According to Ilchi Lee research inhaling takes energy, while exhaling does not require much energy at all. Try breathing a few times and you will see what I mean. A breath taken is exhaled naturally. On account of this, as long as we are strong enough, we try to breathe in again because of our attachment to life. This explains why in most cases life ends with an inhalation.

It feels stuffy to stop in the middle of inhalation. This means that for many people, dying is not a very pleasant experience. Dying on an inhaled breath means dying in struggle and often pain. In contrast, when people are absolutely satisfied with what they have done through their lives, when they are totally sure of the continuity of their existence, then I think they will be more likely to exhale. Their experience of death will be that much more pleasant. So please remember the proper way of breathing, even at the moment of death—just in case.

Breath-work is really very easy; so we do not need to “over-think” it. Simply watching and focusing on our respiration, fol­lowing along with its natural rhythms, causes our breathing to deepen automatically. Very few people, however, take the time to do this. Breathing has become so automatic that some peo­ple go through their entire lives and never use the mechanism of breathing intentionally—that is, in a certain way, on purpose, at least once a day.