As a one-time discerning life-style consultant and personal trainer, one who selected his clients with care, I was surprised to hear the following from a bright guy who had entrusted me with his fitness programme. “Please don’t talk to me now. I’m too busy concentrating on my breathing to pay attention to what you’re saying!”
Given that the world’s Carona pandemic has shown that the virus attacks our life-sustaining breathing mechanisms, breathing is a serious matter.
Breathing? We all know that you just suck it in, blow it out. Everyone does it. Simple as that. Just remember to keep doing it, from birth onwards, and you should be fine!
In this information age, however, even the most common things are often not as simple as they initially seem. Take eating. Everyone does it, yet how much ignorance is there about good nutrition, how many eating disorders are suffered, how complicated is the enslavement to faddist food regimes, and how strange is it that dieting has become one of the most popular, yet unrewarding, indoor activities, especially for women?
While breathing is an automatic function of the nervous system, which leaves our consciousness free to cope with more complicated decisions, it remains the vital process that enables the body to operate successfully. Good breathing can enhance the quality of life. Poor, dysfunctional breathing habits, on the other hand, can adversely affect both physical and emotional health. An awareness of how one can intervene in the process can help dissipate stress, control the painful aspects of asthma, act to beat headaches and increase energy.
At its most essential, breathing is the body’s way of drawing raw material for energy and life-oxygen (O2) into the blood, and expelling waste, carbon dioxide (CO2). When we inhale, that important breathing muscle, the diaphragm, contracts, creating something of a vacuum in the thoracic cavity and forcing air to be sucked into the lungs, from where the oxygen is transferred into the bloodstream. Carbon dioxide is expelled from the blood, exiting the body when the diaphragm relaxes and we exhale.
We take in something like six litres of air per minute, with approximately 12 breathes every 60 seconds. How we breathe radically affects this interchange.
For example, some asthma sufferers are taught Russian doctor Konstantin Buteyko’s method of breathing. He believed that hyperventilation was a major problem for asthma sufferers, as this form of fast, shallow breathing depletes the bloodstream of carbon dioxide, and causes blood vessel spasms and oxygen starvation (CO2 is a smooth muscle dilator, a natural bronchodilator that also facilitates the release of oxygen from the red blood cells into the tissues). His breathing method encourages retaining CO2 by taking control of breathing during an asthma attack and not gulping for air.
Many of us, unlike the asthmatic, who is less free, are dysfunctional, shallow, chest breathers because of poor breathing habits acquired early in life. For much of the time, we have little need of more than the one third capacity of the lungs which shallow breathing utilises. Chest breathing is shallow breathing because it uses only the narrow top section of the lungs, leaving the larger, lower section unengaged. But, shallow breathing forces one to breathe faster and more often to acquire the oxygen the body requires (my buddy, recently divorced, has taken up jogging, just to hear the sound of heavy breathing again). Rapid breathing is accompanied by rapid exhalation, resulting in CO2 build up, leaving this type of breather in a continual state of chronic, low grade hyperventilation. Further reinforcing this type of breathing is the tight clothing which fashion often dictates, encouraging the sucking in of the abdominal muscles, in the futile struggle to look slim!
Another bad habit that encourages shallow breathing is poor posture. Slumping, which collapses the upper body, will interfere with good, diaphragmatic breathing. Shallow breathing can also stimulate the sympathetic nervous system and accelerate the heart rate. This is automatically accompanied by a raising of blood pressure that often triggers the fight-or-flight reflex, our instinctive reaction to stressful and potentially threatening situations. This means there is a needless build-up of chemicals, such as adrenaline and lactic acid in the bloodstream, leaving the stress hormones in the system, without the appropriate behaviour to safely dissipate them.
Breathing is one of the secret activators of our emotional states. It provokes hormonal changes upon which mood depends. Wrong breathing can dictate chemical responses and emotional states that one does not consciously intend. To assume greater control of one’s emotional well being, then, practise good breathing at least once a day, as follows:
Belly-Breathe. Recall all those serene, plump Buddha statues you’ve seen; note how the contentment is fostered by the tranquil, good posture, the distended, relaxed, belly and shoulders. As you engage in good breathing, assume a comfortable seated posture. Nose-breathe. Don’t use the mouth, which is not part of the respiratory system. Let the nose humidify, filter and warm the air, before it reaches the lungs. Good breathing will be silent, rhythmical, flowing, reinforced by an erect, supportive spine, with little shoulder movement but mobile rib movement.
Concentrate on the diaphragm and belly (contemplating the universe in the centre of the belly button isn’t obligatory). As you inhale, the belly should expand and balloon, while the diaphragm moves down and the lower ribs expand outwards, forming a vacuum into which air is drawn, as the lungs fully inflate. When you exhale, contract the abdominal muscles, compressing the belly and relaxing the diaphragm as it moves up to the lower ribs to press the stale air up and out through the nostrils.
Deeper, deliberate belly-breathing will slow your often too-frenetic life-pace. Select at least one five minute session a day when you withdraw from your accelerated routine by sitting quietly, slowing all action and focussing only inwards, to consciously control your breathing routine. The additional oxygen taken in will help recharge your batteries and it will help control anxiety and defuse stress. It will slow the heart rate and trigger the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for relaxing you. By re-oxygenating the body and brain it will enable you to assume calmer control over your life. If you’re having difficulty in falling asleep at night, the mind racing, scores of contending thoughts filling your mind, practise a similar routine, but lying on your back, in bed. The focussed control of breathing, the greater intake of oxygen, will almost immediately calm you. The attention given to the breathing distracts the mind and the stress-inducing thoughts are given less attention. As you proceed, these thoughts tend to fade and the body relaxes and more restful sleep usually follows.
Practise using the full capacity of your lungs, and those selected moments when, like my client, you concentrate on your breathing, will amply compensate for the more usual shallow breathing of daily existence.
drphil