Discovery - The power of correct breathing

I was going to start with meditation as that is, maybe, what most people may think about when it comes to using the mind, or relaxing the mind but I was sitting in a concert the other day and I noticed that the three people in front of me were raising their shoulders every time they breathed in. I started to look around and was amazed how many people were doing this so I thought I would start with the breath first as;

Discovery - it's important to breathe (properly)

And if you are lifting your shoulders as you breathe in, you are not breathing properly.

Is breathing that complicated? It shouldn't be. It's the first obvious thing we do at birth and the last thing we do when we die and most of us don’t appear to do it very well.

As a physio part of my job was to check patient’s chests and breathing pre and post op and to make sure they could and would cough in order to prevent post operative chest infections.

Many patients were not breathing well, they were not using their diaphragms much if at all. So why are so many of us not breathing properly? It’s a natural process over which we have a little control in that we can hold our breath, breathe in different parts of our chest and change the rhythm and frequency.

One of the reasons we don't breathe properly as adults (healthy babies do breathe well) is because of stored trauma in the body which is causing us stress.

This is how it can occur:

When something bad is happening, we will go into flight or fight mode and start to breathe more quickly so that we are able to flee or fight. We are now cortisol dominant and stressed. If the issue is not resolved and integrated or accepted, we remain stressed. This may become such a normal feeling to us, that it ceases to be part of our awareness. Then it becomes a problem.

One of the many diagnoses I received in the beginning was hyperventilation syndrome. In other words I was breathing far too quickly at rest so it was probably not surprising that I was having attacks of dizziness, tachycardia (rapid heart rate) and panic. However this was really only showing I was stressed but, to be honest, if someone had asked me, before I became ill, I would have said I was OK! I thought I was coping. I had no idea I was being affected by my past.

Changing the way that we breathe and where in our chests we breathe can have profound and lasting effects on our health and well being. We can literally change how we feel by changing the way that we breathe. We can also breathe to alleviate both physical and emotional or mental pain.

Not only might we breathe too quickly, but when in pain, physical or mental, we have a tendency to hold our breath.

The breath cycle (an in breath and an out breath is one cycle) affects our autonomic nervous system (ANS). I often hear people tell someone who is feeling anxious or nervous to take a deep breath. That may be counterproductive! Taking a deep breath usually means that people inflate the upper part of their chest thereby stimulating the sympathetic branch of the ANS leading to more tension and anxiety rather than less.

To calm down, the in breath and out breath should either be of equal lengths, balancing the autonomic nervous system or the out breath can be slightly longer.

As we breath in, the sympathetic branch is excited and as we breathe out, the parasympathetic branch is affected so if we want to relax we need to become parasympathetic dominant - that is, make the out breath slightly longer.

(Although you do not need to sit in meditation to practice, it does take practice to change your breathing habits).

Recovery

HeartMath, an American research institute with branches in the UK, South Africa, Australia and maybe elsewhere, has been studying the effects of breathing in humans for years. They have developed apps you can use (there are other HRV apps available) and they have written many peer reviewed papers on breathing and something referred to as heart rate variability (HRV).

Having what is known as a coherent HRV is very good for your health. Correct breathing accompanied by a positive emotion such as appreciation results in a whole cocktail of feel good hormones being secreted and feel good hormones do what they say - they make us feel good. If you are able to establish a coherent HRV then your body starts to secrete a hormone called dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA). This is a hormone of healing. It also has other beneficial effects such as slowing the signs of ageing! It is also the opposite of cortisol, the stress hormone so the more DHEA you are secreting, the less cortisol you will have and that's very good for you.

If you can’t do much because of M.E./C.F.S., you can at least breathe well!

Just see whether you’re breathing deep in your chest or shallowly by placing your hand on your upper chest and the other below your ribs on your abdomen. Your lower hand should rise and fall as your abdomen expands and your upper hand stay still. If this isn’t happening, you need to learn!

Sometimes it is very difficult for people to get the right pattern so try breathing out and pulling in your tummy first and then relax and let the air in. If that doesn't work, try pushing down a bit on the seat of your chair and see if that helps.

Always breathe through the nose unless your nose is bunged up.

Breathing through the nose reduces the chance of hyperventilation (over breathing) which can induce panic attacks. I also found that it virtually eliminated the odd irregular heartbeat I had.

So what exactly does breathing do for us?

It gets rid of carbon dioxide. It supplies oxygen to the body. It’s a valuable tool for centring. Correctly done it can change our state. It can bring emotional balance. Coherence can give us a multitude of benefits (see HeartMath). It can be a focus for meditation. It can blow up balloons.

Yogis have been developing different breathing exercises for different purposes for years (pranayama). We now have the science to observe and measure what these various types of practices can do for us.

Balanced breathing when in physical or emotional pain will help to alleviate the issue. It will help to dispel negative and blocked emotions stored in the body. By breathing as if through the blockage, the pain, the sensations, energy can then begin to move, relax and dissipate.

This has been mostly about balancing the ANS in order to calm us but there are other breathing techniques such as holotropic breathing, cyclic breathing, rebirthing etc which can help to bring buried emotions to the surface. I will include this in another blog. They need to be performed with expert help.

Resources

Institute of HeartMath

Central Channel Breathing - Dr Sue Morter, the Morter Institute

Transformational Breath

Alternate Nostril Breathing - see yoga practices.

Breath by James Nestor

Apps

Inner Balance

HeartBreath

Breath Pacer

Next - meditation