How to Breathe Consciously to Overcome Anxiety and Live a Rich Life

In my last blog on breathing, I had written that most of us are guilty of improper breathing. We are not taught the right way of breathing so we assume that whichever way we breathe is fine. However, it has now become clear that improper breathing is akin to eating junk food and can be a cause of many serious health problems.

Most of us think that we have managed to live till today with the way we have been breathing, so what is there to learn. The human body is a collection of many interconnected systems and subsystems. They all work in unison to keep us alive and out of harm’s way. However, Nature has bestowed the human body with the capacity to be very flexible with ample room for deviations. So if you are still alive breathing improperly and suboptimally doesn’t in any way mean that this practice is good for you.

Improper suboptimal breathing causes stress and stress leads to improper suboptimal breathing. It is a vicious cycle. The only way out is by learning and practicing proper breathing.

Stress affects us all. Stress is everywhere. And while a little stress is OK — some stress is actually beneficial — too much stress can wear us down and make us sick, both mentally and physically. Recognizing stress symptoms is not easy. Most of us are so used to being stressed, that we often don’t know we are stressed until it takes over and we are at the breaking point.

So What Is Stress?

Stress is the body’s reaction to harmful situations — whether they’re real or perceived. When we feel threatened, a chemical reaction occurs in our body that allows us to act in a certain way to prevent injury. This reaction is known as “fight-or-flight,” or the stress response. During a stress response, our heart rate increases, breathing quickens, muscles tighten, and blood pressure rises. We get ready to act. It is how we protect ourselves.

Stress means different things to different people. What causes stress in one person may be of little concern to another. Some people are better able to handle stress than others. Not all stress is bad. In small doses, stress can help us accomplish tasks and prevent us from getting hurt. For example, stress is what gets us to slam on the breaks to avoid hitting the car in front of us. That’s a good thing. A little stress now and then is not something to be concerned about. Ongoing, chronic stress, however, can cause and exacerbate many health problems.

Our bodies are designed to handle small doses of stress. But, we are not equipped to handle long-term, chronic stress without ill consequences. Stress can affect all aspects of our life, including our emotions, behaviors, thinking ability, and physical health. No part of the body is immune to stress. But, because people handle stress differently, symptoms of stress can vary and the symptoms can be vague.

The Four Systems

The respiratory, cardiovascular, central nervous, and endocrine systems are, four systems, among other main systems of our bodies. Simply speaking the respiratory system supplies oxygen to cells and removes carbon dioxide waste from the body. Air comes in through the nose and goes through the larynx in the throat, down through the trachea, and into the lungs through the bronchi. The bronchioles then transfer oxygen to red blood cells for circulation.

Stress and strong emotions can lead to respiratory problems with symptoms, such as shortness of breath and rapid breathing. This happens as the airways between the nose and the lungs get constricted. For people without respiratory diseases, this is generally not a problem as the body can manage the additional work to breathe comfortably, but psychological stressors can exacerbate breathing problems for people with pre-existing respiratory diseases such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD which includes emphysema and chronic bronchitis).

Some studies show that acute stress—such as the stress caused by the grief of the death of a loved one—can trigger asthma attacks. In addition, the rapid breathing—or hyperventilation—caused by stress can bring on a panic attack in someone prone to panic attacks. Our central nervous system (CNS) is in charge of our “fight or flight” and our “rest-and-digest” response. In our brain, the hypothalamus {part of the endocrine system} gets the ball rolling, telling our adrenal glands to release the stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones rev up our heartbeat and send blood rushing to the areas that need it most in an emergency, such as our muscles, heart, and other important organs.

Stress hormones affect our respiratory and cardiovascular systems. During the stress response, we breathe faster to quickly distribute oxygen-rich blood to the needy parts of our body. If we already have a breathing problem like asthma or emphysema, stress can make it even harder to breathe. Under stress, our heart also pumps faster. Stress hormones cause our blood vessels to constrict and divert more oxygen to our muscles so we’ll have more strength to take action. But this also raises our blood pressure. As a result, frequent or chronic stress will make our hearts work too hard for too long. When our blood pressure rises, so do our risks of having a stroke or heart attack.

When the perceived or real harmful situation is gone, the hypothalamus should tell all systems to go back to normal. If the CNS fails to return to normal, or if the stressor doesn’t go away, the response will continue. This leads to what is known as ‘Chronic Stress’. Chronic stress is also a factor in behaviors such as overeating or not eating enough, alcohol or drug abuse, and social withdrawal.

Heart Rate Variability

Before getting into how breathing is intimately connected with stress and relaxation we need to understand what Heart Rate Variability is.

This is a new way to look at the heart. Each beat of our heart is the result of the interplay of the two branches of the autonomic nervous system. The sympathetic, what we call the fight-or-flight response, and the parasympathetic, which we call the rest-and-digest.

So the new way of looking at health by looking at heart rate doesn’t look so much at the number of beats per minute, as the space between them, which is called heart rate variability.

In a healthy person with a robust nervous system, let’s say the heartbeats 70 times or so, per minute – you might assume it’s beating a little less than once a second, which it is, but that’s only the average. We see, in reality, it would be something like 754 milliseconds, 828 milliseconds, 845 milliseconds, 730 milliseconds, and so on. This is because each beat of our heart is a result of this tussle between the two branches of the autonomic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system is very vigilant. It always wants to accelerate our heart rate; it’s always looking for emergencies. It’s looking to keep us safe. The parasympathetic is just the opposite, it wants to calm us down and slow our pulse. Because it wants to use all the energy it can to optimize our immune system, detoxify, digest our food, and of course, maintain a very strong interest in sex.

Thus heart rate variability or HRV is the physiological phenomenon of the variation in the time interval between consecutive heartbeats in milliseconds. A normal, healthy heart does not tick evenly like a metronome, but instead, when looking at the milliseconds between heartbeats, there is a constant variation.

Without getting into too many details, it’s because of this interplay {between the sympathetic & parasympathetic branches of our autonomous nervous system} causing this heart rate variability that we can begin to see where our heartbeats are coming from. Are they more stressful beats? Or are they more relaxed beats?

In an ideal world, most of our heartbeats would be relaxed, and that would mean the variability between them would fluctuate a lot. Because both these nervous systems are always on. The sympathetic always wants to accelerate, the parasympathetic wants to calm us down. In an ideal state, if we’re relaxed, our sympathetic nervous system is always waiting in the background. It’s still vigilant, but it’s not dominating.

The unfortunate truth is that today, for most of us who are chasing wealth, health, happiness, trying to get the kids to school, or sitting in traffic, our heartbeats are being dictated by some level of that sympathetic nervous system. And it’s causing us some problems.

 

As I mentioned earlier stress is the body’s reaction to harmful situations — whether they’re real or perceived. The instant we sense danger the sympathetic nervous system soars. We begin to gulp a huge amount of oxygen into our bodies. Our blood pressure and heart rate get jacked up, they go through the roof. We recruit muscles in our shoulders, neck, and chest to start getting air in even faster. Our lunch is not being digested anymore, our digestion stops. And the blood goes right into the legs to help us run away. Fear dominates our emotions, and we become prone to making impulsive thoughtless decisions.

This happens because our body knows that in a few minutes, we’re either going to be safe or dead. If we’re safe, well, we’ll get back to our immune system, we’ll get back to digesting that food. But right now, the major concern and top priority are to somehow escape this danger.

Now imagine that we have been running away and trying to escape danger for a few minutes, a few hours, a few days, a few weeks, a few months, a few years, a few decades!!  When that happens we get stuck trying to escape the danger. We are seldom aware of the stresses our day-to-day responsibilities cause us. We realise our stresses only when anxiety takes over, and the sympathetic nervous system gets into overdrive mode, governs our heart rate, and decreases our heart rate variability. Eventually, our immune system goes out of synch.

Thus it is no surprise what recent research suggests! It suggests that large percentages, not everybody, large percentages of people with some of the most chronic health problems, also tend to have low heart rate variability, which means their sympathetic nervous system is in overdrive. In fact, low heart rate variability has been associated with cardiac mortality besides things like acid reflux, erectile dysfunction, restless leg syndrome, low back pain, anxiety, and depression. This is because when we’re in that overdrive, our body is in a state of panic.

The danger is just a metaphor. That danger is the accumulation of, our angry boss, our financial worries, and trying to get the kids to school without spilling the coffee again!!

All these things add up. And we end up breathing very shallow, we get very poor at exhalation, and our hormones all go out of synch. When we take a proper breath, our diaphragm descends, and it pulls oxygen into our lungs. When we’re in sympathetic dominance, we’re using prime movers, big muscles to breathe. When we take a proper breath, that diaphragm pushes on our internal organs. I’ve read that the kidneys move 2-3 centimeters with proper breath. It is as though we are massaging our internal organs, enhancing their vitality and strengthening them at the same time, thus keeping them healthy. It all comes back to breathing.

Conscious Breathing

We must remember that breathing is a part of the autonomic nervous system also called the involuntary nervous system that controls all “automatic” body functions, such as breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, sweating, mouth-watering (salivating), and the movement of food through the intestines (peristalsis). The somatic nervous system is part of the nervous system that permits conscious control of all the things that we are aware of and can consciously influence, such as moving our arms, legs, and other parts of the body. It is also called the voluntary nervous system.

In other words, breathing can be part of the somatic nervous system that operates muscles under voluntary control as well as the autonomic (automatic or visceral) nervous system that controls, and regulates individual organ function automatically and is involuntary.

“Think of breathing as a gateway between the voluntary and the involuntary part of the brain.”

The switch from the involuntary nervous system to the voluntary nervous system happens when we take control and breathe consciously. Hence the term Conscious Breathing.

To heal ourselves we have to Breathe Consciously.

Most of us aren’t conscious of the way we’re breathing, but generally, there are two types of breathing patterns:

Diaphragmatic (abdominal) breathing also called Belly Breathing: This type of breathing is a type of deep, and even breathing that engages our diaphragm. The diaphragm gets lowered, and the abdomen expands allowing our lungs to also expand and create negative pressure that drives air in through the nose and mouth, filling our lungs with air. Next, the opposite happens. The diaphragm rises, the stomach muscles get sucked in, the abdomen contracts, and the used air is expelled.  The expansion of the body here is all-around and horizontal. This is the way newborn babies naturally breathe. We’re also probably using this pattern of breathing when we’re in a relaxed stage of sleep.

Thoracic (chest) breathing: This type of breathing comes from the chest and involves short, rapid breaths, and the diaphragm stays passive and idle. The expansion of the body here is vertical. When we’re anxious, we might not even be aware that we’re breathing this way.

The easiest way to determine our breathing pattern is to put one hand on our upper abdomen near the waist and the other in the middle of our chest. As we breathe, we should notice which hand raises the most. If we are breathing properly, our abdomen should expand and contract with each breath and the hand on it should raise the most.

Exhaling the trapped air. 

What I discovered is that the diaphragm is prevented from working effectively in people whose sympathetic system is in overdrive or those suffering from issues related to the lungs. Thus air often becomes trapped in the lungs, pushing down on the diaphragm and giving rise to the feeling of having a bloated stomach. The neck, shoulder, and chest muscles must then assume an increased share of the work of breathing. This can leave the diaphragm weakened and flattened, causing it to work less efficiently. The first and foremost objective then becomes to get rid of the air {carbon dioxide mainly} that is trapped in the lungs.

Diaphragmatic breathing. The diaphragm is the most efficient muscle for breathing. It is a large, dome-shaped muscle located at the base of the lungs. Diaphragmatic breathing is meant to help us use the diaphragm correctly while breathing.
Our abdominal muscles help move the diaphragm and give us more power to empty our lungs. It is intended to help us use the diaphragm correctly while breathing to:

1. Strengthen the diaphragm
2. Decrease the work of breathing by slowing your breathing rate >Decrease oxygen demand
3. Use less effort and energy to breathe

There exist many breathing techniques but Deep Diaphragmatic Breathing, the basic form of breathing, is what we need to get accustomed to. The others can follow after mastery of the basics.

Diaphragmatic breathing technique.
Lay on your back on a flat surface or in bed, with your knees bent and your head supported. You can use a pillow under your knees to support your legs. Place one hand on your upper chest and the other just below your rib cage. This will allow you to feel your diaphragm move as you breathe.

Breathe in slowly through your nose so that your stomach moves out against your hand. The hand on your chest should remain as still as possible.

Tighten your stomach muscles, letting them fall inward as you exhale through pursed lips. The hand on your upper chest must remain as still as possible.

 

You may notice an increased effort will be needed to use the diaphragm correctly. At first, you’ll probably get tired while doing this exercise. But keep at it, because with continued practice, diaphragmatic breathing will become easy and automatic.

When you first try to learn the diaphragmatic breathing technique, it may be easier for you to follow the instructions lying down, as shown above. As you gain practice, you can try the diaphragmatic breathing technique while sitting on a chair instead of lying down.

Remember the priority is to exhale the carbon dioxide trapped in the lungs.

To fast-track the exhalation till you can get efficient with the Diaphragmatic Breathing sit in any comfortable position and do a short and quick inhale, then exhale for as long as you can from your mouth with your lips pursed. There is no need to count or time this activity. Counting only adds to the stress.

After you repeat this a few times and you have expelled most of the carbon dioxide from your body you will want to inhale and take a deep breath to fill oxygen into your body. It is then that you will notice how it feels to get a deep and full breath. However, exhalation will still need a conscious effort.

Till my next post keep breathing and breathe well.

Author:- Ranjan “Jim” Chadha – a peripatetic mind, forever wandering the digital universe, in search & appreciation of peace, freedom, and happiness. So tune in, and turn on, but don’t drop out just yet!