Diaphragmatic Breathing

Guided breathwork practice for self-regulation and resilience with Fleet Maull, Ph.d., co-founder of the Engaged Mindfulness Institute.

Fleet Maull, PhD, CMT-P, is an author, meditation teacher, consultant, coach, seminar leader, motivational speaker, social entrepreneur, and peacemaker. He is the founder of the Prison Mindfulness Institute, the National Prison Hospice Association, and Windhorse Seminars & Consulting. He is a senior teacher in two Buddhist traditions: the Tibetan Buddhist Shambhala lineage and a Roshi (Zen master) in the Zen Peacemaker Order and Soto Zen lineage.

Transcript

Hi,

Fleet Mall here.

Today I'd like to talk about diaphragmatic breathing.

In our work around radical responsibility,

Mindful leadership,

And similar mindfulness-based approaches to really optimizing our personal life and our professional lives,

Diaphragmatic breathing is really just a ground-level skill,

A base-level skill,

Sort of on par with basic mindfulness training.

So many of us have become default chest breathers.

In fact,

I'd ask you to just kind of check in with yourself right now and see if you're breathing more with the belly or more with the chest.

You know,

Very often when I'm leading workshops,

Early in the workshop,

I'll just ask people,

Right now notice,

Are you breathing more with the chest or more with the belly?

And if you're breathing more with the chest,

Raise your hand.

And at least half the room usually raise their hands and acknowledge that they've become default chest breathers,

Which is a stress-based response.

If you've ever had,

You know,

A dog or a cat at home and you notice they're laying on the living room rug or something napping around the kitchen floor,

You notice that they're breathing with their belly.

That's natural breathing.

Also,

If you've had children and you can remember when they were little infants in the crib and you're watching them napping or sleeping,

Again,

You'll see the belly rising and falling.

That's our natural intended way to breathe.

And I'll explain why that is necessary for healthy breathing and really optimal oxygenation of our blood.

The blood oxygen exchange,

Which is what breathing is all about,

To get the oxygen into our bloodstream and then to our cells and then to release the waste and the carbon dioxide out when we breathe out,

That blood oxygen exchange happens through these kind of hair-like particles or feli,

Most of which are in the lower part of the lungs.

So if we're shallow chest breathers,

We're really never even getting that air and oxygen down into the lower part of the lungs and it's certainly not there long enough to get a good blood oxygen exchange.

And therefore,

We're actually starving ourselves at the cellular level of oxygen.

You know,

At the cellular level,

What do we most need to really physically thrive as human beings or any other species?

Of course,

We need oxygen.

We also need water,

H2O,

Right?

And of course,

We need nutrient,

Right?

We need glucose or how our food is converted into glucose as a nutrient,

Right?

So most of us don't drink enough water.

We've all heard we're supposed to drink so many ounces of water or so many eight-ounce glasses per our body weight,

Right?

And most of us don't drink enough water and most of us don't really breathe properly.

So on a consistent basis over time,

We're not getting enough oxygen or enough water,

H2O,

At the cellular level and that has serious deleterious health impacts for us.

So one way to really enhance our health is to retrain ourselves to be belly breathers or diaphragmatic breathers.

And what I mean by diaphragmatic breathing is that we're using the diaphragm muscle,

Right,

That's below the lungs and in our abdominal cavity above our major organs,

That that's what we're intended to breathe with.

The diaphragm muscle contracts,

Pulls down on the lungs,

Creates a vacuum in the lungs,

Which draws the air into the lungs.

And then when the di.

.

.

And of course,

That pushes down as it contracts and it pushes down on all the internal organs so they have nowhere to go but out,

Which is why when we breathe in with the diaphragm,

The belly comes out.

It's not that we're filling up the belly with air,

Although that's a nice visualization to have,

But it's actually that the diaphragm muscle is pushing down and that's pushing all those major organs out,

Right?

So the belly rises and falls,

Right?

So we're meant to breathe that way.

But when we breathe with the chest,

We're breathing with muscles up here instead of with the diaphragm,

Right?

And that kind of breathing is not healthy.

So diaphragmatic breathing means we're breathing with the diaphragm muscle and we see the belly going in and out,

Which is why we often call it belly breathing as well.

Now there's also muscles between the ribs.

I think they're called intercostal muscles and those are involved in breathing as well to help the rib cage open,

Right,

And close.

But still the primary driver of our breathing is meant to be the diaphragm muscle and certainly not these muscles right here.

So if you notice that you're a chest breather,

Right,

You can easily retrain yourself to become a belly breather.

But first I want to explain to you how you could just shift it right now here in a moment,

Okay?

So what I invite you,

Wherever you are watching this,

If you can,

If you're in a chair,

Just lean back for a moment and put your hands behind your neck like that.

And just let yourself breathe,

Relax,

And now notice where you're breathing from.

Well I can guarantee you you're going to be fairly quickly breathing with your belly or with your diaphragm muscle.

Why?

Because you're disengaging the muscles here that you would need to continue chest breathing.

So just going like this will shift you to belly breathing.

So,

You know,

If you work at a desk,

You know,

In an office,

That's something just do every few minutes and just do that.

Take a moment to breathe and relax and look around and,

You know,

Get your eyes away from the computer screen for a moment and take a few deep breaths,

You know,

Deep diaphragmatic or belly breaths like this.

And over time that will help you retrain yourself to become a belly breather.

The other really effective thing to do is when you go to sleep at night,

Especially if you can sleep on your back,

Now I'm not so good at sleeping on my back because I'll end up with lower back pain,

So I tend to sleep on my side,

But you can still even do it sleeping on your side,

But I want to demonstrate as if you were on your back to begin with because it's a little easier.

So you're lying on your back in bed and you place one hand on your chest and one hand on your belly.

And then just move your pelvis around until you notice you start breathing more with the belly or the diaphragm muscle,

Right?

It's just a matter of how you situate your body in the bed and kind of how you position your pelvis.

Just move or play around with it and you'll notice that you'll be able to get to where the hand on your chest is remaining relatively still while the hand on the belly is going up and down.

And just do that as you go to sleep.

Now as you're doing that,

You might count the breaths,

Right?

You could count the breaths up to ten,

One,

You know,

Again and again.

So you might,

You know,

Breathe in one,

Out two,

In three,

Out four,

In five,

Out six,

Like that up to ten and start over again.

That's a basic mindfulness of breathing technique called breath counting.

Or you can count a whole cycle,

In,

Out one,

In,

Out two,

Like that.

So you could use the counting to help yourself stay on track,

But you don't have to use the counting.

At any rate,

Just stay with the belly breathing and you'll find yourself drifting off to sleep and you'll probably sleep better in a more relaxed way.

In fact,

I get lots of reports from people that I train in these breathing techniques that they're sleeping well for the first time in their life.

We do a lot of training work with correctional officers who lead,

You know,

Have very high stress jobs and often,

You know,

Have a very difficult time turning it off and they start using this diaphragmatic breath training as they go to sleep at night and they find themselves sleeping for the first time in their adult lives,

First time in their careers.

So this stuff really works.

So anyway,

If you do that on a regular basis,

You will retrain yourself to become a default belly breather.

And I know that for a fact from my own experience because when I was younger,

I did notice when I became aware of these things that I had become a default chest breather.

It was a stress response.

I tended to breathe more shallowly with my chest and I retrained myself and today I am a default belly breather.

I would have to work to breathe with my chest.

I check in with myself all the time and I'm breathing with the belly.

Okay.

So it's called diaphragmatic breathing.

Now that's what we want our default regular breathing to be.

We can also,

As a sort of both a resilience technique and a relaxation technique and a mindfulness technique,

We can stop and do focused diaphragmatic breathing in a conscious way and in a slightly deeper way than we normally do.

Right?

So anytime we have a few minutes,

We could just take a few deeper breaths.

So begin by filling up the belly kind of metaphorically.

We're actually,

You know,

Just taking a deep breath with the diaphragm and that's pushing the belly out.

Right?

So take a deep breath and we see the belly go out and then continued breathing in and we feel like we're filling up,

You know,

The midsection and then filling up the chest and all the way to the uppermost part of the lung.

So the collarbone actually rises on the in-breath and then we relax and let the breath out.

So that's a nice,

Long,

Deep diaphragmatic breath.

Right?

So if you would just take a few minutes and do 15 or 20 of those,

You'll find yourself really relaxing.

You'll really super oxygenate your blood and that's going to be very healthy for you.

And actually anytime you can stop and just do one of those,

Like the more we're,

The more sort of breath awareness we have in some ways,

The healthier and the more balanced,

The more quantum is,

The more in control we're going to be.

It's really learning that our breath is our best friend.

The more moments during the day that we're aware of our breath and sort of breathing intentionally diaphragmatically,

That's going to be extremely healthy for us.

So anytime you can remember,

Just stop and take one deep breath or three deep breaths.

Or if you have a little longer,

Get up,

Walk around,

Do some deep breathing,

Do a little stretching.

Anything we can do like that is extremely healthy for us,

Rebalances our body and our nervous system and gets the proper amount of oxygen into our blood and to our cells so that we can actually thrive and have healthy and optimal performing lives.

So this is diaphragmatic breathing or belly breathing and I really encourage you to begin working with it.

So thank you very much.

Reviews

Just a few minutes for greater breath awareness and stress management! Thanks, Dr. Maull.