Intentional Stress Challenge: Breathwork
17 challenges of varying difficulty aimed at improving your respiratory and mental capacities.
Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts. Whenever your mind becomes scattered, use your breath as the means to take hold of your mind again. —Thich Nhat Hanh
How much time do you spend thinking about your breathing? If you’re like most people, probably very little. Similar to heart rate, blood pressure, and digestion, breathing is an involuntary function controlled by our autonomic nervous system that doesn’t require active control. It is, however, one of the only autonomic functions that can be immediately modified intentionally. Intentional control of our breathing offers a path, and is arguably THE bridge, between our conscious and subconscious systems.
Efficient breathing means that fewer free radicals are produced, reducing the risk of inflammation, tissue damage, and injury. -Patrick McKeown
Breathing seems pretty straight forward. We inhale oxygen into our lungs, exhale carbon dioxide, and repeat indefinitely. This process helps maintain homeostasis or the balance our brains and bodies need to stay alive. While this foundation is true, there is now significant evidence demonstrating that variance in breath rate and type (nasal vs mouth) is associated with many common health conditions and performance metrics. Improper breathing has been linked to COPD, asthma, sleep apnea, inflammation, autoimmune disorders, mental health disorders, and metabolic disorders like diabetes and hypertension. While it is not certain (nothing ever is) that sub-optimal breathing causes, increases risk or is a consequence of these pathologies, breathwork or focused improvement of our breathing system has been shown to effectively manage, treat or cure all of these common ailments. Training our breathing system has also been shown to increase stamina, endurance and overall performance on a variety of physical and cognitive tasks.
Dwight Schrute: Through concentration, I can raise and lower my cholesterol at will.
Pam Beesley: Why would you want to raise your cholesterol?
Dwight Schrute: So I can lower it.
While I’m not aware of a way to actively modulate cholesterol, voluntary control of breathing can directly influence your heart rate in real time. Placing more emphasis on inhales will increase the heart rate which can help with memory, alertness, reaction time, and energy. Conversely, emphasis on exhales will slow down the heart rate to help you relax, calm down, and reduce stress and anxiety. Made famous by Andrew Huberman on his outstanding podcast Huberman Lab, the physiologic sigh is a breathing technique that research has recently supported as the most efficient and effective strategy to actively reduce stress and autonomic arousal. It is completed by first executing one deep inhale, preferably through the nose, in attempt to completely fill the lungs. Once you reach perceived capacity, take a second nasal inhale (this may feel challenging which is okay) before slowly exhaling through the nose or mouth. When compared to other breathing strategies and brief (five minute) meditation, the physiologic sigh proved to be the quickest and most effective way to reverse effects of psychological and physical stress. As a parent of three young children, I feel like I now use the physiologic sigh to manage my stress so often that it’s becoming a part of my regular breathing pattern. While that’s partly a joke, I do catch myself subconsciously performing physiologic sighs in response to adversity which demonstrates productive plasticity in action. This is a worthwhile technique to begin practicing in response to expected or intentional stress.
Every day that you live without proper breathing is another little step of submitting to stress and deterioration of your health. -Vladimir Vasiliev
The reported normal range of respiration rates for adults is 12 to 20 breaths/minute with slightly higher rates for children. It is estimated that the majority of our population is at the higher end of this distribution. It has also been stated this “normal range” is indicative of our nation’s poor health. Higher breath rates in this range are correlated with many diseases. Correlation doesn’t equal causation but it’s obvious that being sick reduces respiration efficiency. If the respiration rates of common illness still fall in the range of “normal” then what does normal really mean? Respiration rate directly influences the amount of oxygen that can be delivered to our lungs. Quick and shallow vs slow and deep. Hypoxia is a condition that results from inadequate oxygen in the tissues leading to decreased function. Without getting into the differently types, causes and treatments of hypoxia, it has been shown that slow, deep breathing at a rate of six breaths per minutes reduces our body’s response to being hypoxic whereas an average breath rate of 15 breaths per minute does not. As with many distributions when it comes to health in industrialized nations, “normal” may not be the best goal.
The fix is easy: breathe less. But that’s harder than it sounds. We’ve become conditioned to breathe too much, just as we’ve been conditioned to eat too much. With some effort and training, however, breathing less can become an unconscious habit. -James Nestor
Conscious consideration of your breath rate is important, however, the system you primarily use, whether it be your nose or mouth, is critical to optimal health and performance.
“The nose is for breathing and the mouth is for eating.”
Nasal breathing has many favorable benefits over mouth breathing. The increased resistance of the nasal passage allows for greater inflation of the lungs and acts as a natural governor for breath rate. The nasal path favorably warms and moisturizes oxygen while releasing a vasodilator to optimize efficiency and lung health. Furthermore, the nose and nose hairs are designed to filter out toxins and allergens before oxygen enters the lungs. While we can obviously use the mouth as a reserve system when the nose is blocked or when faster breath rates are needed (such as high intensity exertion), consistently using the mouth to breathe can be detrimental to one’s health in a variety of ways. Aside from the inability to filter, humidify or heat air on the way to the lungs, chronic mouth breathing has been shown to produce progressively detrimental changes in the bones, muscles, joints and tissues of the face, jaw, dental region and airway.
Being called a mouth breather used to be an insult but it appears to be becoming the norm. There is now evidence suggesting over half of school-aged children are chronic mouth breathers and a quarter of children are reported to have disordered breathing while sleeping by age six.
The breath knows how to go deeper than the mind. -Wim Hof
The good thing is that it’s never too late to change. Just as the body will negatively adapt to chronic mouth breathing, consistent attempts at nasal breathing will reverse those adaptations and produce improvements in structure and function. Breathwork is something we can do regardless of injury, illness, financial status or age. It can and should initially be done at rest to gauge your ability to exclusively breathe through your nose. If you can’t, work on it. Remember slow, deep breathing is the goal. Effort and intensity when nasal breathing is counterproductive. The objective isn’t perfection, it’s to progressively be able to use your nose to breath while sitting still without causing or feeling stress. If you begin to struggle, stop and then reset. Take your time. An ear, nose and throat (ENT) physician can perform an assessment to ensure there aren’t any medical abnormalities if/when needed. Setting a proper breathing foundation will allow for optimal results when pursuing improvement on the upcoming challenges.
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