Back to basics: Breathing is key.

Breathing is key.

It’s not every day that we take the time to consider the value of something so automatic. Something that inadvertently pervades every moment of our lives. Something we do over 25000 times a day. Something with which we can not go with out. Breath.

If you’ve experienced treatment by me, it’s possible I’ve ranted on about one of my favourite reads, James Nestor’s Breath. He takes you through his personal journey of research and discovery in to the power of breath. He advocates for investing a little bit of time in to this often-overlooked yet pivotal element of our lives. When harnessed correctly, breathing can not only minimise autoimmune and respiratory diseases, but can massively maximise athletic performance. He warns that when done incorrectly, breathing can open a gateway toward a multitude of chronic physiological and psychological disease states. I was blown away reading about how poor breathing patterns likely plays a role in the maintenance and perhaps cause of certain conditions like high blood pressure, ADHD, cancer, depression, diabetes, scoliosis, periodontal disease and bad breath… just to name a few.

Now, it’s possible you’re thinking, what on earth is she talking about? Breathing correctly or incorrectly? This is something I do with my eyes closed. I don’t think about it. My body knows what to do and obviously I’m getting air in and out, so what’s the big problem? And what do you mean breathing ‘correctly’? I’m sure this isn’t news to everyone but James Nestor would suggest that mouth breathing is the devil. Not only does mouth breathing result in at least 18% less oxygen absorption then nose breathing, and can cause the body to lose 40% more water, but mouth breathing actually changes our facial structures to the point where there is effectively functional airway ‘collapse’, there is less space and breathing inevitably becomes more difficult. Interestingly, it has been suggested that mouth breathing actually makes us ‘dumber’. A few Japanese studies demonstrated how mouth breathing negatively effects how oxygen can reach our prefrontal cortex, and they showed how ‘mouth-breathing rats’ took twice as long to crack a maze as their nasal-breathing counterparts.

Nasal breathing on the contrary can benefit our health to no end. For instance, nasal breathing stimulates the sinuses to release nitric oxide, a molecule that plays an essential role. Through an increase in circulation and oxygenation, immune function, weight, mood and sexual function can all be regulated! Beyond this, nasal breathing is directly linked to balancing and regulating our autonomic nervous system. Mouth breathing, and breathing high up in your chest serves to keep our sympathetic system in overdrive, that is, our flight, fight or freeze mode, which is far from ideal on a long term basis. I’m sure you’re all aware of that sneaky phenomenon whereby one minute our right nostril is flowing freely, and the next it cycles over to the left. This is how nasal breathing regulates us. Our right nostril supposedly connects with our sympathetic nervous system, pumping blood to areas of our brain which help with alertness, readiness and logical decisions. The left nostril on the other hand activates our parasympathetic system, the one we need for relaxation and restoration. This natural cycling between left and right is the bodies way of regulating us and ensuring our body is doing what it should at a certain time.

So it would be very easy for me to keep rehashing gems from this book – but I if you’ve got some spare time on your hands over the next 2 weeks I highly recommend the read!

What’s interesting for me is the link between biomechanical dysfunction in our bodies, and how these can block or inhibit beautiful diaphragmatic restorative breathing. When we’ve had injuries to our thorax (rib cage), shoulder girdles, even to our face or pelvis, or we’ve developed these really asymmetrical postural patterns we can get torsions and restrictions that effectively block our ability to achieve that beautiful breath. If you can visualise, when we breathe in, we want the air to travel freely from our noses down the back of our throat, into the alveoli of our lungs so completely that our lungs inflate, our diaphragm descends and our rib cage expands out to the side. When there is tension in the muscles between our ribs, fascial restrictions, adhesions in our tissues from surgeries or previous injury, our lungs have to work harder to get this pattern to happen. Our air will often travel through the path of least resistance, and sometimes this means that the air will stay up in the upper lobes of our lungs and we won’t be able to achieve this complete parasympathetically activating breath.

When we are stressed, frightened, anxious we tend to breathe in this upper chest breathing pattern. This keeps our sympathetic system going and makes it really difficult for our bodies and minds to feel at ease. Equally, if our bodies are blocking our lungs from achieving the right type of breath, we can get those same sensations of stress and anxiety even if our minds are at relative ease.

Before I sign off, I wanted to share with you a few take home tips to get you started working on your nasal breathing! There is nothing more frustrating then reading a blog with all this juicy knowledge, with out being given any real advice to correct yourself. So here are 3 tips.

1.     How to achieve nasal breathing:

Albeit this has led me to be ridiculed by my husband and family, I tape my mouth closed at night. This is not an intense masking tape situation, and it does not look like a scene out of Homeland. But rather, I use a tiny post stamp sized piece of soft cotton tape to gently keep my lips together over night. This makes sure that I am nasal breathing all night long. Not that I’m a snorer, but for those of you who may be sleeping next to a freight train at night, I highly recommend taping them up for a week or so, and then let me know what happens!

2.     Maintaining flexibility and openness through your thorax.

This is vital. The classic child’s pose or some roller opening work goes down a treat. I find lying on your back, with the roller down the centre of your spine and letting your arms hang out to the side provides a really beautiful position for allowing space to come back into your rib cage. In this position, notice your breath, observe where it goes. Can you get that rise and fall all the way down to your tummy? Can you feel your ribs pushing to the sides down below? If not, slow your breath and use your mind to send it to areas that feel a little tighter. Stand back up again and notice how you feel.

3.     Slow down your breathing

As Nestor puts it, we are over eaters and over breathers, with many of us taking almost 4x as many breaths per minute as necessary. Having scoured ancient texts and observing prayers across Hindu, Buddhist, Catholic, Taoist, African, Hawaiian and Native American cultures he found a commonality that seemingly transcends mere coincidence. Somehow cross culturally, many prayers developed requiring the same breathing pattern. For example, both a popular Buddhist mantra and the pattern of the rosary lasts approximately 5.5-6 breaths per minute. Coincidence? I doubt it. This cycle of 5.5 second inhales followed by 5.5 second exhales is the ideal breath. It syncs with our cardiovascular rhythms, increases blood flow to our brain, and improves our whole bodies efficiency. So give it a go, practice just 10 minutes a day and see how what you experience.

Thanks for reading my over enthusiastic ramble about breath! There are a multitude of other techniques out there to help you harness the power of your breath, but this is just to get you thinking. Any questions as always, feel free to reach out 

Warm and oxygen filled thoughts,

Gina