Breathing And Your Health
Written by: David Kegley, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Breathing!? Sounds Suspect, I Would Look Silly!
It seems as though anybody could just take a deep breath and get on with it… The problems seem to arise due to the commonness of breathing and how unconscious we are about what our breathing becomes throughout the day. This is especially true in our contemporary world where stress hits us from several different angles. As for looking silly, one can choose to be the executive who breathes quick, shallow breaths that leave them tight, stressed, somewhat unhealthy and out of control vs. one who breathes slowly, steadily and looks calm, healthy and appears in control.
Anything from pressing toward a deadline, negotiating a deal, dealing with employee issues, to managing home life can cause an uptick in our stress level. What our bodies often do naturally in response to a stressor is to see it as an aggressor. This, of course, triggers many things in our bodies and we react in ways that are counter-productive for life today, including short breaths up in our chest. This may not be dramatic like a panic attack, but keeps us in a semi-stressful state.
It would be better if we shifted our breathing to our abdominal cavity, using our diaphragm to pull air downward into our lungs for longer, deeper and slower breaths.
Getting the Breathing Practice Right
Several clients have responded to me, saying: “breathing doesn’t work for me.” It is perfectly OK that my clients prefer other methods of calming. I’m always fine with that. However, there are ways that people attempt breathing techniques which undermine their effectiveness and I want to make sure to eliminate that possibility. One misfire is utilizing chest breathing instead of belly breathing. I did this myself. As a beginner in conscious breathing practices, my understanding was that I was to expand my lungs by expanding my chest. But, as any voice trainer will tell you, the real depth of our lung capacity comes when our diaphragm (below our lungs) expands downward into our abdomen. This is belly breathing. It causes us to use the abdomen as a barrel for expansion.
I was coaching a competitive swimmer once. She was a distance swimmer. I asked her how she prepares for her races in terms of breathing. She thought about this for a moment and for her it intuitively had to do with some longer, deeper breathing. So, I asked her what she observed with the sprinters. How did they breathe just before their race? Wow, what a difference! It was mostly fast, full-on chest breathing! What the sprinters were doing was simulating a fight/flight situation, triggering adrenalin to sprint quickly to the finish. By contrast, this distance swimmer needed to build up oxygen levels with deep breathing but also a sharp mental discipline for the distance of the race.
What we need to do to endure throughout the day, to maintain a mental discipline, negotiate and have diplomacy is the long, steady rhythm of a distance swimmer. One way to help shift from chest breathing to belly breathing is to place one hand on your chest and the other hand on your belly. You want to feel all the movement in and out of your belly, your chest should be still as you breathe. For many of us, this takes some practice and retraining.
There is another phenomenon occurring. The fascia surrounding the organs of our belly is sensing that this belly breathing is occurring. This stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system and shifts us toward a more relaxed state. It is important to recognize the significance of this physiological shift. Most other rhythms of our bodies are out of our control. Once we swallow, our digestion happens mostly without our conscious management. Our heart rate is regulated behind the scenes as well as our blood pressure. However, we can intervene in our regulatory state by the simple act of controlled breathing. To some degree, it can reset our blood pressure, heart rate and have a beneficial effect on mood, digestion and concentration. This cannot be overstated.
This can mean that we have increased attention available to process complex thoughts and reason more creatively. The idea is that during our workday we are most often overly anxious and our physiological system has gone more toward a stressed and uncreative mode of a fight or flight condition. By use of this slower, deeper breathing pattern we are taking everything down a notch, so we feel more present and calmer.
If you want to take this method a step further, before you’re ready for bed, practice your slow diaphragm breathing in a cool dark room away from any electronics. That, combined with other sleep hygiene practices, can revolutionize your ability to get a good night’s sleep.
Developing Habits That Take Your Stress Level Down Regularly
Patterns of breathing are all over the internet and I’ll mention a couple here. I might just begin by suggesting that you simply take some slow, deep breaths focused on belly breathing. Don’t worry about much else. Let it feel good to breathe and notice how good it makes you feel to relax on the outbreath. It can be that simple once you get belly breathing right. One simple refinement is to breathe out more slowly than you breathe in.
I know a psychologist who coaches his C-Suite clients to reduce the number of breaths per minute by simply shifting more toward long, slow belly breathing. The easiest way to do this is to practice every day and get used to the rhythm of that long, slow breathing. Get so used to it that you miss it when you’re not doing it. For those who want to track how they are doing, there are wearable breathing monitors that people can strap to their chests. This gives you some data, so you know exactly how you are improving. Whether you use a wearable or not, look for a rate that helps you feel calm.
Next is BOX BREATHING. It gets its name because of the four different steps. Step one: inhale for four seconds. Step two: hold for four seconds. Step three: exhale for four seconds. Step four: hold empty for four seconds. Repeat for as many times as you need to calm down. The Navy Seals have been known to use this technique.
The 4-7-8 PATTERN. Here a person breathes in for a count of four, holds for seven and breathes out for a count of eight. You can get a little more careful in breathing out by holding your tongue at the top of your mouth and creating a kind of controlled, slow airflow, which can help you relax during that part of the routine. The pattern was popularized by Dr. Andrew Weil.
The habit of a slower, deeper breathing pattern takes practice. It doesn’t happen in one day. The breathing patterns are very simple and once you learn them, they’re worth their weight in gold when it comes to managing stress, developing concentration and being more in control of yourself. I’ve had to watch for their subtle effectiveness. It’s not like flipping a switch. Instead, almost imperceptibly, the shift toward calm begins to occur. Then, when I am calmer, I am just calmer and I forget that it took some breathing to get there. The same goes for when I want to go to sleep at night. It doesn’t always work like magic to use a breathing pattern to go to sleep but when it does work, I go to sleep and I’m not awake to acknowledge that it took ten or twenty minutes of a breathing pattern to get there.
Want David to help you create a calmer, more creative work-life? You can reach him at: drkegley.com or LinkedIn.
David Kegley, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Dr. Kegley specializes in coaching well-educated, progressive leaders and executives who have been stopped in their tracks due to health setbacks. His doctorate is in theology and preaching. His first 25-year career was in the Presbyterian Church U.S.A., where he was a Pastor and Head of Staff. But, after getting nearly burned out, getting diagnosed with Prostate Cancer, and going through cancer treatment, he emerged as a credentialed coach. Now he Coaches in the areas where he experienced his own humility and growth: Health and Wellness, The Cancer Journey, Burnout Recovery, and Leadership and Executive.
