Every Breath You Take

Breathing can lower blood pressure, increase stamina, enhance mood, aid digestion and boost libido--but only if you learn to do it right

We do it about 20,000 times a day--more than 100 million times over the course or a lifetime--yet we pretty much take it for granted.

Experts say the majority of us don't even do it correctly. But if we did, we could vastly improve our physical, mental and spiritual health.

What are we talking about? Breathing, of course, one of the most fundamental aspects of our lives. A human can survive without food for more than two months and without water for about a week, but after four minutes without breathing, brain damage begins, followed quickly by death.

Breathing does far more than just keep us alive, however. "Breath has been used for 5,000 years as the road to consciousness," says Thomas Goode, N.D., managing director of the International Breath Institute in Boulder, Colo. Many cultures associate it with energy and spirit: The Indian prana, the Chinese chi, the Japanese ki, the Greek pneuma, the Latin spiritus and the Hebrew neshamah all refer to the air we breathe, or breath itself, as well as to our spirit, soul and life energy or essence.

"Breath truly links mind and body," says Erik Peper, Ph.D., director of the Institute of Holistic Healing Studies at San Francisco State University. Since breathing is the only function in the body that is both voluntary and involuntary, Peper calls it "a gateway between the conscious and the non-conscious."

Research has shown that the breath can be used as a tool for a cornucopia of health benefits, among them reducing tension, increasing stamina and endurance, improving athletic performance, aiding digestion, lowering high blood pressure, lessening fatigue, helping weight loss, improving sleep, relieving constipation, enhancing memory and mood, increasing libido and improving work efficiency.

To derive these benefits, however, you have to stop taking it for granted, and actually become aware of your breathing.

How We Breathe

"Most of us do what I call upside-down breathing," says Gay Hendricks, Ph.D., author of Conscious Breathing: Breathwork for Health, Stress Release and Personal Mastery (Bantam, 1995). She points out that we tighten our stomach muscles as we inhale, filling our upper chests with air, then relax the abdomen on the exhale.

But the experts say that's backward. To see the correct way to breathe, watch babies: Their abdomens rise on the inhale and contract on the exhale. This is called belly, or diaphragmatic, breathing. The key is to fully exhale before inhaling again. Hendricks says that this form of breathing is like an oxygen "cocktail," because of the additional store of the element that it makes available to your body.

Babies may do it right naturally, but as young children become more aware of things they can't control physically or emotionally, everyday stresses cause them to breathe shallowly, not completely emptying the lungs on the exhale. That's part of the fight-or-flight reflex, encoded in us since the Stone Age. As adults, that shallow breathing is reinforced by society encouraging women to suck in their stomachs and men to puff out their chests.

"Most of us spend the entire day in a modified form of the flight-or-fight reflex," says Jeffrey A. Migdow, M.D., a holistic physician in Lennox, Mass., and coauthor of Breathe In, Breathe Out: Inhale Energy and Exhale Stress By Guiding and Controlling Your Breathing (Time Life Books, 1986, 1999). "In fact, most people unconsciously hold their breath 80 percent of the time, although optimally we'd be breathing between 90 and 100 percent of the time."

The resulting increase in adrenaline and heart rate actually causes physical stress--and as many as 90 percent of physician visits are for stress-related disease, estimates Herbert Benson, M.D., head of the Mind/Body Medical Institute at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. Benson, a big-time believer in the power of breathing, has shown that a now-famous meditative breath technique, which he dubbed the Relaxation Response, can lower stress and improve health on every level.

Breath and the Body

Experts have shown that by learning how to breathe correctly and inhale more oxygen, you can help ward off disease and infection. "Most chronic disease is, to some degree, the result of insufficient oxygen [a condition called hypoxia]," asserts Carl Stough, founder of the Carl Stough Institute of Breathing Coordination in New York City.

Stough has done extensive research on the diaphragm--the thin, dome-shaped sheet of muscle fiber similar to a drumhead that's located between the bottom of the lungs and the top of the abdomen. He points out that while it's capable of moving 12 centimeters during breathing--and 8 centimeters is considered a healthy breath--most people are lucky if they make it move more than 3 centimeters when they breathe.

When there's air left over in the lungs after the end of an exhale (called residual volume), the buildup of carbon dioxide can predispose you to tension, migraine headaches, infections and, Stough believes, even heart disease and cancer. "There isn't a biopsy of cancer tissue that doesn't show a lack of oxygen," he notes.

Hendricks explains that the body is designed to discharge 70 percent of its toxins through breathing. If you don't expel all the carbon dioxide and other toxins through the breath, he says, "other systems must work overtime, setting the stage for a number of illnesses." His patients report a radical decrease in the number of sick days they take after he teaches them how to breathe properly. "Since I began breathwork in 1974," he adds, "I haven't missed a day of work myself."

Migdow agrees that the breath is a silent partner in maximizing health. For example, proper breathing can optimize the efficiency of the nervous system. "Since the nervous system has a strong effect on the immune system, breathing right can improve immunity," he says. "Warding off a cold is easier when you breathe right, and if you do get sick, it helps you get better faster."

Proper breathing has been credited with helping relieve everything from hot flashes, which can be cut in half, to asthma. (Goode estimates 30 percent of all "asthma" cases are really just shallow breathing). Breath training can also aid athletes, Migdow says, because breathing right relaxes the body and makes muscles more flexible, which increases stamina.

Stough worked with the American athletes as a breathing coach during the 1968 Olympic games in high-altitude Mexico City, teaching them special exercises to retrain the diaphragm to work at optimum efficiency. Subsequently, the United States won more gold medals than any previous American team in the history of the Olympics and were the only ones that didn't require supplemental oxygen. Hendricks has also worked with athletes, reporting his most dramatic success with a marathon runner who sliced 30 minutes off her usual four-hour time after just one breathing lesson.

Other forms of breathwork can help relieve pain or increase energy. The focused hyperventilation techniques used by the Lamaze and Bradley methods of childbirth often lessen the agonies of childbirth, or at least provide a mental distraction so that the pain becomes more tolerable. And you can use short, forced exhalations--the opposite of calming diaphragmatic breathing--whenever you're drowsy or need a pick-me-up. "It makes the fluid around the spine and the brain vibrate," Migdow explains, "which stimulates the brain and wakes it up."

Breath and the Mind

Optimum breathing improves your mental well-being every bit as much as your physical. Migdow regularly teaches patients proper breathing techniques, and when they return in a month for a follow-up, "they typically report that they've been able to tolerate tension better," he says. "They communicate better with their coworkers and their partners, too."

"We need to learn that life is a critical balance between regeneration [rest] and excitation [work]," says Peper. Diaphragmatic breathing is the key to that balance, helping calm our too-common state of hypervigilance so that we can flip our switch to "off" when needed.

Psychologists use breathwork to help patients through difficult emotional explorations. Shallow breathing can prevent us from feeling safe enough to recognize and release repressed emotional issues, says Hendricks. "Those feelings stay lodged in our bodies longer than they need to, setting the stage for a number of physical disorders."

Hendricks explains that we tend to hold various unexpressed emotions in certain parts of the body. He suggests that when one is "trapped" in an emotion, it's helpful to focus attention on whichever area of the body is tense while belly breathing, visualizing the breath filling the area in question. Typically, the neck, shoulders and upper back are connected to anger; the throat and upper chest to sadness; and the stomach and intestines to fear.

If you breathe your way through stress, you might also reap the benefit of a sharper mind. Research by behavioral biologist Robert Sapolsky, Ph.D., of Stanford University shows that the chemicals produced in our bodies when we are stressed damage the hippocampus--the region of the brain responsible for memory and learning. Reducing stress helps prevent this damage, which in turn helps improve our ability to focus, remember and learn.

Breath and the Spirit

Breath can also help us open the door to a richer spiritual life, deepening our connection to a higher power.

"When you're breathing properly, you're more open to feelings and sensations, and there's a better chance to feel inner connections," explains Migdow, who lived at a yoga ashram for 15 years. "The only way you can feel a connection to God is to be relaxed enough to get there, and that means optimum breathing."

Breathwork is key to various meditation traditions, not only helping center and calm you but often leading to spiritual insights and even to altered states of consciousness. Breathing meditations are used in Buddhism, Taoism, Tibetan Vajrayana, Sufism and, of course, yoga. Pranayama yoga is, in fact, the ancient Indian science of breath, designed to optimize the flow of life force throughout the body. Most other forms of yoga also depend heavily on manipulating breathing in a variety of ways (speeding it up, slowing it down, holding it) and for a variety of reasons (to relax, rejuvenate, purify or even to heighten sexual response). Zen meditation, on the other hand, seeks only to observe breath, not manipulate it, using it as a focal point to help clear the mind.

Not all spiritual uses of breath come from the East. The ancient Christians used to hold their breath to attain euphoric states during baptism. Jewish Kabbalists visualize God breathing into them as they inhale, just as in the Bible story of how God breathed into Adam when he was created. As they exhale, they imagine breathing into God, thus using breath to unite with their Higher Power.

More than simply being the flow of air into and out of our lungs, breathing is, in fact, a tool that improves life on every level. As Hendricks says, "Breathing has the power to enhance both the practical present moment and our mystical connection with infinity. It is all there in the breath, free for the asking."

BREATHING LESSONS

Today there are dozens of different therapeutic breathing techniques. Most of them are actually just versions of basic diaphragmatic, or belly, breathing. Here are a couple of simple but powerful exercises to get your breath going.

* BREATHING COORDINATION (from Carl Stough, founder of the Carl Stough Institute of Breathing Coordination in New York City). Start practicing this exercise lying down, although when it becomes easy, you can do it sitting or standing. Keeping the jaw loose, inhale deeply but comfortably through the mouth. As you exhale, begin to audibly count (a soft whisper is fine). Concentrate on opening the throat muscles as wide as possible as you do this so you can extend the exhale without any pressure or effort, getting rid of as much carbon dioxide as possible. At the end of the exhale, the inhale will come automatically because of the vacuum created by your empty lungs. Continue for about 10 minutes.

Stough believes repeatedly practicing this simple exercise is the key to retraining your diaphragm to breathe properly and therefore increase your oxygen intake. He suggests doing it first thing in the morning and before you go to bed at night, although you can do it at other times as well.

* THE WORK-STATION BREATHING BREAK (from Jeffrey A. Migdow, M.D., holistic physician in private practice in Lennox, Mass., and coauthor of Breathe In, Breathe Out: Inhale Energy and Exhale Stress by Guiding and Controlling Your Breathing [Time Life Books, 1986, 1999]). Sit up straight, legs uncrossed. As you begin taking slow deep breaths, allow your abdomen to fill completely. Exhale as far as possible. Repeat for a minute or two.

Then, mentally scan your body from head to toe, concentrating on each body part and noting spots that are tense. As you inhale, visualize these areas relaxing as they open and fill with air; as you exhale, feel the aches, pains and tension being released. Feel free to physically move those tense areas, such as shrugging your shoulders or wiggling your toes.

Continue the exercise for two minutes. For optimal effect, you can repeat this exercise every hour, or whenever necessary. Because it's fairly subtle, quick and easy, Migdow suggests it's a perfect stress-buster to use at work or in any other public place.

BREATHWORK GLOSSARY

Breathwork is an umbrella term covering a wide variety of techniques. Here are three of the most common ones.

* ALTERNATE NOSTRIL BREATHING originated with yogic practices but now enjoys wider applications for such things as stress reduction and fighting fatigue. It involves closing one nostril as you forcibly breath through the other, then switching nostrils. Alternating between the two nostrils reputedly stimulates both hemispheres of the brain: Breathing through the right nostril stimulates your left brain, used for logical, linear thinking, while breathing through the left stimulates your right brain, the seat of your creativity and emotions.

* HOLOTROPIC BREATHING, developed by Stanislav Grof, M.D., combines elements from aboriginal traditions. Eastern spirituality and Western psychology to help people release trapped emotions. Employed in a workshop setting, the method relies on continuous, fast, deep breathing and evocative music to help people attain altered states of consciousness.

* TRANSFORM BREATHING (also called Full Wave Breathing), developed by Thomas Goode of the International Breath Institute, focuses not just on the diaphragm but on the lower abdomen, solar plexus and chest. It envisions breath as a metaphor for life--with full and open breathing facilitating a full and open life.

KATY KOONTZ is a freelance writer in Knoxville, Tenn. She writes frequently about health and consciousness issues and tries not to hold her breath.

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