It’s surprisingly hard to apply conscious effort to a process that typically occurs without thought. The average person breathes 12-20 times per minute, adding up to 17,000-30,000 breaths daily!
Our breathing is natural and usually effortless. It is also a product of our internal environment, providing clues about our health and reflecting any imbalances that are occurring in the nervous system.
In our busy lives, most of us are operating in sympathetic nervous system dominance. This aspect of the autonomic nervous system tells us there’s a threat approaching — it enables us to breathe fast, and run hard. “Fight or flight” is the expression for a nervous system that is prepared for anything, to flee from a bear or meet that deadline.
The opposing autonomic system, the parasympathetic nervous system, tells our body it’s time to slow down, to “rest and digest.” This system enables us to relax, to enjoy ourselves without distraction, and optimize bodily processes like digestion and detoxification that are halted in action when we are sympathetically charged and running from the bear.
These two functions of the nervous system are equally important and balance each other in all things. However, sympathetic dominance impacts our breathing and can result in a cascade of health impacts on the body.
If you are running from a bear, you want your heart beating fast supplying blood to your extremities so you can go faster. You want that sweat to lower your temperature and keep you cooler. You want those nerves firing and muscles contracting. You want your breathing quick, supplying your lungs with the oxygen to put up your best fight.
But in our daily lives, for most of us, there is no bear (depending how you feel about your boss). There are stressors and challenges, but they don’t require the physical demand that the sympathetic nervous system can put on the body.
The sympathetic nervous system's effect on the body can play a significant role in a host of common health concerns:
elevated heart rate or blood pressure
heart palpitations
dizziness and vertigo
shortness of breath or difficulty catching your breath (when you haven’t been exerting yourself)
tightness or tenderness in the chest
chronic mouth breathing or snoring
sleep apnea, insomnia or poor sleep
muscle tightness or spasms and TMJ
digestive issues and constipation
numbness and tingling
cold hands and feet
poor memory and headaches
mood changes
fatigue
These are just some of the symptoms that can be caused by or contribute to dysfunctional breathing. Of course these symptoms can also be clues about other conditions and you should always discuss them with your doctor.
The bottom line is that the way we breathe impacts each and every body system, and can either support our health or contribute to the problem. This is where breathing practices come into play.
Controlling breath and learning functional breathing strategies can reset the nervous system, releasing the body from sympathetic control and activating the parasympathetic alternative.
When we breathe in a way that is functional, we can stimulate our master parasympathetic nerve, the vagus nerve. Diaphragmatic or belly breathing, physically tells the vagus nerve that it’s time to take control.
How to breathe for nervous system balance:
Start to notice your breathing. Is it fast or slow? Deep or shallow? Are your shoulders moving? Is your chest moving or your belly? Place one hand on your chest and the other on your belly and start to notice which is moving. Are they both moving or is one moving more than the other?
Our goal with diaphragmatic breathing is to allow the lungs to fill completely with air, filling the chest cavity and applying downward pressure on the diaphragm. In this way, the stomach contents are compressed downward and the belly moves out while the chest and shoulders remain relatively still.
Find a calm and comfortable place to do your breathing practice. Sitting in an upright posture with feet firmly on the floor and your back away from your chair, enables the air to best enter the lungs and the belly to move freely out and in without obstruction. You can also do this standing if you can relax your abdomen while doing so. Let your face muscles relax and be soft, allow your shoulders to drop down away from your ears. Let your spine be erect but not stiff and relax your pelvis to a neutral position without slouching or arching the back.
Breathe quietly through your nose and out through your nose or mouth. These breaths are slow and do not require a huge volume of air. Imagine you are breathing through a straw and allow a small and consistent stream of air into your lungs, counting to 4 or 5 as you breathe. Once the belly protrudes and the lungs are full, allow that air to slowly release from the nose or mouth, as gracefully as it entered, allowing for a count of 5 or 6 on the exhale.
An exhale that is longer than the inhale will further stimulate parasympathetic nervous system control.
Aim for smoothness and ease. Allow thoughts and distractions to come and pass. Allow judgments and criticisms to come and pass. This is a process and not a competition. This is a time and space for connection to your body, to your health and wellbeing, and a gift to yourself to pause and be still, listening without extra noise.
20 minutes of daily practice can shift and balance the nervous system and provide you with a tool to use in moments of stress once you are more comfortable with the technique. Apps like Breath+ can support your practice by providing visual and auditory clues to breathe at the pace that you prefer, aiming for about 6 breaths per minute.
As you learn to consciously manipulate your breathing, you may notice physical responses that reflect the shift from sympathetic to parasympathetic action. Your hands and feet may warm, your muscles may relax, your digestion may be stimulated and you might hear digestive noises from your abdomen, your headache may subside, your anxiety may dissipate.
Breathing this way, affects your heart rate variability, which is a predictor of better health outcomes.
Increased heart rate variability, or increased variations in the time between each heart beat, is correlated with a better balance between the two components of the autonomic nervous system. This balance indicates that there is a healthy and functional stress response.
Less heart rate variability, meaning that the variation between heart beats is low, shows less flexibility in the autonomic nervous system. Low heart rate variability has been shown to correlate with worsening depression or anxiety, an increased risk for cardiovascular disease, and increased mortality.
Learning to breathe functionally, stimulate the actions of our parasympathetic nervous system, and expand our understanding of the unconscious process of breathing can mean lasting changes in health outcomes.
We don’t need to change the way we breathe. Our bodies can handle that and keep us alive without help. But, if we can pay attention and modify breathing for functionality, we can deepen our connection to our bodies and create widespread improvements to our health.
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