If you’ve ever been in an acutely stressful situation, you’ve probably heard it before. “Okay, just breathe” or even more common, “let’s just take a breath.” Why do we use these phrases? After all, everyone breathes already. How important is it really to monitor your breathing?
Why we breathe
Firstly, let’s think generally about why we need to breathe in the first place. When we breathe, we bring the oxygen we need into our body. The oxygen goes into our blood, brain, muscles, and basically everywhere. If we don’t get enough oxygen to our brain, we start to yawn, as a sort of protective mechanism to ensure that the brain does, in fact, get enough.
This means that we are not always perfect at getting all the oxygen we need through breathing. The brain has a safeguard against not getting enough oxygen to it, so that it can still send out signals to the rest of the body, but what about everything else that uses oxygen in our body? Does our blood have the option of yawning?
It’s also been found that when we do get enough oxygen to our systems, we have improved moods, thoughts, blood circulation, and mental clarity. Because of this, there are a lot of perspectives and philosophies on the importance of breath work.
Anxiety and breath work
It’s clear to most of us that taking long, slow, deep breaths can help relax us. But what most of us don’t realize is why that is. After all, nobody tells you to take some fast deep breaths, right? Then you’re hyperventilating, that’s like panic attack territory, the opposite of relaxing. So why do slow deep breaths help us?
Have you ever seen someone breathe into a paper bag in real life or on a movie? People think it’s a myth, but it actually helps. The paper in a paper bag is just thick enough to create a barrier that makes us work a little harder to breathe, which in turn causes us to slow our breathing down. When we breathe in, we activate what is called our sympathetic nervous system. It basically wakes up our sensitivities to stimuli, in all forms. And when we breathe out, it activates what is called our parasympathetic nervous system, which essentially calms those nerves.
When we begin to breathe quickly, we push the button for sympathetic nervous system activation more and more frequently, telling our brain and body, “Hey! Something’s happening around me, all available resources report to top deck to focus on this!” This is why when we breathe slowly in and out, we can calm down–we are increasing the amount of time in between the activation of our sympathetic nervous system, and if we are trying to stretch out our out breath, we are increasing the amount of time that the parasympathetic nervous system is able to do its’ work relaxing us. Essentially, we are telling our body, “no, there’s nothing to get all worked up about, you are safe.”
If you have anxiety, try this exercise. The next time you feel yourself starting to panic, take your breath in, but hold it for a second or two. Then, try to lengthen your out breath for as long as you can. Do this for five or ten repetitions, and see how you feel. Depending on the situation, you may want or need to do more, but just remember how it works. On a physiological level, the longer you take in between breathing in, and the longer you take breathing out, you are telling your body, “No, this stimulus is not so important to focus on that I need to work myself up over it. I’m safe and it’s okay to relax.”
Breathing and depression
Now, we can extend this hypothesis to depression as well. Some of the symptoms of being oxygen deprived, such as lack of energy, and being unable to focus, intersect with the symptoms of depression. On a day when you feel no energy or motivation, you might be willing to try taking some deep breaths. It may seem silly or pointless, but give it a try.
Unlike with anxious episodes, when you are feeling very low and listless, you’re going to want to focus on your breath in–not out. Breath in as much air as you can comfortably stand, and when it’s all in, just let it all go, don’t bother trying to hold onto it. Now do it again, and again! On a physiological level, you are telling your body that the task at hand is important to focus on, and equipping it with the ability to do so, by giving the brain more resources to send signals and the muscles more resources to do what the brain tells them to do. By breathing in deep and simply letting the outbreath go, you are literally giving your body more energy to carry out the tasks that you need to complete!
Breathing and exercise
Monitoring your breath and heart rate is very important during exercise. We keep track of how heavy we breathe, to see how much our bodies have been affected by the exercise we are doing, and whether or not we can push ourselves harder, or need rest.
Not only do we monitor our breathing to inform us of our inside state, we also control the rate of our breathing, as in running, we try to get a certain amount of breaths in a certain amount of strides. This is a tool to help manage our performance, and to ensure our bodies stay healthy within the strain we put on them.
In short, during exercises we like to monitor and control our breathing, because we need to make sure our bodies get enough oxygen distributed out through them, in order to work properly. When we put our bodies under stress intentionally, it is our responsibility to make sure that we are still giving them the elements they need to survive and function properly.
If you are a person who is inactive, this idea of monitoring and controlling the breath may be new to you, but it is a good idea to take on anyway, in a general sort of way. If you are not exercising, then there’s not a big need to make sure you’re taking a certain amount of breaths per minute or whatever marker you would use, but it is still possible to get out of whack with your breathing in a regular day due to emotional and environmental situations.
If you have a lack of oxygen, you may feel a lack of focus or energy, which could simply be cleared up with some deep breathing and consistent breath energy. Give it a try next time you’re in a funk for no reason.
Music and connecting to the breath
When you are a singer, breathing is very important. Obviously, some songs are more challenging than others, and some require an immense amount of breath diligence in order to be completed accurately.
In singing, taking a deep breath is not enough. You need to learn how to take a breath from deep down in your abdomen, where the diaphragm is, how to use your breath smoothly and sparingly, where you need it to produce the correct sound. You learn about how posture affects your breathing and sound, as well.
But it isn’t just singers. For musicians of any sort, is very important to keep your breath connected to the music. There is something that happens in performing, a sort of emotional signature of a piece, which you either connect to or you don’t. When you perform and connect to the “emotional heartbeat” of a song, your audience is captivated and they believe you, in a way.
There’s a way of “being in the zone” within performing, where the piece informs you–your emotions, your facial expressions, and even your breathing choices. In the zone, you also inform your piece, and the two (or more) of you work in a sort of unit. It is a sort of phenomenon, but within a choir, when you all get in sync, you find you are all breathing at the same time, you feel closer to each other as a group, and you can even get your heartbeats in sync while you perform together! This kind of connection and power is what music can give to us.
Next time you find yourself unable to take deep breaths, turn on a song that just really seems to get you, and then turn it up. Let yourself be swept away in the beat, the notes, the message. Even if you’re not a singer, pretend to perform with the musicians. You may find you can get into the zone with them, and you will connect your breath, your emotions, and your heartbeat to their song.
Psychological breathing in yoga
Now yoga is exercise, that is true. So the above information about exercise applies to yoga as well; it’s important to breath deep to get oxygen to all parts of your body in order to help them perform their best while carrying out tasks. However, yoga also employs a more psychological breathing philosophy on breathing, which I thought was worth taking a look at here.
If you’ve ever taken a yoga class in person or online, you may have heard an instructor telling their class when and how to breathe. To those unfamiliar with yoga it may seem strange that it should matter very much when you breathe in relation to what poses you’re doing, unless your rib cage was obstructed in some sort of weird contortion. And surprisingly, that’s not the usual reason your instructor will tell you take a big deep breath in and then let it all out very quickly, etc.
In yoga, there is a belief that your breath out can be used to release mental and emotional blocks. There is also this philosophy for specific poses as well, like twists. So if your instructor is having you twist and breathe out at the same time, (which they often do) you can bet that they’re trying to get you to release some pent up worries or upset within you.
It is also interesting to remember that yoga was made up within the constraints of a specific spiritual belief, that believed that thought mastery was very important to living a life free of suffering. A yoga practice gives a person a chance to practice thought mastery. It can be difficult for a lot of people to get into yoga because it is actually quite athletically rigorous if you really dig into it. Some poses feel impossible to achieve, or impossible to hold. This intense discomfort (mental and sometimes physical), can really bring up thoughts in our heads.
We recognize during a difficult yoga session what our self-defeating thoughts sound like. For some people, they are more about what they can’t do, how they’re a failure and don’t believe in themselves. For others, they may be directed towards other people. They may look at the people around them in the class and feel angry because it looks like they’re the only one struggling, or be annoyed at the teacher for leaving them in a difficult posture for so long. During all this, we are encouraged to breathe. Breathe in…and breathe out. Focus on our breath.
The function of this is very simple and if we stand by it, very effective. We use our breathe, not as a distraction, but a tool to give us the little bit of separation we need from our thoughts and our feelings in order to remain steadfast and finish our task. With practice, we can make this a habit that carries over into our daily, non-yoga lives.
This practice of focusing on the breath when we are distressed works on both a psychological and physiological level, and gives us a free, effective, and always-available coping mechanism to be used in any situation we find tense or overwhelming. With yoga, we are taught that we can get through emotional discomfort and still carry out the tasks we set out to finish.
Breathing and meditation
Many people think of meditation as “clearing the mind and focusing on your breath.” This is effective, if you can do it. But for most people, focusing on the breath as a technique doesn’t serve to clear their mind, so much as give them a bit of emotional separation from the thoughts they were thinking, as I mentioned above when talking about breathing within yoga.
And this is fine. I’m not certain where this “clearing the mind” misconception came from, but meditation is more about redirecting the mind, and doing so in a relaxed way, instead of a more frantic thought-police type thing. This is where breathing comes in. Many people, when approaching meditation for the first time, are anything but relaxed. This shows in their breathing pattern. It becomes shallow and inconsistent. When you think of a relaxing nap, for example, your breathing slightly deepens and slows. This is the sort of thing you want to mimic in your mediation, at least at the beginning, to calm yourself into a meditative state.
Within meditation and yoga, there are other specific breathing practices, if you are interested in looking into those as well. They are similar in thought–a more psychological, philosophical outlook on the relationship between breathing and your ultimate outlook on your life. For some they are very fascinating and useful.
Whatever your inclinations and beliefs are, it is beneficial to take control of your breath, for physiological as well as psychological reasons. Taking deep breaths helps you perform each day better, and take command of your own actions in a subtle, but persistent way that can only be described as secretly delightful. Happy breathing!
