Morning Insight - Slow Breathing

This morning's insight is about the importance of slow breathing.

If this insight sparks curiosity, you may also enjoy 'Morning Breathwork - Slow Breathing', which will help you to lengthen your breath.

SOURCE STATEMENT
This morning insight is inspired by the work of researchers, authors, and yogis:
Mark Krasnow, Kevin Yackle, Jack Feldman, Yandell Henderson, B.K.S. Iyengar, Maharishi Patanjali, James Nestor, Andrew Huberman.

Transcript

Good morning and welcome.

Today's morning insight is about the importance of slow breathing.

My name is Inga and it is my mission to bring you science-based insights about health,

Yoga and meditation.

One of the founders of modern-day yoga,

Balur Krishnamacharya Sundaram Iyengar,

Writes in his book The Illustrated Light on Yoga,

The yogi's life is not measured by the number of his days,

But by the number of his breaths.

Pranayama,

Yogic breath practice,

Did not start with Iyengar.

Yogis have been practicing pranayama since before yoga practice was first written down by Maharishi Patanjali,

Around 200 to 400 BC.

Prana means breath,

Respiration,

Life,

Vitality,

Strength and energy.

And ayama means length,

Expansion,

Stretching or restraint.

Slowing down the breath is in the name.

The ayama of the prana,

The length of the breath is increased and the respirations are stretched out over time.

That,

To yogis,

Is the purpose of breath work.

So,

In order to better understand if and why these early yogis were onto something,

Let's do a little catch-up of what happens mechanically in our body when we breathe slow versus fast.

Could there be a truth to Iyengar's quote that our life's length is better measured in breaths than it is in days?

While most of us are aware that oxygen is our life force and without it we die,

We see carbon dioxide as a metabolic waste,

Something we need to get rid of,

Both in our atmosphere and in our bodies.

Yet carbon dioxide plays a vital function in our ability to burn oxygen in our cells.

Without carbon dioxide,

Oxygen would be useless.

Tissues would starve even if oxygen would be readily available in the blood.

The best way to understand this is by visualizing your respiratory system as a railway network.

If you close your eyes,

Imagine that your body is a company where employees need to work a 24-hour clock.

In order to function at all times,

There are day shifts and night shifts.

Your lungs are central station,

Where the day shift enters through the inhale and the night shift leaves through the exhale.

Central station's platforms are called the alveoli.

You have 500 million of them.

So,

Imagine loads of platforms.

From these platforms,

The day shift workers,

Which are oxygen molecules,

Will embark their trains that will lead them to where they need to work.

The train,

Which is your blood,

Transports oxygen through the train tracks,

Your arteries,

Towards the departments,

Organs and muscles.

In this train,

Team leaders await the oxygen day shift.

Leaders manage the exchange between the day shift and the night shift.

They lead most oxygen to the departments where the night shift has best prepared.

That way,

Muscles who work hard get more oxygen.

The night shift workers that are at work in your muscles and organs are carbon dioxide molecules.

They prepare the workday for the day shift oxygen.

The more night shift workers are present,

The better prepared the day shift is.

The leader is all about efficiency.

She only allows the oxygen team to disembark the train when enough carbon dioxide has properly prepared for the day shift.

So,

No night shift means no oxygen release.

In summary,

Carbon dioxide is needed for oxygen to be taken up by your muscles and organs.

This means that to properly oxygenate your body,

You need to have sufficient levels of carbon dioxide in your blood.

This is really important to understand,

Because if you want to be a better breather,

You need to learn how to manage your carbon dioxide levels.

If you learn that,

You will be able to lengthen your breaths while doing the same amount of work and therefore live a longer and healthier life.

So why is that?

Night shift carbon dioxide workers do not come in via the central station.

They arrive in the system through the department stations.

When muscles or organs are more active,

They will produce more carbon dioxide.

So the departments of muscles or organs that are temporarily important for the organization have more night shift workers preparing for the day shift.

This automatically attracts more oxygen to that department and helps with the efficient release from the leaders.

When the day shift train arrives,

The night shift hops on and leaves the body via central station's platforms into the exhale.

So when the train comes,

The night shift always gets on that train,

Because it needs to recover from its shift.

This means that the more trains travel back and forward,

The faster you breathe,

The more carbon dioxide will leave the body.

Remember that we need carbon dioxide for oxygen to do its work,

So if too much carbon dioxide leaves the body because we breathe too fast,

Oxygen released to the tissues will be disrupted.

When there's too little carbon dioxide to prepare for the next oxygen team,

The leaders will not let enough oxygen disembark from the train.

This can lead to a feeling of suffocation,

Panic and anxiety,

Even when there's more than enough oxygen readily available in the blood.

Researchers at Yale University showed that breathing too fast,

Both in humans and in animals,

Causes carbon dioxide levels to drop,

Subjects to suffocate,

Heart rates to spike and anxiety and panic to rise fast.

The moment respiratory rate would lower,

Carbon dioxide level would rise again and panic would cease.

So next to improving oxygen uptake and making breathing more efficient in general,

Slow breathing,

And in particular lengthening the exhale,

Immediately reduces panic and anxiety.

More recently,

In 2016,

A group of researchers from Stanford University wanted to study the part of the brain that regulates breathing,

The so-called pacemaker of the breath,

Called the pre-Budsinger complex.

And they accidentally discovered an important link between this pacemaker and relaxation,

Excitement,

Attention and anxiety.

They wanted to understand which part of this pre-Budsinger complex controlled which pattern of breath,

And therefore they isolated a group of neurons to stop the mice from sighing.

But they left other breath patterns intact.

A few days later though,

They noticed something surprising.

These mice were extraordinarily calm.

Even in very stimulating environments,

They acted relaxed.

When they looked more closely,

They noticed that the mice were breathing more slowly,

Allowing them to remain calm under stimulating circumstances.

Follow-up experimental studies investigated whether slowing down breathing in mice would train them to regulate stress and fear.

After a four-week,

30-minute-a-day breathwork training,

The mice were exposed to an experimental fear manipulation.

Researchers measured how fearful they were through measuring the time the mice would freeze in response to the fear stimulus.

Comparing the mice who received breathwork training with their fellow mice who received a placebo,

The breath masters froze much less in response to the fearful stimulus.

This study shows that not only can slow breathing directly control your stress response,

A slow breathing practice also seems to have more general downstream effects.

Through training,

We exercise our relaxation response and our sensitivity to carbon dioxide,

So that when you encounter a stressful or fear-provoking stimulus,

Your automatic stress response will be less severe.

There are a number of other reasons why slow breathing is important,

Such as its effect on your autonomic nervous system,

Being able to use more oxygen from one breath.

And what about exercise?

And what about fast breathing exercises?

Aren't those healthy too?

Yes,

They are.

More on all of that in my upcoming course on breathing and the next insight on fast breathing.

In summary,

If we want our body to function optimally and remain calm under stressful circumstances,

Slow and steady breathing is the way to go.

Thank you for listening to this morning insight.

Have a lovely rest of your day.

Reviews

Fantastic insight. A really valuable way of understanding CO2 and breathing in a new way, thank you.

That was fascinating and very calming. Helped lower my blood pressure :)
We loved what you were taking about. Thank you.