The Importance of Paced Breathing While Standing and Walking

I have been feeling tired and weak for a couple of years now. This is due to my issues with long COVID. I give lot of details about that here. One of the most conspicuous symptoms has been weakness standing up. Standing up in the morning feels very achy and my legs hurt all over. The general feeling lasts throughout the day. I avoid long walks and sit whenever I can. I have been spending a lot of time massaging my legs but this has only led to modest benefits. However, this week I made a large inroad in rehabbing my legs. Allow me to explain.

I created a self-care system called Program Peace that encourages people to breathe along with a breath metronome. It guides you to breathe longer, smoother, deeper breaths and leads to relaxation and a reduction in muscle tension. You can download the free app or visit www.programpeace.com to find out more. I use paced breathing several times per week and I think I get great results from it. 

However, there has been one problem. Because of my long COVID, I have only been practicing paced, diaphragmatic breathing while laying down. For months I have had a sneaking suspicion that this has made it so that I am only deeply relaxed while laying down and I recognized the possibility that part of the reason my body feels so heavy when standing is because it has literally been years since I have practiced paced breathing standing up.

 

The whole-body heaviness and the soreness in my legs got to a point last week where I felt desperate and decided to take a walk around my block while paced breathing. So, I took out my phone, opened the Program Peace app, and placed the breath metronome at a rate of 7 second inhalations and 9 second exhalations (this is too long for many people and a beginner should probably start at 5x7, 4x6, or lower). I walked very slowly, mostly focusing on taking complete breaths where I inhaled and exhaled all the way out. While walking, I concentrated on the soreness in my legs and the technique of “antirigidity” that I spell out below. This slow walk around the block took me at least 10 minutes. By the end, my legs felt much lighter and more springy. This encouraged me to do it again, and by the time I came back, another 10 minutes later, most of the pain in my legs was gone.

 

Every night this week I have repeated this. The relief I have gotten has been unbelievable. It showed me that because I was only breathing diaphragmatically while laying down, standing up way enough to push me into distressed breathing. Because of this I want to warn people not to practice paced breathing exclusively while lying down. I also want to advise people to practice paced breathing while walking. The experience has spurred me to do something else I recommend in the Program Peace book, which is to use the breath metronome over headphones while stretching and lifting light weights at the gym.

“Diaphragmatic generalization” is the pairing of diaphragmatic breathing with different actions. It works. Almost any muscular injury you have can be largely rehabilitated with diaphragmatic generalization. It is not a household term, but it should be. The fact that years of leg soreness could be ameliorated in less than an hour tells me this “neuromusculardiaphramatic axis” in the body (where our nervous systems and muscles learn what to trust and what not to trust by the way we breathe) is profoundly impactful. The fact that I got relief so fast tells me this axis is highly plastic. I understand that this might seem like a lot of hyperbole to some readers, but I want to recommend that you try it for yourself.

 

Everything I do while breathing with a breath metronome becomes cleansed in peace. Let me leave you with the 5 tenets of Antirigidity:

 

https://programpeace.com/antifrailty/

 

Anti-rigidity Protocol

1)       Find a contraction or active stretch that feels stiff and achy when held. This often involves an unfamiliar position or posture and leads to cracking at the joint. The point where this configuration cracks is the most in need of rehab. Engage, stabilize, and hold the position until it fatigues. This usually takes between five and 30 seconds.

2)       Hold the general parameters of the posture while varying others. Move the joint dynamically, utilizing its range of motion in every possible vector, flexing into the ones that seem the stiffest or sorest. If you can continually reposition, you can approach the problem from different angles. Anti-rigidity can be done with concentric contractions (in which the muscle shortens), eccentric contractions (in which the muscle lengthens), or isometric contractions (in which the muscle does not change length).

3)       Allow the area at least 15 seconds of complete rest before you try again. Use this respite to recognize what the muscle feels like when it is completely resting.

4)       Stimulate dormant muscles throughout the body in this way while breathing correctly. As long as you are breathing diaphragmatically, you should feel the ache diminish in a matter of seconds. At first, the ache may be so intense that it makes paced breathing difficult. In that case, just ensure that you are taking long, passive exhalations. You can facilitate this by taking deep inhalations through the mouth and then puckering your lips and blowing out for as long as possible to reinforce the relaxation response.

5)       After your anti-rigidity training session, it is essential to allow these muscles to relax completely, so lie down (employing the corpse pose, body scan, or progressive muscle relaxation from Chapter 5) and let the contractions subside.