I have come to pay a lot of attention to my breath since losing my father to lung cancer in 1997- He was a serious smoker for more than fifty years of his life.Ardha Matsyendrasana Pose Yoga When he was diagnosed, I was not at all surprised, but like him, I knew very little about where the ramifications would lead us when it came time for the inevitable. As an infant, I suffered from pneumonia, which is probably when I first lost a connection with the essential breath, the unconditioned or voluntary breath we experience as children.
Ardha Matsyendrasana Pose Yoga One of my grandfathers also died from lung cancer when I was age four, which had a significant effect on me. I can still remember his slight frame sitting up in his bed, the breathing apparatus surrounding him in his small bright hospital room in Southern California, where my mother’s Salvadoran family had immigrated in the late 1940s. Like my father, I, too, began smoking at a very young age. Thirteen, to be precise; long before my lungs were fully developed. A few years later, my dad suffered a heart attack while jogging in the park.
