Meditating on the
breath is a profoundly beneficial exercise, but I think that most practitioners
do not understand how the benefits are achieved and thus don’t know how to
maximize them. I think that there are very specific physiological and
psychological reasons for breathing meditation. In my opinion, the reason to
focus on the breath is to retrain the unconscious breathing module in the
brainstem and also to strengthen the diaphragmatic and intercostal muscles that
power our breaths. This will allow us to breathe more slowly, more deeply, and
less defensively. We all breathe defensively, some more so than others.
Defensive breathing is made up of short, shallow and incomplete breaths and it
contributes to stress and anxiety.
I bought myself a
stethoscope recently and I use it to listen to my breathing. When you put the
"bell" of the stethoscope up to your mouth you can hear tiny
distortions and discontinuities in the breath – desperate little gasps. It
became clear to me when listening carefully that breathing deeply can be a
struggle. It shouldn't be though. Some of the force generated to create the
suction for a breath comes easily at first, but the breath becomes more
difficult and strenuous the longer you inhale. The more slowly and fully you
breathe the more you can hear and feel these points of weakness in the breath.
You do not need a stethoscope to hear this or feel it. When I don't have a
stethoscope sometimes I will cup both of my hands between my mouth and ear. You
want to listen for brief cessations or unevenness in the "so" sound.
It sounds kind of like the voice when it "cracks." Breathing is
strained whenever a single inhalation slows or is impeded briefly. When someone
is very stressed you can often hear them straining for more breath – the
inhalation will be punctuated by multiple rapid gasps. This happens when one is
continuing to inhale despite their body's inclination to "switch"
from inhalation to exhalation prematurely.
These points of
weakness in the breathing musculature tell us to stop taking a full breath and
go back to exhaling prematurely - this is the mechanism that causes us to
breathe shallowly and underlies disordered breathing. I think that there are a
few ways to reprogram your breathing, but they take time and patience, because
they involve retraining unconscious brain regions. Specialized centers in the
brainstem automatically regulate the rate and depth of inspiration depending on
the body's needs. These need to be reprogrammed but it takes discipline. The
average adult human male has a total lung capacity of about 6 liters of air,
but only a small amount of this capacity is used during normal breathing. Nervous
breathing will often involve inhalations of less than half a liter. We rarely
breathe all the way out, or all the way in, and our breaths are usually confined
to a narrow range called “tidal volume.” See the diagram below. The slower and more
forcefully we breathe the more we can extend our tidal volume. Most adults
breathe between 12 and 20 breaths per minute. Many breathing experts recommend “belly
breathing” at 6 breaths per minute, but if you don’t work up to this low rate
you might end up hyperventilating and feeling light headed. The longer you can
extend your exhalations the more the heart will decelerate and the more the
vagus nerve will be recruited to pacify the autonomic nervous system.
When mammals are
severely stressed, they assume that their respiratory needs will only be met
properly by breathing marked by high rate (frequency), and low depth. Defensive
breathing is a vertebrate adaptation to an adverse environment. Animals that do
not trust their environment breathe shallowly in anticipation of a violent
attack. They are always prepared for the rapid and shallow breathing (low tidal
breathing) necessary for vigilance and emotional reactivity. This type of
breathing is not well suited for periods of rest, but is used regardless
because the traumatized animal does not know when it will be attacked. I know
that my breathing is caught up in this defensive evolutionary strategy despite
the fact that it has no benefit for me in the modern environment. We all want
to shoot for low frequency and high depth, meaning that we inhale and exhale
more total air volume and switch between inhalation and exhalation on longer
time intervals.
To work towards
this I have developed a few strategies:
1) I try to return
to the breath frequently throughout the day, monitoring it and deciding if it
is too shallow or fast.
2) I catch myself
getting ready to switch from breathing in to breathing out before I have even
taken a full breath, and instead of switching, I prolong the breath in.
2.5) I also try to
catch myself on the tail end of an exhalation and try to prolong it rather than
starting to inhale. Joseph Pilates saw forced exhalation as the key to full
inhalation and advised that people squeezed out the lungs as if they were
tightly wringing a wet towel dry;
3) I breathe in
through my nose and out from my mouth - because breathing in through the nose
is a slower process (the airway is more narrow) it naturally prolongs the
inhalation.
4) I force myself
to breathe slowly when eating and when talking to others – these are times when
my breathing often becomes shallow.
5) While
meditating, I will focus on breath volume exclusively for several minutes -
focusing on my unconscious "switching" proclivities.
6) Experience
disordered breathing first hand. Before my normal breathing exercises I like to
remind myself of what not to do. I breathe very shallowly and very quickly for
a full minute. After about 30 seconds it becomes very apparent how uncomfortable
this is.
7) I listen to my
heart with a stethoscope while breathing deeply. The heart actually starts to
speed up at both low and high lung volumes because the breathing musculature is
straining. The mere act of noticing your heart panic during deep breathing,
helps to calm your heart because you can notice that it is overreacting.
8) My favorite
breathing exercise: I take a very full breath and then continue breathing, but
while remaining at a very high lung capacity. In other words, I hold a good
deal of air in, only taking shallow exhalations and large inhalations. Then I
do the opposite. I breathe all of my air out and then only take very shallow
inhalations and large exhalations. Forcing your breathing muscles to work
outside of the normal “tidal volume” and instead in the “reserve volumes” is a
quick way to strengthen them, enhance their capacity and extend the normal
tidal volume.
Most meditation
practices merely ask practitioners to turn attention to the breath. They do
this in hopes that the person will notice that their breath is defensive and
think to themselves: “Wait, my current environment is not upsetting, so why am
I breathing like I have something at stake.” Listening to my heart through a
stethoscope produces the same questioning: “Wait, why is my heart beating this
fast? ” Just hoping that you will notice the desperation in your breath is not
enough. I sit and focus on my tendency to prematurely arrest the inspiratory or
expiratory flow. I try to notice this tendency and consciously override it
again and again until I find that the muscles begin to prolong breathing on
their own. I also try to associate a type of satisfaction, satiety, pleasure or
fulfillment with the sensation of taking a full breath - almost like each full
breath is a relief and some form of sustenance that rejuvenates me.
Unfortunately, when the body can tell that you are overriding its preferred
breathing style, you feel small bursts of panic and a strong impulse to switch
- we have to resist this and try to stay relaxed without switching. If we can
get past this initial discomfort early in the meditation, then we should be
able to really "get in to" and reprogram our breathing. I plan to
keep monitoring my breathing pattern and regulating it so that it goes from
being defensive to being empowering.
I think that the
discomfort from shallow breathing "ramps up" many addictive behaviors
by making us feel desperation. For example, I think that our breathing becomes
more shallow when we are hungry and the discomfort of it makes us feel that we
are desperate for food. People use the phrase: “I am starving” when they notice
that their hunger is affecting their breathing. Similarly, people turn to
cigarettes, alcohol and anger when they can tell that negative life circumstances
are affecting their breathing. People can transform disordered breathing into
healthy breathing in minutes using some recreational drugs but of course this
is short lived and the inevitable withdrawal symptoms actually accentuate
disordered breathing.
Anytime we are
anxious, during social stress, public speaking or hardship – we become short of
breath. If you are an anxious person, small stressors quickly lead to very
shallow breathing. We can consciously tell when our breath becomes more
shallow, but we normally don't use this as a cue to better regulate our
breathing as we should. Instead we simply take the sensation to indicate that
something is very wrong with our outer world. This causes us to ruminate about
negative things, when it is our inner world that we should attend to. When my
breathing was at its shortest I could not stop myself from playing out the most
socially awkward and socially upsetting events in my head. After only a few
days of breathing exercises I noticed that the best way to end negative cyclical
thinking was just to focus on breathing more deeply. There is a direct
relationship between negative thinking and shortness of breath partially
because you cannot have genuinely positive thoughts when you feel like you are
suffocating.
When I breathe
easily and freely, I have fewer neurotic and anxious thoughts. In fact, the
neural pathways for breathing are tied to the pathways for conscious thought
through the amygdala. I have become convinced that every time a full inhalation
is arrested prematurely, a subtle, panic signal (from the brainstem to the
hypothalamus to the amygdala to the cortex) is sent to consciousness. I think
that the best way to stop this is to use conscious practice to reprogram the
neural systems responsible for breathing and to strengthen the breathing
muscles for deeper, more prolonged breaths. I think that one of the best times
to practice this is during a guided meditation. The more you practice extending
your breaths, the easier regulating the breath becomes. I think that we should
never stop attending to the breath.
For more information about diaphragmatic breathing click here:
For more information about diaphragmatic breathing click here:
To find out much more about diaphragmatic breathing click here to visit my Program Peace website at www.programpeace.com.
Great article thank you! Good to know that some of the things I have been doing are the reason I am seeing results. I want to work many of the things you said into my own practice.
ReplyDelete