Due to breathing s potential dominance of the autonomic nervous system anything you do 5,000 to 30,000 times a day or two to five hundred million times per life time will influence you positively or negatively in many ways. Your breathing is the only part of the ANS that you can consciously control. Make it your lead horse and the rest of the team, your nervous system will follow. Your breathing can be out of control like a blind three year old child trying to drive an automobile down a straight road. Or it can be a balanced combination of skillful and spontaneous action that propels, and guides you towards the directions in life that you care most to go.
Life seems to be varying degrees of the two extremes.
Used appropriately, the breath and breathing can help the ANS maintain levels of function that, baring accident or disaster, never need doctors or hospitals. Prescription drugs may well be reduced to levels of rational emergency support instead of disease and death dealing dependencies. You can use your breathing to detect hidden signs of potential illness, key blocks in your internal power and your ability to get what you want in life, and whether or not you are feeling your feelings and in touch with your emotions and experiencing the fullness of your life. The magic of breathing is not merely in proper input of oxygen and balance of carbon dioxide. Poorly chosen breathing exercises will set up blocked or too-wide swings of energy experiences that disturb and distort rather than facilitate easier, coordinated, integrated, and strengthened states of breathing and being.