Robert John wrote:
While the breath work is important, it isn't the breath itself, so much as the resulting "power".
Once you manifest it, it can be done while breathing in, breathing out, held breath etc.
I believe that's only once you manage to divorce the power generation from the actual act of breathing.
Similarly we teach everything in the beginning with extension forward - for a crude example a student stands in hanmi, arms in front, another pushes on the arms, and the pushee should be able to keep standing without exerting a lot of effort - but once one starts to get that, the same extension (or whatever you want to call it) works in other directions and arm positions as well.