxation. As you relax from a presession state of tension, the yawning indicates a relative state of relaxation.

Yawning has a special place in this work. Yawning has priority over any exercise. Any exercise is stopped in favor of a yawn. Further, the yawn gets a special sound. Shortly I will talk about the sound(s) to make as you exhale, but it is different for a yawn. A yawn gets as loud a sound as you can make. Exaggerate the sound. Yawning is a good sign and one of the best indicators that you are letting go of the chronic tension that serves to protect your nature.