Date: 02/08/2008
Until you know your C02 level you will not know if you are breathing correctly. Most people are hyperventilating or over-breathing and don?t know it. You have to measure your C02 in your exhalation to know if you are over-breathing. There is no other way to know. Oxygen and C02 are true partners in the game of breathing.
What is "proper breathing" and how do I do it? Proper breathing is both deep diaphragmatic breathing which promotes a relaxed, parasympathetic state, and also involves a slower rate of exhalation. For example, think of breathing in to a count of 3 and exhaling to a count of 6.
Maybe we should be breathing this way most of the time, not just when we are practicing relaxation. This is slow, deep breathing.
To begin learning this 2:1 ratio of breathing in to breathing out, practice this rate when you are focused and are essentially at rest. You can`t worry about it at other times. Changing a very basic learned habit such as breathing rate may well be a life-time occupation. You will never learn it and not ever regress. Over-breathing has its purpose as well.
The body will adjust the rate during other activities. At first, exaggerate the exercise and really try to breathe very slowly and consciously during practice. This will carry over into a more comfortable rate during autonomic breathing.
First to learn to diaphragmatically breathe. Imagine you have a large balloon in your stomach below the diaphragm. Inhale into that balloon, allowing your stomach to move outward, downward or even sideways. Once full, exhale slowly through pursed lips. Pretend you are exhaling through a straw and very slowly let the air out as the stomach deflates. You can even use the stomach muscles to draw the stomach in. This is actually a better exercise to strengthen the stomach muscles than holding your stomach in all the time. Getting in touch with those stomach muscles can be difficult for many. We usually breathe in in exactly the opposite manner, inhaling and drawing our stomach in and when exhaling letting our stomach out. This is "backward breathing".
At first. for learning purposes, you can only be attentive to this when you are focused, resting and practicing. Your practice time has to be devoted to this one issue. If not, and not practiced many times a day, you probably won`t learn it. Remember, what you do enough becomes learned. Some say it takes a year to break an old habit. Physical therapists say you have to exercise an injured, unexercised muscle every hour and a half to have it gain the awareness of the new behavior you wish it to learn. I am hoping with dedication and practice you will learn it. You have to practice the change in behavior very frequently if you expect it to become natural and even then you have to stay on top of it and your reaction to events, people and things. Practicing once a day will not equal learning.
To jump start the process, I recommend you use a timer or watch that you can set to remind you every 15 minutes to tune into your breathing and practice for a few minutes. You could put a pop up reminder on your computer as well if you spend much time there.
When one begins to breathe this way, many body changes begin to take place. Heart rate drops, blood pressure drops, muscle tension decreases. In fact, deep abdominal breathing and muscle tension are incompatible. Think of the tense posture of someone sitting in a dental chair, "breath-holding" while gripping the arms of the dental chair with their tense, blanched hands and knuckles. You can"t do that with deep abdominal breathing. They just don`t go together.
When you breathe deeply and exhale slowly, GI (gastrointestinal) function tends to normalize. If someone is pretty tense and uptight and carries their stomach drawn in, then breathing this way causes a nice calm increase in stomach wall movement and this stimulates a gentle peristalsis. This tends to work for the person who is constipated. For the individual who experiences diarrhea frequently, this breathing technique is very effective. Take for instance the "anxious stomach-responder" to stress. Let`s say this person is having to give a presentation and is having a case of stage freight. Because the person is perceiving the audience as a threat (sympathetic arousal), the brain sends an autonomic message to the gut (in gut responders to stress) to increase peristalsis. The gut accommodates by increasing peristalsis causing increased evacuation, all to the biological end of allowing the organism to survive by being better able to run or fight better. We can ultimately run or fight better with an empty stomach and gastrointestinal tract.
Finally, if done properly, with this slow, deep breathing, we will experience an increase in hand temperature up in the range of 94-96 degrees. Biologically, we can afford to have warm hands if we are safe. If not safe, and we are subject to a threat attack, we would put our hands and or feet out in front of us to protect our selves. If we were assaulted and wounded, we might bleed to death. Again, because biology dictates our survival, under stress or perceived stress, our brain sends a message to our periphery (hands and feet) and tells the blood vessels to constrict. Our hands and feet get cold. Warm hands and deep breathing go together. Cold hands and chest breathing also go together. Biologically, by virtue of breathing deeply we are cueing our brain to know that we are safe, we can relax, and let blood flow to the periphery.
Practice, Practice, Practice!
By Rosemary MacGregor RN, MS info@themangotreespa
506 2786 5300
http://www.theMangoTreeSpa.com
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