Breathe Your Way Back to Health
Learn to breathe right.
I am a yoga enthusiast, a yoga-asana (posture) practitioner for the last almost twelve years. I, however, started dwelling deeper into yoga as a complete science rather than just looking at yoga as a form of exercise quite recently, as a reaction to the pandemic and how this deadly virus affected our already high, stress levels.
Yoga in Sanskrit means union; it is the union of the individual consciousness with the universal consciousness (spiritual enlightenment). Yoga needs strict discipline, years of practice (abhayas) and renunciation of desires (vairagya), which is impossible without a sound body & mind. Hence yoga starts by training the body to be strong and stable through yoga-asanas and training both the body and mind to be focused, unwavering, and healthy through pranayama or breathing exercises. While this is just the first step in yoga, it is a powerful tool for self-management.
How can ‘breathing right’ help us manage ourselves gracefully through these trying times and help reduce our stress levels, is what I would want to leave you with, in this article.
What is stress?
What happens when you come face to face with danger?? Imagine you are driving and suddenly, from nowhere, you see a truck hurtling towards you! Even as you think of this, you will notice your heart rate increasing. What happens at the moment is that adrenaline kicks in, your breathing becomes shallow, your body pumps more blood into your muscles, your mind sharpens to enable you to fight or flee. All energies of the body get focused on handling the crisis. This is your sympathetic nervous system taking over. In this situation, the body expends no energy towards the autonomous functions required to maintain the body, like digestion, assimilation, circulation, etc. Once the situation returns to normal, and you are relaxed, the breathing comes back to normal, you enter a calm state, the brain pumps feel-good hormones and neurotransmitters such as serotonin and oxytocin into your bloodstream, and the maintenance activities of the body are triggered. This happens because the parasympathetic nervous system is now in control.
Both systems are essential; the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight) for action and the parasympathetic nervous system (rest & digest) for maintenance. The issue is that this is an entirely unconscious process. We have no conscious control over the autonomous functions of the body. Even small day to day negative triggers like getting into an argument with your kid or an unplanned dinner guest can trigger the stress response in our body, sometimes putting us in a perpetual or long cycle of ‘fight or flight,’ causing negative emotions, depression, constant anxiety, autoimmune disorders etc.
Next time you are stressed or hyperventilating about something, observe what is happening to you. I feel choked as if someone has punched me in my solar plexus, and all my air has gone out. Hence, to feel better, I try and breathe more, but my breathing is shallow; I take many deep breaths, fully expanding and contracting my chest. The more I breathe in, the more anxious I feel! My heart rate increases, and I can feel the fog settling in my mind.
Handling stress
The good news is that while we can’t slow down our heart rate or command our mind to think positive or demand our ‘rest & digest’ system to take over, the one autonomous function that we can consciously control at this time is our breathing.
The lungs are covered with nerves that extend to both sides of the autonomic nervous system, and many of the nerves connecting to the parasympathetic system are located in the lower lobes, so when we take long and slow breaths, we trigger the rest & digest (the parasympathetic nervous system) state in the body. The deeper we breathe in, and the longer we exhale, the more slowly the heart beats and the calmer we become. When we take short, hasty breaths, typically what happens when we are anxious, it fills only the top lobe of the lung, which is connected to the sympathetic nerves.
The key is to take a deep, complete breath in through your nose, right till your belly. A complete breath is taken in three smooth steps in a single flow.
Step 1 — take the breath to your belly; this fills up the lower lobe of the lungs,
Step 2- continue to breathe in now and fill your upper abdomen (middle lobe of the lung),
step 3- continue to breathe in and fill up your chest; observe your chest expand sideways; this fills up the upper lobe of your lungs.
Body Posture becomes especially important if you want to take a full breath in. Your back should be erect, and your shoulders should be squared up and straight. Try these positions and observe your breathing -
Self-experiment 1 — sit on a chair in a slouching position and take a full breath in; try to fill your belly. How was your experience?
Self-experiment 2 — while sitting or standing, push your shoulders up towards your neck and take a full breath in and try to fill your belly. How deep was the breath?
Self-experiment 3 — while sitting or standing, keep your back erect, square up your shoulders and keep them straight. Take a full breath in and try to fill your belly. How was the experience?
With this as background, I recommend this breathing exercise which works for me whenever I feel stressed.
Step 1 — Sit on a chair with your feet firmly on the ground or lie down with your back straight, firmly resting on the floor or bed. Close your eyes and take deep, complete inhales followed by long/slow exhales. Inhale from your nose and exhale very slowly from your mouth. Inhale should be to a count of 3, so 1–2–3 (belly -abdomen -chest) and exhale should be to a count of 8.
I usually chant ‘Aum’ instead of counting, the inhale and exhale count come to approximately the same number of 3 and 8.
The number of inhale-exhale cycles depends on how stressed I am feeling at that moment, but generally, 15–20 cycles of conscious deep breaths are enough to bring my mind back to a calm state.
Step 2 — Close your mouth and start breathing entirely from your nose, both inhales and exhales, till your belly. Don’t try to control your breathing pattern; just observe it. You will notice your breathing slowing down and becoming soft and relaxed with no effort.
Step 3 — As you breathe in, visualize the energy (the prana, chi or life-force) entering along with the air/oxygen and gathering at your solar plexus. As you breathe out, imagine all your stresses, aches and pains leaving you.
Step 4 — As you take the next breath, visualize the energy (the prana, chi or life-force) entering along with the air/oxygen and gathering at your solar plexus and as you breathe out, imagine this energy spreading from your energy centre, the solar plexus, to all other parts of your body especially any part which feels stressed or painful.
Keep repeating the third and fourth step alternatively.
Step 5 — Continue relaxed breathing, keep your focus on the breath travelling in and out and when ready, flex your fingers and toes to connect back to your body and external environment and then open your eyes.
This is a simple, effortless breathing exercise or meditation, which will leave you feeling calmer and relaxed.
Overall health
Breathing has the power to control the autonomous functions of the body — digestion, assimilation, excretion, and circulation. Are you aware that nearly all the weight we lose is exhaled? Fat is converted to carbon dioxide and water. You exhale the carbon dioxide, and the water mixes into your circulation until it’s lost as urine or sweat. If you lose 10 pounds of fat, precisely 8.4 pounds comes out through your lungs, and the remaining 1.6 pounds turns into water (https://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g7257).
For overall health, ensure that you are conscious about how you breathe all through the day,
· Breathe through your nose (not mouth).
· Inhale deeply, filling up your belly, abdomen, and chest completely.
· Exhale should be slow and long (either through the mouth or nose).
Mammals with the lowest resting heart rates live the longest. The only way to retain a slow resting heart rate is with slow breaths.
“The yogi’s life is not measured by the number of his days, but the number of his breaths,” B. K. S. Iyengar
