Straw Breathing

Guided breathwork practice for self-regulation and anxiety reduction 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 Moll here for the Center for Mindfulness and Public Safety.

In this session,

I would like to introduce a really effective,

Simple and effective self-regulation tool called straw breathing.

I've been using this for a long,

Long time and I find it extremely helpful.

So just as a little bit of caveat,

With any of these breath regulation tools,

You always want to approach them in a very gentle way.

These are very benevolent,

Simple tools,

But we never want to approach them with any kind of ambition or pushing to get any kind of effects or anything.

They're just very gentle self-regulation tools.

So you always want to approach it in that way.

If you ever start feeling dizzy or weird or anything,

Just immediately stop,

Let your breath return to normal.

It's extremely unlikely that that will happen,

But I just want to offer that caveat.

And actually what you'll find yourself feeling is more resourced and resilient and relaxed and so forth.

And it's not all about like in a situation where we need to be in a state of readiness.

It's not about relaxing out of a state of readiness.

It's just when we're in an over-agitated state,

It's bringing ourselves back to that more resourced or more resilient zone where we can be in a state of readiness.

Or if we're trying to go to sleep at night,

It can be about bringing us into a deeper state of relaxation where we can easily go to sleep and have a good night's sleep.

Now straw breathing is best done with diaphragmatic breathing or belly breathing.

So I will do another video talking about that.

But when we become chronic chest breathers,

That's a stress response.

And we end up with shallow breathing and it's not normal or healthy for us,

But it's a very common stress response.

So if you are a chest breather,

One way to shift that is when you're lying in bed ready to go to sleep at night,

Place one hand on your chest,

One hand on your belly and adjust your body.

Usually it's the way we hold the pelvis until you notice the hand on the belly is rising up and down and the hand on the chest is relatively stationary.

And if you just do that regularly as you go to sleep each night,

Within a matter of weeks or months,

You will retrain yourself to be a diaphragmatic breather or a belly breather.

And you're actually just reactivating our normal way of breathing.

So you don't really have to completely relearn it.

You will tap into that natural way of breathing that's already there and that will become dominant again or your default mode of breathing.

Those of us who have dogs or cats at home,

When they're lying on the rug taking a nap,

You see the belly go up and down,

Right?

Those of us who have children,

We remember when our children were very small in the crib,

How were they breathing?

Belly going up and down.

That's the natural form of breathing,

Diaphragmatic breathing.

It's often called belly breathing because as we breathe in,

What properly drives the breath is the diaphragm muscle contracting.

So it pushes down,

Creates a vacuum in the lungs,

Drawing the air in.

And as it's pushing down,

All of our internal organs have nowhere to go but out,

So the belly rises.

And then when the diaphragm muscle relaxes,

The air is released and the belly falls,

Okay?

So belly breathing or diaphragmatic breathing.

So if you can do that with the straw breathing,

It makes it more effective.

And actually straw breathing is another way to retrain yourself to become a diaphragmatic breather.

Now,

I'll guide us through straw breathing in just a moment.

You can actually do it with a physical straw.

You can use a whole straw or you can cut it in half,

Use a half straw.

And we breathe in through the nose and then you can place the straw in your mouth.

And it takes more effort to blow out through a straw than just to breathe out normally.

And that effort will gradually retrain you to be a belly breather or diaphragmatic breather as well.

Now,

You're probably going to want to use straw breathing lots of times when you wouldn't feel comfortable using the straw or have a straw available.

So we can easily do straw breathing just by breathing out through pursed lips as if through a straw or somewhat like whistling,

Okay?

So with straw breathing,

You breathe in through the nose,

Out through pursed lips,

Like that,

Okay?

And I'll guide us through it in a moment.

I would like to say one more thing about these breath regulation exercises.

And that is I feel they are optimized in their effectiveness by doing them in what I would call a very embodied way.

In other words,

That we are physically present,

That we develop the ability to bring our attention to the body and notice and feel all the actual sensations that make up this experience we call body.

Body is just a word.

There is this living experience of being alive in our body.

And it includes all the sensations we can notice and feel on the surface of the skin from head to toe,

Which is one vast sensory organ as we know.

And it also includes all the internal sensations within the body.

We all have this innate capacity called interoception,

Internal perception.

This is how we know when we're hungry,

When we're thirsty,

When we're tired,

When we need to use the restroom,

Or if we are experiencing some discomfort,

A headache,

Indigestion,

Muscle pain.

That's all the body communicating to us from inside.

Our whole body is a living organism and sensory all the way down to the bones and including the bones,

All connected to the central nervous system.

And with practice,

We can learn to feel our body at a much deeper level.

And that's very grounding.

It's very helpful and it actually builds our resilience over time.

So helpful to cultivate that quality of embodied presence for any of these breath regulation actions.

They'll work anyway.

They'll always be helpful.

And I think they're even more helpful,

Or we can optimize their impact by doing them in this more embodied way.

Okay?

So let's give it a try.

And you can do this anytime,

Anywhere.

I use the straw breathing when I'm driving a lot,

Especially drives to the airport in bad weather and so forth.

I keep myself well regulated,

Keep from getting too stressed out,

Arrive at the airport,

Get through security,

Which can be stressful,

Get to the gate,

Usually make my flight,

And I'm relaxed and not all stressed out because I'm self-regulating the entire way with the straw breathing practice.

So you can do it eyes wide open while you're driving a car.

You can do it with your eyes closed when you're wanting to go to sleep at night.

It'll help you relax and go to sleep.

You'll have a better night's sleep.

You can really do it anytime,

Anywhere,

In any posture.

Now to learn it,

Wherever you are right now,

You might just take a seat and make yourself comfortable.

And you can try to learn it with your eyes closed or your eyes open,

Or you could just have your gaze down so you're less distracted.

It may be helpful to kind of tune in to your body the first time as you're learning this by closing the eyes if you're in a place where it's appropriate to do that,

But you don't need to do that.

It's not necessary.

So I'm going to guide us,

And we're going to use counting because we want the out-breath to be twice as long or nearly twice as long as the in-breath.

So again,

We're breathing in through the nose with the mouth closed,

And out through pursed lips,

As if blowing through a straw.

In through the nose,

Out through pursed lips,

As if blowing through a straw,

Okay?

Or somewhat like whistling,

Okay?

And we'll do the counting like this,

In 2,

3,

4,

Out 2,

3,

4,

5,

6,

7,

8,

Like that,

Okay?

So I'll guide us.

I encourage you to follow along as best you can.

Eventually you'll develop your own rhythm.

You may be breathing in a 3-count,

Out a 6-count,

In a 4,

Out 8,

Or in 5,

Out 10,

But keep it relaxed.

With all of these breath regulation tools,

There's no place for any kind of pushing or ambition.

It's contraindicated.

It doesn't help.

This is all about staying well-resourced and relaxed,

Alert but relaxed,

Okay?

All right,

So let's give it a try.

So we'll begin with an inhale,

In 2,

3,

4,

Out 2,

3,

4,

5,

6,

7,

8,

Like that,

Okay?

In 2,

3,

4,

Out 2,

3,

4,

5,

6,

7,

8,

In 2,

3,

4,

Out 2,

3,

4,

5,

6,

7,

8,

In 2,

3,

4,

Out 2,

3,

4,

5,

6,

7,

8,

Okay?

I think you get the idea.

And again,

You'll find your own rhythm,

And if you can't have the out-breath be twice as long as the in-breath,

Just have it be longer than the in-breath.

Maybe you're breathing in a 4-count and out a 6 or 7-count.

Why do we want the out-breath longer than the in-breath?

The in-breath is connected to the up-regulating sympathetic branch activation.

So as we breathe in,

It's up-regulating our nervous system.

The heartbeat increases a little bit.

As we breathe out,

Down-regulating,

The parasympathetic branch response.

So if we have too much in-breath and not enough out-breath,

We're getting that continual stress response.

So here we want to reverse that,

Have more out-breath,

Less in-breath.

There's lots of things going on with the straw breathing.

You can use your search engine and research it.

There's lots of information.

There's things going on with changes in our nitrous oxide level.

As I said,

If we use an actual straw,

It'll help retrain us to be diaphragmatic breathers.

There's all kinds of good,

Benevolent things going on,

But it's a very simple tool.

I've been using it for many years,

And I use it all the time to keep myself well-regulated and balanced and in a resource place in that zone of resilience,

And especially when I find myself getting sort of pushed out of or triggered out of the zone of resilience by whatever might be going on in the world around me,

Or internally,

For that matter,

Getting kind of worked up about something,

I can do the straw breathing and just come right back to a very resource place,

Okay?

So let's give it a try again.

I'll guide us for a little bit,

And we'll do it silently for a few minutes,

And then I'll come back and we'll finish this session,

Okay?

So again,

Beginning with an in-breath,

Breathing in through the nose,

Out through pursed lips,

As if to a straw or whistling,

Okay?

In 2,

3,

4,

Out 2,

3,

4,

5,

6,

7.

In 2,

3,

4,

Out 2,

3,

4,

5,

6,

7,

8.

In 2,

3,

4,

Out 2,

3,

4,

5,

6,

7,

8.

In 2,

3,

4,

Out 2,

3,

4,

5,

6,

7,

8.

And then just let's continue on our own for a minute or so.

And as you're practicing the straw breathing,

Just be curious about your own physiological state and notice any changes.

You will likely notice that you're calming down,

Feeling more relaxed and more resourced.

Okay,

So that's the straw breathing.

So I encourage you to practice and work with that,

Make it your own.

And once you get really familiar with it,

Then you have it available to you anytime,

Anywhere.

It's free,

It's immediately available,

And it's yours.

So give it a try.

And as always,

With any of these self-care tools,

Please approach them in a really informed,

Responsible manner and feel free to do your own research.

There's a lot available online.

You can find out about straw breathing and other breath-related self-regulation tools.

There's publishers where you can find CDs and online programs and teachings by wonderful experts in this field.

So be well informed about it.

But again,

This tool,

Straw breathing,

Very simple,

Very benevolent tool.

Anybody can do it anytime,

Anywhere.

I encourage you to make it your own so you have it available to you.

Okay?

So be well,

Take care,

Thank you.

Fleet Mall Center for Mindfulness and Public Safety.

Reviews

Straw breathing is such a handy tool, thank you!