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Visit "Breathing Perspectives," a monthly email publication written by Dennis Lewis, and request a free sample issue. Each month "Breathing Perspectives" will bring you safe, powerful breathing exercises, as well as breath-related news, research, insights, and much more to support your health and well-being.
Please note that the breathing exercises, information, suggestions, and practices described herein are intended to be purely educational. They are not intended to replace the services and advice of your physician. Though the breathing practices and deep breathing exercises described here are very safe, anyone with a serious medical problem, or a potential problem, should consult her or his physician before experimenting with them.
Research in a variety of fields has shown that breathing deeply can improve our health in many ways. Now comes evidence that deep breathing can help women who experience hot flashes during menopause.
In an article by Carol Krucoff in The Washington Post (August 18, 1998, page Z16), for instance, Robert Freedman, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences in the School of Medicine at Wayne State University in Detroit, points out that studies show that the frequency of hot flashes can be reduced by about 50 percent through slow, deep breathing. According to the article, women going through menopause who use belly breathing and slow down their respiratory rate (to seven or eight cycles of inhalation and exhalation a minute) at the onset of a hot flash can apparently either "abort" it or "reduce its severity."
Those readers who have observed their breathing for any length of time have probably noticed that, in general, air does not move through the nasal passages equally at the same time. Usually when the left nostril is more open, the right one is more congested and vice versa. This occurs because the flow of blood shifts back and forth between the nostrils in a rhythm that takes approximately one and a half to two hours. This "ultradian rhythm," long observed by medical science, is related to the functioning of the brain hemispheres and can play an important role in healing. When the left nostril is more open, the right hemisphere of the brain is generally more dominant; when the right nostril is more open, the left hemisphere is generally more dominant.
You can make use of this fact for your own well-being. You can, for example, intentionally open a nostril that is more congested and thus make the other hemisphere more active by lying down on your side with the congested nostril above and continuing to breathe through the nose. If you are feeling out of sorts or have a headache, trying this experiment for 15 or 20 minutes can often bring relief.
As we begin to learn how to observe our breathing, many of us may notice that even at rest our breathing is faster than the "average" rate of 12 to 14 times a minute (a rate which is already faster than it needs to be). In fact, many of us, without knowing it, habitually "hyperventilate"--that is, we take quick, shallow breaths from the top of our chest. This kind of breathing sharply reduces the level of carbon dioxide in our blood. This reduced level of carbon dioxide causes the arteries, including the carotid artery going to the brain, to constrict, thus reducing the flow of blood throughout the body. When this occurs, no matter how much oxygen we may breathe into our lungs, our brain and body will experience a shortage of oxygen. The lack of oxygen switches on the sympathetic nervous system--our "fight or flight reflex"--which makes us tense, anxious, and irritable. Such breathing also reduces our ability to think clearly, and tends to put us at the mercy of obsessive thoughts and images. Some researchers believe that hyperventilation can actually magnify our psychological problems and conflicts, and that chronic hyperventilation is intimately bound up with our anxieties, apprehensions, and fears. The key to slowing down our breathing is not to try to slow it down, but rather to learn how to breathe more deeply, using our diaphragm, belly, rib cage, and lower back in the breathing process. See The Tao of Natural Breathing for more information.
Recent research seems to show that there is a relationship between upper chest breathing and heart attacks. According to Donna Farhi in her recently published book The Breathing Book (Owl Books, p. 59), patients who had experienced a heart attack were later taught how to integrate diaphragmatic breathing into their daily lives. "In doing so," says Farhi, "they significantly reduced their chances of having a second heart attack. Another study showed that all 153 patients of a coronary unit breathed predominantly in their chests." By learning deep, diaphragmatic breathing we can apparently help our heart.
Those of us whose work requires extreme visual concentration (and the list is a long one, especially in this age of computer technology) can improve our work and increase our energy by making sure that our face muscles are relaxed and by looking away frequently from the work we are doing. This will help our breathing. When our face muscles become tense and our eyes lock onto anything too long, diaphragmatic movement during breathing decreases. This makes our breathing more shallow and means that we're taking in less oxygen. What's more, this shallow breathing decreases the lymph flow in our body thus reducing the effectiveness of our immune system. So be sure you check your face muscles every 15 minutes or so to see if they're tense. And be sure to let your eyes move frequently. If for some reason your work does not allow you to look away, then at least use your peripheral vision. This will help relax your diaphragm and improve your breathing.
Yogis, chi kung practitioners, meditators, and alternative health practitioners have known for a long time that conscious breathing can help reduce stress, increase relaxation, and decrease pain. In her new book Molecules of Emotion, famed neuroscientist Candace Pert tells us that bringing our attention to our breathing during meditation brings many such benefits. Such mindful breathing helps us "enter the mind-body conversation without judgments or opinions, releasing peptide molecules from the hindbrain to regulate breathing while unifying all systems." The key here, it seems, is simply to be present to our breathing, using our inner attention to follow our inhalations and exhalations as they take place by themselves. So if you want to increase relaxation and reduce stress and pain, try sitting quietly each day for at least several minutes and simply follow your breathing with your attention.
Digestive breathing is a simple but effective deep breathing exercise that can help promote digestion. It is based on using your hands to stimulate energy points related to the spleen and stomach meridians (energy pathways described in Chinese medicine), while you simultaneously direct your breathing deep into your belly.
To undertake this practice, sit on a firm chair with your spine erect, yet relaxed, and your feet flat on the floor in front of you. Place your hands on your knees with the heel of your hands above your knee caps and your fingers pointed downward. Use your fingers, especially your index finger, middle finger, and ring finger, to find three indentations in your knee where the fingers can comfortably fit. Your middle finger will be over the center of the knee cap. Now simply keep your hands there, using just a slight pressure to stimulate the meridians running through the knee area. Sense the warmth going into your knees from your hands. As you breathing in, sense that you are breathing energy gently into your expanding belly. As you are breathing out, sense your belly naturally contracting. Do not use force. Work in this way with your breathing for at least five minutes after each meal, or any time you have digestive problems. (This breathing exercise is from The Tao of Natural Breathing: For Health, Well-Being and Inner Growth.)
Some of us try to do deep breathing when we want to relax. Unfortunately, most of us do not really know how to breathe deeply. We do not know how to release the unnecessary tension in our belly, back and ribs. As a result, our efforts to deal with stress through deep breathing often result in shallow, faster breathing which tends to make us more nervous and tense.
There is another, easier approach to using our breath to help us relax. In this approach, you emphasize and lengthen your exhalation. It's what happens naturally when you sigh. The long exhalation helps turn on your parasympathetic nervous system, your "relaxation response." There's nothing to do except to make sure your exhalation is longer than your inhalation. You don't have to count to do this. Just put your awareness on your breathing as you exhale. Sense the air rising upward and going out slowly through your nose. Don't worry about the inhalation; it will take care of itself. This breathing exercise can be undertaken safely whenever you feel stress coming on.
In a study published in the May 2, 1998, issue of The Lancet, researchers working with cardiac patients at the University of Pavia, Italy, have established an optimum healthy breath rate of 6 breaths a minute. When you consider that the average resting breath rate is 12-14 times a minute, this represents a substantial reduction in breath rate. Patients who learned to slow down their breathing through special deep breathing exercises ended up with higher levels of blood oxygen and were able to perform better on exercise tests. According to the report, low blood oxygen, which is common in cardiac patients, "may impair skeletal muscle and metabolic function, and lead to muscle atrophy and exercise intolerance." The authors of the study conclude that their findings support other research "that report beneficial effects of training respiratory muscles and decreasing respiratory work in (cardiac heart failure patients), or physical training in general."
The Importance of Breathing Through Your Nose
Except for emergencies, our breathing was designed to take place mainly through our nose. When we breathe through our nose, the hairs that line our nostrils filter out particles of dust and dirt that can be injurious to our lungs. If too many particles accumulate on the membranes of the nose, we automatically secret mucus to trap them or sneeze to expel them. The mucous membranes of our septum, which divides the nose into two cavities, further prepare the air for our lungs by warming and humidifying it.
There is another important reason for breathing through the nose. This has to do with maintaining the correct balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in our blood. When we breathe through our mouth we usually inhale and exhale air quickly in large volumes. This often leads to a kind of hyperventilation (breathing excessively fast for the actual conditions in which we find ourselves). It is important to recognize that it is the amount of carbon dioxide in our blood that generally regulates our breathing. Research has shown that if we release carbon dioxide too quickly, the arteries and vessels carrying blood to our cells constrict and the oxygen in our blood is unable to reach the cells in sufficient quantity. This includes the carotid arteries which carry blood (and oxygen) to the brain. The lack of sufficient oxygen going to the cells of the brain can turn on our sympathetic nervous system, our "fight or flight" response, and make us tense, anxious, irritable, and depressed. So remember, when possible, to breathe through your nose.
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