Clothing, Weight Gain and Breast Cancer

Much of the clothing of a large segment of western culture is primarily designed for slouchers and egos, not fully alive and breathing bodies. Belts, tight jeans, neck sizes of many dress shirts, neckties, and brassieres can restrict the full breath. Some clothing designer just came out with the loose look. Baloney. More like the lose look. You lose breath. No elastic waste bands at all. Layered elastic waste bands can severely restrict one's breathing. Stretch jeans can be good. High heels and platform shoes shorten the calf muscles and hamstrings as well as throw off dozens of sphincters that need optimal posture to function properly. More about this. After wearing heels for some time, the lack of heels then invites a stiffening of the knee and resultant restriction of pelvis and subsequent reduction of breath. I have to think of the Chinese tradition of binding women's feet. High heels seems to me a clever/sneaky way to slow down the female sex and contain/control some of their energy. Is this style (I DO love to see shapely legs but will settle for sandals or Berkies) patriarchy running amuck again?

What many people don't realize is that clothing that is too restrictive can cut off the ability to burn fat. What happens is that we wear clothes that don't stretch and allow us to breathe fully. Or we eat a big meal and wait too long to loosen our belts, and this reduces our breathing capacity and restricts our ability, and interest, to burn calories with oxygen from the breath. And the food converts to fat. Self-perpetuating cycle.

Add up stretch underwear underneath stretch-waisted skirt and/or panty hose, and you may well have the equivalent of a belt. Restrictive clothing is particularly noticeable when you are sitting down in a seat or a chair that does not adequately support your low and mid-back. I've shown people how to feel negative or positive (as in depressed or happy) just by changing how they sit in a seat. My breathing rule number one: never wear anything that restricts the breath-wave. That includes a suppressive relationship. Each breath has an opportunity to accumulate energy or invite a deficiency in it.

Trying to breathe deeply when your abdomen, chest and upper and lower back muscles are restricted by tension or tight-fitting clothing is like trying to blow up a five-quart balloon inside a 3-4 quart bottle.

Any tightness in the brassier can slowly constrict the upper body so that it feels normal to be squished. Because of this, it is often difficult to convince women that their bras are too tight. Bras are very bad if they leave a red mark. Even without a red mark, many bras are too tight or too small in one or both cup sizes.

Two studies were completed in the year 2000 in British hospitals by medical doctors showed a connection between bra wearing and fibrocystic breast disease. From these studies, a film documentary was made and shown on nationwide television in Britain in November 2000.

I have some clients unhook their bras, receive Optimal Breath Releases (OBRs) techniques and exercises and then show them how tight the bra now feels. Most will want to change the bra immediately. Without the breath release techniques this may be difficult to understand. See brassieres for more on this.

Do the Basic Basic daily breathing exercise in #191 Secrets of Optimal Natural Breathing manual, and loosen the bra with expanders from a fabric store until you can get one fitted properly. Monthly times necessitate expansion. Perhaps more in one breast than the other. When the back strap is loosened, the shoulder strap needs to be raised a little but not always.

Does the shoulder strap get too tight and drag down on the shoulder causing pain in the top of the shoulder? Instead of lowering the height of the back strap by lengthening the shoulder straps, place something under the shoulder strap to distribute the weight over a larger part of the shoulder. Pain in the shoulders from the weight? Get to a gym and do shoulder strengthening weight training outlined in the #191 Secrets of Optimal Natural Breathing manual.

I suspect most shoulder and back straps could be a lot wider. "But they stick out of my new blouse and look like wings or something," says she. Maybe a change in priorities is in order.

An e-mail woman friend writes that elastic is sometimes worse! Makes you think you can squeeze into something that's too small. "I like nicely fitted waistbands with a little slack and a button that can be undone when necessary."

I believe that non-restrictive bras or no bras at all are necessary for dependable, consistent personal power. A subdued breath is always going to subdue or distort the experience or expression of the breather. Why don't people figure that out themselves? Shallow breathing actually feels "normal" to many. These "normal" people worry me. Hiding larger breasts from society's eyes? Too much chronic tension that becomes "natural" to us? Shame? Anxiety? Chronic fatigue? We create a world that lives with that tension, and it distorts our inner perceptions. Then we project and manifest those perceptions out into the world and compound the problems. Breathe easier and life is easier. Keep the rib cage and heart center open and be proud of who you are.

I've wondered about this and just learned that there are others as well that believe that tight bras and ill-fitting cup sizes might have something to do with causing breast cancer. At the end of this article was a (dated) research questionnaire developed by a JFKU Psychology major who has fitted 5,000 bras at Victoria's Secret. Stay in touch with the newsletter for further developments on her research.

A new study shows that wearing a bra is linked to higher incidence of breast cancer. Women who wear a bra 24 hours a day are 125 times as likely to develop cancer as women who don't wear one at all. In a study involving 4,700 women by Medical anthropologists Sydney Ross Singer and Soma Grismaijer, those women who never wore a bra had the same incidence of breast cancer as men, a rare condition. Women who wore bras for more than 12 hours but did not sleep in them had 21 times the risk as women who wore a bra for less than 12 hours.

It is suggested that lymphatic vessels are blocked by the bra, keeping white blood cells from their role in destroying abnormal cells, and leading to malignancies. However, even without knowing the exact mechanism, the correlation is significant: 4 to 12 times as great as the connection between smoking and lung cancer. Singer and Grismaijer's book, Dressed to Kill: The Link Between Breast Cancer and Bras, elaborates on their research.

Women with large breasts are more likely to find it difficult to go without a bra. This leads me to suspect there is a probable correlation between breast size and breast cancer. But other studies may give much deeper insight to this.

Suspenders (wide ones) or belly bags or purses are good choices. No wonder Hawaii is so popular. The land of Huna, Aloha and Mumus. Ha means breath. A spiritual history based on spirit and full breathers.

As junior high schoolers, we used to (and still do I see) let our jeans hang down almost to the floor. We were rebelling? I think the full breathing and self expression guides many towards this. Was this our statement of freedom and autonomy, like the bra burning of the sixties?

Ever wonder why European mountain walkers wear suspenders so often? For men's pants I prefer Saville Row or Savanne No-Wrinkle pants with elastic waistbands or their equivalents. They let me breathe. But if you carry a lot of stuff in your pockets, you will be pulling up your pants probably too much for your liking. Suspenders negate any tension around the belly-breath area. Better yet, suspenders and a belly bag. I think suspenders on a woman can be very attractive. OOOPS! The belly size will increase a little as the breath fills up near the waist band. To heck with a tiny waist and big chest image of what a man and woman should look like. The belly muscles must work with and let go, not fight against the breath. Most pants can be let out. Try unhooking the top button for a while. Hide it with a sweater or vest if need be.

I have a professional public speaking client whose tailor didn't give him any room to increase his pant size. He changed tailors. I predict Michael Lee will achieve national prominence as a leader in cross-cultural communications, bringing people of totally different ethnic backgrounds together for a common good. The belly bag can hang below your bottom breathing point. Take it off when you sit, and slide it around to your side or back when you want to give or receive a hug. Vest pocket wallets work as well.

TOKYO (Reuters) -- Police in Japan are taking aim at a new menace to road safety -- platform shoes. The offending footwear, a must-have item for thousands of young Japanese girls, has been blamed for contributing to car accidents by slowing the time it takes for drivers to hit the brakes in an emergency.

Police in Japan's second city of Osaka said on Friday they will ban drivers from wearing platforms if tests prove this to be true.

The move comes after a passenger died in a car crash last November when a young woman's heels prevented her from braking properly. Authorities elsewhere in Japan have already issued directives instructing drivers not to wear shoes that "would prevent safe driving."

Initial tests have backed up the theory, showing that drivers wearing platform shoes take a crucial fraction of a second longer to apply the brakes than drivers wearing normal shoes.

The outlandish shoes are a common sight in Japanese cities, usually on the feet of artificially tanned teenagers who also sport dyed blonde hair, skimpy skirts and glittering eye make-up.

But with the soles of some shoes reaching as high as 12 inches, health experts have warned they could cause painful injuries to ankles, feet and backs.