Breathe!
What I read: How to breathe by Martin Petrus. Published June 30, 2021.
This is my one hundredth post on Substack. To celebrate this milestone, I thought it would be good to write about something that can benefit everyone. I chose the topic of breathing.
We all breathe. We don’t all harness the power of our breath to maximum benefit, but breathing is a universal activity every living person shares. That already intimate relationship with breathing can prove to be an entryway to improve upon what comes naturally. Whether utilized to improve overall health, calm ourselves, or achieve some form of transcendence, breathing is a universal tool. It costs nothing. It can be done anywhere at any time.
Respiration influences many of the processes in our body that have a direct impact on our physical and mental health. Each day, we take around 20,000 breaths, so over the years it adds up. With every inhalation, our heart rate speeds up and with every exhalation, it slows down. The nervous system is especially sensitive to changes in breathing rate. Through our breath, we can change our state from stress to relaxation, or from feeling dull to being energised. Longer term, through being more attentive to the way we breathe, we can benefit our health and longevity. In short, we can change our breathing on demand, which can be a hack to accessing the rest of our physiology.
Just this week I had a couple of panicked hours over a big life decision I had made. Luckily, I remembered some basic breathing techniques that calmed me down quickly. What I was panicking about turned out to not be that big of a deal. Once I thought it through I realized I made the right decision. But at the time knowing I had the knowledge and skillset to use certain breathing techniques to calm down quickly helped significantly.
In my youth I studied meditation with a teacher. I didn’t study with them long, but the techniques I learned have served me since, even if I’ve been uneven in practicing them consistently. I’ve also taken many yoga classes and they’ve helped my breathing skills a lot.
Martin Petrus is a breathwork coach.
What is breathwork? It can be described as ‘breath consciousness’ and ‘conscious breathing’. Every time we notice our breath or change our breathing pattern to achieve a specific outcome, we are practising breathwork.
Petrus describes breathwork as the new yoga. I was an early yoga adherent when it first emerged in mainstream American culture when Richard Hittleman’s Yoga: 28 Day Exercise Plan was published in 1969. My father bought an early copy and I fondly recall my dad and I regularly going through the postures together on the living room floor. I don’t recall that Hittleman’s approach was particularly breath-centric, but I would later study yoga from a teacher and along with meditation training I came to regard control of my breath as something I’d benefit from forever.
Yoga and conscious breathwork both originate from traditions in India with some recorded references to breathwork dating back to sometime beween 2nd century BC and 2nd century CE. Certain Tibetan teachings considered breath to be important as far back as 18,000 years. Breath as an integral part of yoga goes back 2,000 years.
There are many instances throughout world cultures in which breathwork of some kind plays a role. Modern athletes use certain breathing techniques to improve performance. Despite its prevalence throughout time and its more recent popularity, few people give the breath much serious consideration as an important aspect of life.
Petrus offers five specific breathing techniques for the reader: nasal breathing; diaphragmatic breathing; rhythmic breathing; building carbon dioxide resistance; and breath holding.
Of the five techniques, I utilize nasal, diaphragmatic, and rhythmic breathing often.
Nasal breathing is what it sounds like, breathing just through the nose. Many of us fall into the habit of mouth breathing. I do. Except when we’re engaged in more vigorous activities such as sports, there’s typically no good reason to breathe through our mouths unless we have a physical impediment keeping us from breathing through our nose which Petrus suggests we try to correct.
Some of the benefits of nasal breathing include the calming effect of slowing airflow; greater oxygen exchange with the bloodstream; filtering pathogens; warming or cooling the air better for the lungs based on the external environment; less dehydration; and avoiding some mouth problems associated with mouth breathing.
I try to maintain only nasal breathing when I can. Sometimes I fail but then remind myself to do it again and the habit does solidify better over time. Every morning when I awake, I sit quietly and slowly breathe in and out through my nose 10 times. Usually, I end up doing more than that, but by only tasking myself with doing it at least 10 times it jumpstarts my day with a sense of calm and centeredness.
The next technique Petrus discusses is diaphragmatic breathing. Nasal breath is assumed here too, but in addition this technique consciously engages the diaphragm.
It’s a big, dome-shaped muscle situated under our ribs that divides the thoracic and the abdominal cavities. When you inhale, the diaphragm moves down creating the difference in pressure in your lungs and pulling in air. When you relax, the diaphragm moves up and the air goes out. Here lies the guidance to natural breathing – the inhalation is active, drawing the air in and the exhalation is passive, as you just relax and don’t have to push the air out.
When you properly do diaphragmatic breathing, you ideally keep your upper chest still and pay attention to your inhalation, letting your belly, lower ribs, and even your lower back expand on the inhale and then naturally contract on the exhale.
Petrus lists a bunch of benefits to diaphragmatic breathing which you can read in the article. Suffice it to say it’s good for you. As someone who’s done this type of breathing for years, I’m convinced it’s led to better overall health and a calmer mind.
When I’ve taken yoga classes, this type of breathing is the one teachers focus on, breathing through the nose and expanding the lower torso gently in and out as the yoga series and poses are executed. I try to maintain this style of breathing throughout my day and periodically reset myself with a few minutes of conscious diaphragmatic breathing to get me back into the habit.
One observation from personal experience. If you’re like me and self-conscious about your thick tummy, you might catch yourself doing what I do and resist proper expansion. The suck your stomach in directive so many of us have heard turns out to not be great advice for proper full breathing. Let your belly expand. It’s okay. Sure, your stomach will look a little bigger to others if you do, but you know what? No one’s really looking anyway. Better to have better health and a calm mind than to pretend to have a flat abdomen for vanity’s sake.
The next technique is rhythmic breathing, and this is one I do all the time. If you’re ever anxious or stressed, this is the best natural way I’ve discovered to calm everything down quickly. It also incorporates nasal and diaphragmatic breathing so you’re doing all three at once.
Again, yoga uses rhythmic breathing as part of the practice. Our bodies are governed by rhythms and our nervous systems pick up the slow, steady flow of air as a safety cue and adjust our bodily processes accordingly.
Often rhythmic breathing is done to a count. So many counts breathing in, so many counts breathing out. One thing not mentioned in the article is that in some yoga practices they suggest one count for the inhalation and twice as long for the exhalation. Maybe that’s not a necessary protocol, but you’ll likely encounter it if you research breathing techniques. Also, go at your own pace. When you take a meditation or yoga class the instructor will often count the inhalations and exhalations for the class. This is perhaps a necessary teaching tool, but we don’t all naturally breathe at the same pace. Find your own pace and do that. Rushing the pace to someone else’s count can be counterproductive and stress-inducing.
I’m not going to go into great detail about building carbon dioxide tolerance. You can read the article for that. Carbon dioxide tolerance is getting accustomed to CO2 which plays an important role as a vasodilator and helps release oxygen from the blood. The Buteyko method Petrus outlines in the article will help you start to build up CO2 tolerance.
Specific breath-holding technique isn’t discussed since Petrus suggests only learning it from a qualified teacher, but I can attest to most yoga teachers I’ve taken classes from using this as part of their nasal/diaphragmatic/rhythmic breathing guidance during class. For example, a teacher might instruct the class to inhale to a slow count of four, then hold for four, then exhale for eight. Repeat. So, a certain amount of breath holding is built into many yoga practices.
With this Substack blog I try to offer my readers interesting bits of knowledge, insight, or ideas I glean from various content I consume, but being able to offer everyone who reads this something that I believe can help you now, immediately, and forever, seems like a great thing to give you in this one hundredth post. I hope you find it useful.
Petrus ends his article with some information about integrative breathwork therapy and he lists a bunch of great resources including the only book he recommends for people who don’t have prior knowledge about this topic, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, by James Nestor.
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Have a great day. And breathe!
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