Breath & Whole Body Health

Breath is life – so goes the well-worn phrase, but what does that mean actually? As overwhelming evidence from these days of COVID points out, without adequate oxygenation, we die. We’re now over a month into a global quarantine to protect each other from a virus. It limits our ability to breathe. How do we reimagine breath for what it offers in terms of health?

Respiration is more than breathing in and out. It’s whole-body rhythmic pulsation – tidal sway amid our cellular ocean. Through bone, blood, and connective tissue, through the tug of tiny tubules on the nucleus inside each cell, our breath moves everywhere, every moment.

Bones rotate rhythmically in their habitual respiratory pattern, generating a continuum of spiraling movement. Organs pulse with life as fluids flush through their innards, accommodating blood and lymphatic flow. Skull and sacrum rock in reciprocity. They’re attached, but at a distance, by their bond to the dura. That’s the skin that surrounds and contains the brain and spinal cord. And the dura breathes, gently pumping its aqueous contents of cerebral spinal fluid. From micro to macro, our entire body flows with respiration, whether we’re conscious of that or not. Can you feel it?

There are significant reasons you might not attune to your micro-rhythms of respiration. Biomechanics is one of those reasons. The biomechanics of breath helps to establish mental real estate that houses our sense of self. In a process called proprioception, attention to breath allows us to notice ever-finer slices of the self-perceptual pie.

Proprioception works like this: when our breath deepens, it tugs on the fascia. Fascia is a ubiquitous web of connective tissue that adheres to its job description by attaching everything inside of us to everything else. Using breath awareness techniques, you can learn to refine your attention by noticing sensory information from tiny receptors woven throughout your fascial web.

Our reward for attention to the breath is that we develop the capability to follow those sensation-rich pathways – at an impressive distance from the lungs. By sensing stretch receptors woven into your fascial net, you CAN follow your breath into your little toe! Once you’re able to find and connect more dots – to further points throughout your fascial universe – your mental map gets enriched. We learn where we are. We can also feel what we are, a collection of billions of tiny balls of cellular energy respiring in the fluid space of our extracellular matrix.

The diaphragm is our primary muscle of breath – it’s Grand Central Station for fascial push-and-pull. This muscle contains the largest tendon in the body. As this tendon warms up, the diaphragm’s rate of excursion (range of motion) increases. Think of it like this – you’re taking your old dog for a walk. In warm weather, your diaphragmatic dog is more agile, and movement comes easily. A warmer ambient temp increases diaphragmatic range of motion, and breathing feels light and effortless. But baby, when it’s cold outside, the elasticity of the diaphragm’s central tendon is restricted. Like an elderly golden retriever, your central tendon is moving slowly, perhaps limping a bit in the depth of inhalation; your chest feels tight.

Trauma literature is replete with ways to use the breath to either come into presence or to retreat from it. Breath is our silent partner in nervous system regulation. By breathing deeply and slowly, we slow our nervous system, dipping into a healthy parasympathetic state of rest and digest. When we’re too up-regulated, we breathe shallow rabbit breaths up around our collarbones. Traps tighten, shoulder blades reach for the stars, and our necks kink forward. There are neurological consequences, as the very nerve that feeds range of motion to the diaphragm gets squeezed into oblivion between tight neck muscles.

Once your head migrates forward, the thoracic spine collapses. The breath becomes shallow, mingy. The diaphragm has no place to go in a collapsed chest. Under these circumstances, our breath can barely keep us going – emphasis on barely.

What happens when we starve ourselves of inspiration? In addition to a plethora of other physiologic problems, brain fog happens, which leads to dissociation. That means we disconnect from our felt sense of self – and go kind of numb. Cellular stars can blink out, along with your connection to the teensy stretch receptors in your fascial web.

We can manipulate breath to change states – from sluggish to highly charged, and back. We shut breath down instinctually when we want to avoid feeling and ramp it up to welcome in more sensation. When we’re extremely stressed, the diaphragm freezes, playing as dead as a mouse in the mouth of a cat. It’s especially true when we feel helpless, the cause of our stress without recourse. When we survive imminent threat, emerging from our freeze state, the first clue we’ve made it is the awareness of our deepening breath, that sigh of relief.

Breath can balance your nervous system. During stressful times, how can you restore a working relationship with your breath? In this case, breath regulation means equality between inhalation and exhalation. Breathing like this develops equanimity between up- and down-regulation. There’s a massive amount of research to support the use of synchronized breathing to calm a stressed-out nervous system.

As a reward for reading this far, I’m offering free access to some breath-regulation animations! I practiced breathing using them for 20 minutes before bed every night for a week. I noticed my back pain diminished as my mood, focus, and productivity improved. After practice with this breath technique, clients told me they discovered a greater ability to relax and self-soothe when confronted by stress.

For do-it-yourself fans, here are three ways to develop your own equanimous, soul-soothing breath:

• Slow your breathing, making an equal effort while inhaling and exhaling. You don’t have to breathe at full capacity – about half-capacity is fine.

• If you don’t use this animation series, you can count your inhale and exhale, keeping the counts equal each way. Extending the length of each inhalation and exhalation has differing effects on your nervous system. There is a sweet spot somewhere between five and seven breaths per minute. It varies per individual, with some people needing more frequent breaths to optimize a balance between up- and down-regulation.

• Notice the spaces between inhaling and exhaling. You don’t need to retain your breath at the top of inhalation or the bottom of exhalation. Simply notice those gaps, and just allow them to be.

If you’re craving a more luscious breath practice, bop over to my online school for access to my free synchronized breath video series. You have three different breath rates per minute to play with. Experiment with all of them and then use the one that makes you feel best. Try it daily for a week – I would love to hear about any changes you notice.