- Updated on November 20, 2023
By Dr. Artour Rakhimov, Alternative Health Educator and Author
– (Translation) Last updated on August 9, 2018
Newspaper “Sovetskaya Sibir'” (Soviet Siberia)
No. 19, 31 January 1998.
Konstantin Pavlovich Buteyko recently celebrated his 75th birthdate. Thinking that the cause of the most common diseases has been deep breathing, he was and is now the most mysterious character in medical and public circles. He has many supporters in our country and abroad, who promoted to award “Buteyko genius” with the Nobel Prize. At the same time, many doctors do not accept his ideas and the method of “liquidation of deep breathing”. In recent years, while touring far from Siberia, the president of Folks’ Academy of Spiritual Culture agreed to talk with our reporter N. Zubritskaya.
“You are usually do not say about your childhood, but there was the beginning of your character”
“When I was 5 years old, I gave myself one oath. I was returning home from the shop, but a stranger, a grown lad, beat me and took away all my shopping goods. I yelled towards his back, “When I am an adult, I’ll eliminate all robbers!” I’ll keep my word; I’ll do that… I went to school one year earlier – I cheated that I was seven years old. By that time I could write and read Byron; therefore, I was assigned to the third form.
“You studied successfully later as well. What was driving you?”
“I could not tolerate that somebody was in something above me. The main law of organic matter is perfection. After the school, I decided to go to Kiev Polytechnic Institute, in order to build a spaceship, which could fly in cosmos. The study was interrupted due to the war. I was in the automobile unit, which served the reserves of the frontal line. After the war I decided to go to a medical institute; I studied with all my grades excellent. Wishing to solve the mystery of death, I decided to observe the death of a hundred hopeless patients. I was sitting for hundreds of hours in the ward for the dying and I learned how to predict, with hourly, or even daily, precision, the last breath of the patient. I have a special quality; it is rare, acute sensitivity to breathing. Just in those times, I noticed the relationship: the closer the death, the deeper the breathing.”
“Breathing is called the bridge to Universe”
“Yes. And awareness of the own breathing can give the man a lot. Breathing and life are synonyms. To breathe consciously is to live consciously.”
“They say, that it is not easy to learn your method. I know that due to my experience – using books it is impossible to get. But in a group with your practitioner learning is easy. But many are scared to try your method, because air hunger, as hunger for food, is an example of extreme discomfort. In reality, that is not so.”
“In order to introduce the method to a clever person, I need only 5-10 minutes. I start with the same, what I did myself when I was a student, who was severely sick with hypertension. My state was almost hopeless; I tried the best medications. I had to expect the speedy perspective of myocardial infarction, or insult, or kidney failure. The blood pressure was beyond all imaginable limits. However, I have causative thinking; I tried to find the cause of my disease. During my medical service in the hospital near Pokrov’s Gates, I got an idea that my hypertension due to deep breathing. I started to monitor my breathing. I felt that my air moved through nasal passages, throat, trachea, and bronchi. The ribs were expanded, the abdomen expanded, and the air reached the abdomen. Several inhalations and exhalations – and I felt better. The problem is that deep breathing, Satan, as I call it, does not like to be observed. Later, I consciously decreased my breathing, and the headache got released, the heart calmed. I went into the method in 3 minutes. I immediately went towards, reached the maternity unit, cancer patients. I said, ”Let us conceal breathing.” And the pain was taken off as by a magic wand. By decreasing the depth of breathing, I cured and established the foundation of my method: during deep breathing, hyperventilation of the lungs, the level of carbon dioxide in the blood is lowered; that causes interruption of all metabolic processes, which finally leads to diseases.
“From the book “Discovery of doctor Buteyko” we know, that official medicine had an unfriendly attitude in relation to the method. Some of its representatives tried to eliminate you physically and to poison; twice you had suspicious road accidents. They tried, although without success, to put you in a madhouse. Why all these persecutions?
“The problem is that I found a method to get rid of drugs and complex and not safe surgical operations. The thought, that the most common diseases, which kill humanity, can be treated with normalization of breathing, insults the official medicine. Even Academicians do not want to think about the causes of the disease. There are few of them who possess causative thinking. The mind of the man is nailed with: sleep more, eat more, get more sex, breathe deeper, work less – and you will be healthy. But these are the laws of the anti-world. Deep breathing makes the person aggressive and provokes violence. In essence, deep breathing is some type of madness and the cause of robbery, theft, infidelity, and pollution of the environment. If breathing is the deeper certain number of times, the person is duller, weaker, and sicker the same number of times; and he lives shorter.”
“Do you want to turn the world upside down?”
”To turn the anti-world is my goal. It is the Hercules task to clean the Augean stables, which are human brains. And Medicine is to blame for the cause of the collapse of civilization, because medicine, in essence, is anti-medicine. It blessed such sins as overeating, laziness, and promiscuity. It nailed into brains that to breathe deeper is useful. And the more people are perverted, the deeper they breathe.
“Could you tell more about causes of overbreathing?”
“Consider the origins. When the life appeared on Earth, the air had no oxygen; it consisted of carbon dioxide, from which all living cells were built. They are built now too. Investigations showed that for the cells of the brain, heart, and kidneys, about 7 percent carbon dioxide and only 2 percent oxygen are required. Now air has 200 times less CO2 and 10 times more O2; and the deeper we breathe, the stronger the violation of the necessary balance. In the formation of deep breathing, we are to blame: overeating, physical inactivity, nervous and psychological stress, sexual immoderation, street drugs, and food allergens. My discovery is 45 years old, but medicine is still on its head. The students are still taught that during deep breathing the organism gets more oxygen, although it is proven a long time ago that everything is vice versa. Therefore, medical schools become the bases of foolishness.”
“Such assessments can disturb many people.”
“Many people do not understand why I fight fiercely. The destiny of the mankind, its survival, is at stake. Fame and money are not of my concern. Now I inquired the Health Ministry with the question, “Why is the 1985 Directive about the use of the method not fulfilled?” Up to the present time, nothing, what was specified in the Directive, is done.”
“During the International Congress on Respiratory Diseases in Novosibirsk, it was surprising that nobody mentioned a word about the Buteyko method, which radically treats asthma. The conclusion of Academicians is that asthma is incurable.”…
* The whole interview is included in the Amazon book (sponsored content): “Original Works by Dr Buteyko and 1988 Buteyko Breathing Manual” (Kindle Book and Paperback). You can also find the PDF version of this book on the page “Dr. Buteyko’s Original Interviews, Articles, Speeches, and Manuals“…..
