The Art of Breathing Well

“Breathing is the first act of life.  Our very life depends on it.  Millions have never learned to master the art of correct breathing.” – Joseph Pilates

There are many things that the human body cannot survive long without; food, water, warmth… yet, it is the breath alone that would be the death of us if we were deprived of it for but a few minutes.  The breath is our life force; our first sign of life is when as an infant we cry out to take our first breath.  It is astounding that something so vital to us is something we often take for granted.  Many of us think breathing is an automatic process, yet so many of us have never mastered the art of breathing well.  Respiratory malfunctions such as asthma still debilitate 1 in 10 people of the Australian population; in fact in 2010 asthma caused the deaths of 416 Australians (National Asthma Council Australia).  For a condition with so many preventative measures, this is astonishing.  Shortness of breath is also been said to be a symptom of heart disease.  With these ailments we contribute many factors, external conditions, poor diet, genetics…  Not many of us consider our breathing patterns, habits or weak muscles that alter the depth and quality of our breath to be main contributing factors.     

The purpose of breathing is to take oxygen into the body by inhaling air, and to expel waste and toxins from the body through exhalation (“Breathing Your Way to Better Health” – B.B. Martin).  Oxygen (O2) is the most important nutrient that we need for health and wellbeing.  O2 not only gives us life, it also destroys harmful bacteria in our bodies without affecting the beneficial bacteria we need (“The Importance of Oxygen” – Dr. Morris F. Keller).  The quantity of oxygen that we get into our lungs depends on how we breathe and the quality of the air that we take in; aside from how we have physically trained ourselves to breathe and the depth of our breath, external factors such as air pollution can also affect the amount of oxygen that the body absorbs.  Since the body must have enough oxygen to work at its optimum, a deficiency in oxygen can contribute to many, many physical ailments; energy levels, an inability to eliminate waste products and toxins which can affect metabolism, lack of circulation which is particularly important when it comes to the health of our heart and brain, sleeping difficulties, it can affect muscle and joint health and flexibility; the muscles and joints require oxygen to build and repair and oxygen can also affect blood sugar levels (“Breathing Your Way to Better Health” – B.B. Martin). 

How Posture Affects the Breath

When we are breathing well the lungs are able to expand with ease and the breath moves down through the lungs and into the diaphragm, which is located at the base of the lungs.  The diaphragm expands on inhalation and then collapses on exhalation.  When we expel all of the outbreath, it enables us to release more toxins from the body.  For the breath to be considered deep, ‘diaphragm’ breathing the belly should expand and release with the breath.

Due to postural distortions such as kyphosis (severe slouching through the shoulders and rounding through the thoracic spine), deep breathing becomes a challenge.  If you consider how any other muscle tightness in your body restricts your movements in certain actions, it is not difficult to conclude that tightness through the muscles that surround the lungs can restrict lung capacity, thus limiting the amount of breath we are able to draw into the diaphragm.  Think of how restricted you feel when wearing a tight belt around the waistline; now imagine that belt around the lungs.  Due to the tightness through the chest, shoulders and neck, many kyphotic individuals find that they breathe into their chest due to restriction to the natural breathing path.  So breathing becomes shallower and the quality of breath is altered.

Tight abdominal muscles can also restrict the ability of the diaphragm to release.  Because of our natural tendency to brace the abs and tighten this area under load, expanding the belly while engaging these muscles at a high intensity level is almost a contradiction.  To enable a slightly deeper breath, Pilates uses a technique called thoracic breathing.  Thoracic breathing may not allow the diaphragm to expand to capacity because of the restriction of abdominal movement, but it does enable a deeper breath.  In thoracic breathing the rib cage expands outward on inhalation and collapses inward as the breath is exhaled.  This draws the breath out of the chest and enables a deeper breath.  There are many theories to support that tight abdominal core muscles are important for a healthy spine.  But, as with other muscle groups that we constantly tense and tighten, this can lead to postural distortion.  That is why it is important to occasionally remember to relax the abs and work the muscles in the back, but also to let go of these muscles on occasion, especially during times of relaxation to enable a deeper breath.

Breath-Holding

As a Personal Trainer I am always amazed by how many people hold their breath without even realizing.  Often when we undergo a task or situation that causes stress, our body stimulates a ‘startle reflex’ with one of the physical responses being holding our breath.  What causes this ‘startle reflex’ in physical training is often the concentration required to perfect a movement, especially if it is one being performed for the first time.  Sometimes the mere shock of the activity itself causes this breath holding, for example, an unexpected amount of resistance weight causing stress on the body can inspire someone to initially hold their breath.  I caught myself out the other day!  I worked through a stretch program I had been neglecting for weeks.  Knowing my posture was a little out of balance, I stretched out the muscles I perceived as overly tight to correct any anticipatory posture distortions.  As soon as I worked my way through these muscle groups, instant pain! And the shock of this immediately provoked a response where I held my breath.  My recent training in Pilates made me conscious of what I was doing and I instantly reminded myself to breathe.  But it made me think; how many other instances are there when I hold my breath?

For a week or two I decided to ‘tune into’ my breathing.  As an avid exerciser, I was surprised how much I held my breath during training!  Most of the time this was because a particular exercise was more intense than my brain was anticipating; I gasped and held my breath when I tested my working weight on a set of deadlifts.  The shock of the weight took my breath away and I had to consciously tell my self to breathe (which, by the way, helped relieve some of the shock and strain of the training).  This seemed to be a regular breathing pattern for me too!  Whenever I performed a task where the intensity level was a little higher than I was expecting, the shock of it made me gasp and hold my breath!  The most surprising occurrence of this was when I was teaching class; a program called CxWorx, which offers many high intensity options for core training, is something I teach 3-4 times per week.  The choreography is set so I am constantly forced to adapt and increase the intensity on my own training, as there are always new exercises that I haven’t experienced before.  One of the most challenging exercises I have been introduced to is being able to extend my arms and legs straight out while lying on my back and while holding a 5kg plate.  Most people, even with body weight, when you are in this posture with the arms and legs just hovering above the floor, the lack of core strength would cause them to arch the back and strain their lower back muscles.  Prior to teaching this program, as a PT this is an exercise I would have only considered giving an athlete with incredible core strength such as a gymnast.  Yet through teaching and perfecting CxWorx, I had trained myself to do this quite well.  There was something else I had trained myself to do every time I attempted to do this move… gasp and hold my breath!  Worst of all, due to the high level of repetitions in classes and the nature of teaching set choreography programs where often the same program is taught for 4-5 weeks consecutively, this breath holding had now officially become a habit! And they say it takes approximately 300 reps to perfect a movement!  How many reps does it take to correct something that has been performed incorrectly countless times??? 

The shock of strenuous activity didn’t only inspire breath holding, when I finally remembered to breathe, I noticed my breath became quite shallow.  Due to tense muscles, another result of shock; we hold our breath and almost freeze by tensing our muscles, my breathing wasn’t deep and relaxed and moving into my diaphragm (a task that is difficult when you tense the abdominal muscles which is often a requirement during training), it caused movement in my chest which is an indication of shallow breathing.

I noticed that this same habit of breath holding when the task at hand proved strenuous was common among many of my personal training clients.  It was also common when they were introduced to a new exercise.  The concentration of perfecting a new movement and all the intricate details of correct technique inspired this same breath holding.  Some clients even confessed that breathing is something they have difficulty with in other tasks; especially if they are multi-tasking or the activity requires a great deal of concentration.  In Pilates, often the breath and the speed of the movement are measured.  In many Pilates’ exercises, due to the tension required in the abdominals, thoracic breathing is often addressed to deepen breathing during training.  Yet, I have had participants come and tell me that they have only been able to feel the chest move up and down with their breath, so when it came to measuring and slowing down the breath and movements, they felt as though they were running out of air before they had completed the movement.

According to Michael Grant White, Executive Director of the Optimum Breathing Association (www.breathing.com), many of our ‘bad breathing habits’ are learned when we are young; as children we hold our breath to control our fear, anger or even love or excitement that we feel. According to White, things such as ‘normal’ parenting can create chronic tension in a sensitive child (“Breath Holding- Optimal Breathing” – Michael Grant White).  An infant or a child hearing “NO!!!” or “DON’T!!” in response to throwing food, or reaching for a pot of boiling water from an overhead bench top can induce breath holding and body tension due to the ‘startle reflex’.  If repeated often enough this can set in to cause the entire body to remain tightened up to foster potentially very irregular breathing patterns (“Breath Holding- Optimal Breathing” – Michael Grant White).

Associated Health Risks

Aside from known respiratory ailments such as asthma that holding your breath can induce, research has linked other fatal ailments with this.  Dr. David Anderson, a researcher and hypertension specialist with the National Institutes of Health believes that inhibitory breathing raises blood pressure by “knocking our blood chemistry out of kilter” (“What are You Holding Your Breath For? Let It Go for Lower Blood Pressure and Better Health” – www.highbpmed.com).  It does this by destabilizing levels of gases such as oxygen, carbon dioxide and nitric oxide in our blood, thus making it more acidic.  This makes the kidneys less efficient at pumping out sodium thus increasing blood pressure (“What are You Holding Your Breath For? Let It Go for Lower Blood Pressure and Better Health” – www.highbpmed.com).  Nitric oxide is produced by our cells and is especially abundant in the nasal airways.  Breathing slowly and deeply through the nose helps deliver the gas to our lungs and into the blood stream.  In contrast, fast erratic breathing, or no breathing, decreases the amount of nitric oxide in the blood thus resulting in an increase in blood pressure levels (“What are You Holding Your Breath For? Let It Go for Lower Blood Pressure and Better Health” – www.highbpmed.com).

Breathing for Better Health

If fast, erratic and shallow breathing can raise your blood pressure, it follows that slow regular and deep breathing can lower it.  According to Dr. David Anderson, a method called ‘slow breathing’ practiced for as little as 10-15 minutes a day has proved to produce significant and lasting drops in blood pressure (“What are You Holding Your Breath For? Let It Go for Lower Blood Pressure and Better Health” – www.highbpmed.com).  After studying and practicing Pilates I have found that metered breathing with slow, controlled physical movements also helps release stress and enhances muscle relaxation to assist with movement quality.  A lot of people who meditate find that starting with a conscious, slow breath helps relieve stress and centre energy thus taking them to a deeper state of relaxation.  Who would have thought that something so taken for granted such as focusing on each breath we take could have such an effect!

 As Joseph Pilates once said “breathing is the first act of life.  Our very lives depend on it. [Yet] millions have never learned to master the art of correct breathing”.  Inhibitory breathing is said to be a common reaction to emotions; we feel fear, anger, abandonment, surprise and we learn quite young to hold our breath.  We concentrate on the task at hand and we hold our breath, we ride out the emotional rollercoaster of our lives and often don’t realize that we haven’t drawn breath that apparently is an automatic process for our body!  Suddenly we find ourselves choking on our words, tense, our temperature rising and a feeling that the breath we were holding onto, suddenly we can’t catch it!  I for one will be taking my 10-15min a day to learn how to breathe again- just 10 minutes to slow down and feel the deep inhalation and exhalation.  Something this vital to our lives and wellbeing shouldn’t be so taken for granted.