Blog#70- 5/14/21
CLOSE YOUR MOUTH AND TAKE A DEEP BREATH
By
Richard Davis
Breathing is something most of us don’t think about very much. It just happens and we take breathing for granted because we haven’t been educated enough about how breathing affects the functioning of our body, except when we are not breathing.
I recently read a book titled Breath by James Nestor and it has caused me to make some small changes in my life and to be more thoughtful about how I breath. In the introduction to his book Nestor says, “This book is a scientific adventure into the lost art and science of breathing. It explores the transformation that occurs inside our bodies every 3.3 seconds, the time it takes the average person to inhale and exhale. It explains how the billions and billions of molecules you bring in with each breath have built your bones, sheaths of muscle, blood, brains, and organs, and the emerging science of how these microscopic bits will influence your health and happiness tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, and decades from now.”
What Nestor talks about is nothing new. In India and China, as well as other places, the concept of a life force called prana was discussed 3000 years ago. A lot of what modern yoga addresses in terms of breathing has to do with this life force. Most yoga teachers know that the quality of breath is just as important as the poses that accompany them and that without a degree of mindfulness about breathing the physical part of yoga may not be as effective.
Western science has not paid much attention to the concept of prana and although there have been occasions when studies were done with yogis who could control blood pressure and other vital functions that are considered out of conscious control, there has not been enough recognition about the importance of breathing in our overall health.
I was reminded of this recently when I had a session with a traditional physical therapist to work on some core strengthening. In past years I have worked with a local yoga teacher and had come to appreciate some of the importance of breathing in relationship to physical conditioning.
The physical therapist was clearly expert at her work but the approach left me empty. It was as if someone had given me a bag of all kinds of vegetables to make a salad and then thrown the bag at me and said, “Here’s your salad.” Most of the ingredients were there but there were a lot more steps needed to make an edible salad.”
Nestor makes it clear that exercise without mindfulness about breathing is a shallow endeavor. He provides the example of the work of Dr. John Douillard, a trainer to elite athletes. Douilllard did an experiment with professional cyclists and had them breathe through their mouths as he increased pedal resistance.
At the most difficult stage of exercise the athletes were panting and struggling to catch their breath. Then Douillard had the athletes breath through their noses. As he increased the level of exercise intensity the rate of breathing decreased going from 47 breaths a minute with mouth breathing to 14 breaths a minute with nasal breathing. Heart rate had increased tenfold in the mouth breathers while heart rate was unchanged in the nose breathers.
There are many more dramatic examples in the book about how breathing can affect the structure of teeth and sinuses. Nestor also spends time talking about mouth breathing in relation to snoring and sleep apnea. He cites studies and what he reveals is not just snippets of interesting findings but information that could be life changing for anyone reading the book. The book’s appendix contains a guide to different ways to improve your health by using different breathing techniques. Check it out.
