Steve,

As you know, judging from my own experience and readings I think that
asthma as we know it is unintentionally caused by doctors -  a sort of
disguised "Heroic Medicine" that killed George Washington and hundreds
of others in the last part of the 18th and the first part of the 19th
century with barbaric treatments such as bleeding, purgatives and
emetics..

Take a look at the handy 1 hour video presentation by Ramdev (Google
search words Ramdev and video, or simply
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-386913693756370208&q=ramdev&hl=en)
with IMHO authentic yoga breathing exercises but with greatly
exaggerated claims on treatment of some diseases like diabetes and
thyroid to mention only few.

You will see that one yoga breathing asthma exercise as f. i.
bhastrika is exactly the opposite of what western doctors tell us to
do, namely to sort of break out of asthma by making upper chest
breathing normal and effective.  Western docs tell us to avoid upper
chest breathing and do belly breathing (lie down with a book on your
belly and get it moving up and down). Bronchodilators are the mainstay
of their treatment, but if as seems quite likely, nature intends us to
be able to open up our chest to overcome wheezing etc, then
bronchodilators would be in fact a nasty  trick and a source of
addiction.

So strange as it sounds, the instruction of yogi Ramdev to breathe
upwards and into the chest, where the lungs are might tend to correct
a deformed rib-cage and any case help with asthma.

The critical point about all these weird and wonderful or mystical
oriental breathing tricks and getting "prana, qi, chi, ki or cosmic
energy" may lie in doing the alternate nostril breathing  (anulom)
with the feeling that lung inhale volume is being mysteriously boosted
without any feeling of suction.  It all seems like patiently savoring
some expensive wine and noticing that swilling the wine around in your
mouth may produce different sensations. With experiments with prana
etc.. the sensation is sort of "antiasthmatic" and extremely
pleasant.  Asthma at one of the spectrum and prana breathing is at the
other end of the breathing sensations.  Neither of them is really
understood (airway damage in asthma seems to be purely secondary) so
it is surely logical to try out the prana stuff rather than stolidly
and somewhat fanatically attempting firstly to explain asthmatic
breathing in terms of fluid mechanics ignoring reflexes.

You might consider asking a doctor why bhastrika etc are not seriously
considered for asthma treatment and why the "fluid mechanics" approach
to breathing is so wonderful. Failing a satisfactory answer the claim
of the medical professon about drugs being superior to any sort of
alternative treament would seem bogus.  Regards, Richard Friedel

Steve, do you mean they're more visible than on most people?  I would think
that's a result of your workout.  I looked at the video's on your website
and don't see anything unusual.  Most people have more fat on that part of
the body, so could that be the difference?

I'm a bit vague on this, but for what it's worth --

When I was in high school, long ago, one of my school mates had what was
called "pigeon breast", a protruding central area from a deformed rib cage.
In some of my early readings after contracting adult onset asthma about 25
years ago, I recall that this can be caused by severe chronic asthma as a
child.

SJF