How’s your breathing? Is that a weird question? The day you were born, your lungs ballooned with air and they haven’t stopped working since. At this point in your life, you’ve taken hundreds of millions of breaths. With so many years of practice, you might even consider yourself an authority on the matter. But if you could humor me for just a second, I’d like you to take a deep breath, the biggest breath you’ve taken all day, and pay attention to where it travels in your body.
Where did you feel it the most? Did your belly expand? Did your chest rise? Was it sharp and shallow or spacious and deep? Did your breath find its way into the back of your body as well as the front? Did you inhale and exhale through the nose or mouth?
The way you breathe is just as important as the act itself.
The breath is a valuable tool. It keeps your heart beating and your cells in good supply of oxygen, but it can do some other pretty breathtaking things. Among other things, breathing well can help to:
Lower blood pressure
Reduce cortisol levels and anxiety
Stabilize the spine during heavy lifting
Boost immunity
Loosen up stiff trunk muscles
Support good posture
Center yourself in the here and now
But what does it mean to breathe well?
Breathe through the nose as much as possible
Nose breathing is our default, mouth breathing our “in-case-of-emergency, hiking-up-a-giant- hill” back-up. As infants, nose breathing allowed us to suckle and breathe at the same time without choking. With each inhale, the cilia in our nose filters the air, keeping germs, debris, and toxins out of our lungs while the nasal passages humidify and regulate the temperature of that air. Nose breathing also releases nitric oxide, a vasodilator, and increases lung capacity. This means more oxygen flowing into your cells, more energy, and bigger, more efficient lungs, leading to a potentially longer life.
On the other hand, breathing through the mouth has been associated with a host of ills, from higher heart rate and blood pressure, insomnia, sleep apnea, congestion, gas, bloating, poor dental health, stiff upper trunk musculature, forward head posture, and higher levels of stress. Fortunately, nose breathing has been shown to right most of the problems created by mouth breathing.
Breathe spaciously
Your lungs are one of the largest organs in your body, with a surface area around the size of a tennis court and 1500 miles worth of airways. That’s the distance from my house here in Orchard Mesa, all the way to Concord, VT, a full 32 hour drive away. That’s a ridiculous amount of real estate, and many of us use a mere fraction of it.
Think of your lungs like a water bladder. As air pours in (from the nose) the bladder fills from bottom to top, stretches, and expands to the sides, belly to ribs to chest. Though this is often called “belly breathing”, the belly is not the only thing that should be moving; on the contrary, your breathing should be three-dimensional.
The diaphragm is the prime mover of the breath. The brain sends your body the message to breathe, and the diaphragm engages, drawing air into the lungs and massaging nearby digestive organs as it pushes down into the abdomen, assisting in GI function; your intercostal muscles between the ribs expand forward and back, increasing mobility in the thoracic spine; your chest expands like a big balloon and your shoulders fall back, unwinding and stabilizing that stiff, hunched spine after a little too much time in a chair.
Breathe slowly
Research is starting to reveal what practitioners of meditation and yoga have known for years: that concious, deep, and controlled respiration calms the nervous system, and can positively impact health conditions such as anxiety, depression, insomnia, and hypertension.
While the exact mechanism behind these phenomena remains unclear, one possibility lies in the sensory nerves located within the chest, in particular the pressure-sensitive baroreceptors located in the arteries around the heart, that plug into the vagus nerve.
Originating in the brain stem, this extensive nerve runs through the chest and gut and bears the tasks of regulating heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, and breathing. As the diaphragm relaxes and the chest draws in at the bottom of deep respiration, the baroreceptors repeatedly stimulate this critical nerve, helping the body shift from “fight or flight” into a more restful, restorative state, slowing the heart, lowering blood pressure, and easing digestion.
The sweet spot falls right around 6 breaths per minute.
That’s a 5-second inhale and a 5-second exhale. However, there are many different kinds of intentional breathework and controlled breathing techniques to choose from, including:
Diaphragmatic crocodile breathing
This is a great place to begin if you’ve never practiced diaphragmatic breathing. Lying on your belly with your forehead resting on your folded arms, notice the circle of your belly as it presses into the floor. Breathe deeply into your belly for 4 to 5 seconds. Rather than feeling your stomach pushing down into the ground, you want to feel it grow and expand out to the sides. Exhale for the same count and repeat for 3 to 5 minutes.
Box breathing
Slowly inhale through your nose to the count of 4, hold that breath to the count of 4, exhale to the count of 4, and hold once more for 4 before repeating the cycle. You can increase or decrease the count based on your comfort level. Spend 3 to 5 minutes box breathing.
Take a few deep breaths before every meal
While this isn’t exactly a breathing practice, it’s an excellent way to center yourself, as well as prepare your digestive system, for the delicious food to come.
Alternate nostril breathing
Using your your thumb, close your right nostril and breathe deeply in through the left. Exhale and then close the left nostril with your pinky finger. Inhale, exhale, and switch between the two nostrils for 3 to 5 minutes.
Now tell me… How’s your breathing?
~Coach Kait Christopherson
Grand Junction Personal Trainer