Diaphragm

The most clinically specific discussion Aajonus gave about the diaphragm concerns hiccoughs. He described hiccoughs directly as spasms of the diaphragm muscles causing abrupt short inhalations with a slight gasping sound. This framing is notable because he did not treat hiccoughs as trivial or mysterious but as a literal muscular event, a spasm of a specific muscle, the same as a cramp elsewhere in the body.

His remedy for this condition was precise. He recommended sipping one cup of very warm good mineral water mixed with three tablespoons of unheated honey to relax the diaphragm muscles, with the effect occurring within a few minutes. The warmth and the honey together appear to function as a relaxant delivered internally to the affected tissue. He also recommended applying external warmth via a hot-water bottle combined with gentle massage of both the diaphragm and the upper spine just below the neck to help relax the affected muscles. These two interventions, internal and external, were presented as the complete protocol for hiccough resolution within his framework.

One of the more detailed discussions touching the diaphragm involved how the thyroid gland responds to a blow that knocks the wind out of someone, specifically a strike to the stomach or diaphragm. Aajonus returned to this example repeatedly across multiple workshops because he considered it one of the clearest demonstrations of what the thyroid actually does as opposed to what pharmaceutical medicine claims it does.

He described his brother striking him repeatedly in the stomach, directly in the diaphragm, causing him to lose his wind and pass out because he stopped breathing. His heart would stop along with his lungs. Then, within thirty seconds, forty-five seconds, or up to two minutes later, he would regain consciousness. He asked the question directly: why does the heart start beating again? His answer was that thyroxin levels had surged to restart it.

To validate this, he went to football games and obtained permission to draw blood from players who had been knocked out after being hit by multiple opponents. He found thyroxin levels sky high in those players. The thyroid, in his framework, exists primarily to protect and restart the lungs and heart in exactly this kind of emergency, where the diaphragm absorbs a blow that disrupts the breathing mechanism and stops both respiratory and cardiac function simultaneously.

He explained that a blow to the diaphragm causes the lungs to stop, the heart to stop, and the individual to pass out, and that what pulls the person back to consciousness is a massive surge of thyroxin that kicks the heart and lungs back into function. This is why, in his framework, the thyroid gland has five backups, two thyroid glands and two parathyroids on each, because the lungs and heart are the only systems whose cessation is immediately lethal, and the diaphragm's vulnerability to blunt impact makes that cessation a recurrent evolutionary threat.

Aajonus also discussed the diaphragm implicitly in the context of positional medicine for respiratory illness. When the lungs are detoxifying, whether from something freshly inhaled or old material coming out through the lungs, or when the lungs are undergoing repair, he said many of the muscles involved are not working fully, likening it to shutting down several lanes of a highway.

In this situation, lying down is dangerous because gravity pushes the lungs shut, and without adequate muscle tone and glandular tone and organ tone, the body cannot hold the lungs open against that gravitational pressure. The diaphragm is implicated here because it is one of the primary muscles involved in holding the lungs open and driving the respiratory cycle. When it and the surrounding musculature are compromised by detoxification or repair, the mechanical support needed to counter gravity disappears.

His solution was to sleep or rest sitting at a slant, because in that position gravity pushes the lungs open rather than closed. He specified leisure chairs, chairs that recline to an angle, as appropriate resting positions during a cold, flu, or pneumonia. He stated that lungs can only collapse in one direction, the prone direction, and that sitting prevents that collapse.

In one iridology or body-reading session described in the transcripts, Aajonus identified hardening in the diaphragm area along with metals concentrated there as findings in a specific individual. He named this alongside other findings including metals in the left kidney, around the heart, and problems with the pancreas and kidney, and noted that the tonsils were very shriveled. His recommendation in that case was at least a lubrication or moisturizing formula once a day, referencing the formulas he described in his books. This is the only case-specific mention of the diaphragm area as a tissue that can accumulate metal deposits and develop hardening, suggesting that he regarded it as subject to the same toxic accumulation and structural deterioration as other muscular and glandular tissues in the body.

Aajonus described his own approach to breathing during intense exercise as deliberately slow and diaphragmatic. While running, including sprinting backwards around a track at Hollywood High School, he forced himself to take deeper breaths rather than breathing rapidly and shallowly. He would take two to three to four seconds to inhale, hold the breath, and exhale for the same duration. He contrasted this with the rapid, inefficient breathing he observed in other runners, noting that rapid breathing made the lungs work very fast without working efficiently and burned large amounts of energy in the mechanical movement of the lungs themselves.

His position was that controlled slow breathing, even under exertion, preserved nutrients that would otherwise be spent on rapid respiratory mechanics, and allowed him to run faster and recover more quickly than athletes who were not managing their breath in this way. He reported that after sprinting, his heartbeat returned to normal within three minutes. He connected this to the practice of yoga breathing exercises he did separately from exercise, which he used to train the breathing mechanism to function with control and efficiency. He distinguished between holding the breath as done in yoga and the slow rhythmic breathing he used during physical activity, noting he did not hold his breath while running but did practice held breath in yoga contexts.

He also named singing as the most strenuous exercise of the human body precisely because it requires controlling the muscles of the throat, the mouth aperture, and the breathing together to produce tone and pitch, with the chest and diaphragm working in coordination throughout. He stated that twenty minutes of singing equals one hour on a treadmill in terms of the demand placed on the body.