No One Teaches You How to Breathe
Also: how to have healthy relationships, recover from panic attacks, and throw a ball.
Breathing is the most fundamental thing each of us do. We do it constantly and subconsciously, through the day and night. Yet for the most part, we never think of it at all. It just happens.
Like many things that just happen, however, there’s more to breathing than we first understand.
All kinds of things have to take place for us to breathe.
The autonomic nervous system (ANS) controls the involuntary actions of our body, including breathing. Chemoreceptors in the body detect changes in blood pH, CO2, and O2 levels. They send signals to the respiratory center in the brain to adjust breathing as necessary.
Like I said, there’s a lot to it! And if you learn to pay attention, you can improve your breathing. You can enhance your oxygen intake and lower your stress.
You can, in fact, breathe better.
I am an especially slow learner in this regard. Just as I didn’t understand how to feel in my body (as opposed to thinking with my mind), I never really knew that breath work was a thing.
I took yoga classes for three years before I understood that you’re supposed to synchronize your breath to the movement of the poses. To be clear, I’m sure various teachers explained that concept at different times along the way, but I didn’t really get it until long into the process.
Just because you’re able to do something intuitively doesn’t mean you can do it well. And this has a lot of implications, at least when it comes to being a human.
Do You Know How to Throw a Ball?
For another example, think about learning to throw a ball. It’s not innate in the way that breathing is, but because the learning process occurs so young, you probably don’t remember learning it.
Most likely, you learned to throw by trial and error. Perhaps you got better at some point, but unless you actively played a sport that requires a lot of throwing, you may still have the same general technique you developed when you were a toddler. In other words, you know how to throw a ball, but not necessarily well. (Which is fine, because most of us don’t need to be ball-throwing experts.)
Athletes who throw balls around for a living, or even those who do it as a serious hobby, spend a lot of time practicing how they throw. Coaches come along and correct their approach, “breaking down the mechanics” to start all over and teach a whole new way of something the athlete started doing when they were two years old.
The same is true for running, cycling, swimming, or anything else that involves physical activity. You can learn to do it without knowing how to do it well.
No One Teaches You…
What else is like this? We could make a long list, starting with some core executive functions:
No one teaches you task initiation, i.e. how to get started on tasks (especially the ones you feel resistance towards)
No one teaches you goal-directed persistence, the ability to set and follow a goal through to the process of completion, overcoming any obstacles along the way
Then we could proceed to “recovery” skills:
No one teaches you how to self-regulate, how to soothe yourself and calm your nervous system upon being overstimulated
No one teaches you what a panic attack is (how to recognize the signs, how to recover from it, how to analyze the triggers that led to your senses being so heightened)
No one teaches you how to develop resilience (or better yet, antifragility—we’ll come back to that in another post)
We could also consider skills that are helpful in existing with others in harmony:
No one teaches you how to manage conflict
No one teaches you how to set and enforce boundaries
No one teaches you how to maintain a healthy relationship
Really, the list could go on and on. No one teaches you how to be a human. Because our species is so adaptable, you’re able to get by. But if you learned some key skills, you’d be so much better off!
A Little Goes a Long Way
Once you realize how much there is to learn about yourself—as well as all these autonomous processes that most of us take for granted—you might feel intimidated. How could you ever master everything? Especially when you’re burdened, stressed out, and time-starved.
But here’s the cool thing. My experience has been that a little knowledge goes a long way! As you learn to recognize your patterns of behavior, you can do things differently.
Even though I’m a slow learner and it took me three years to learn to breathe properly during yoga, other skills came along much easier.
Just like throwing a ball, I’m sure I could be much better at it with coaching and dedicated practice. But I don’t necessarily need to.
If I’m better at emotional regulation than I used to be, that’s a win.
If I don’t procrastinate to the point of creating deep anxiety over how I should spend my time, that’s wonderful.
If I learn that I tend to overestimate my ability to be in more than one place at a time, I might do it a little less.
I have much more to learn, of course. But even the small learning helps.
***
It doesn’t get more fundamental than breathing. In the hierarchy of “being alive,” breathing is #1.
No one teaches you to breathe. But when you begin to pay attention to breathing, you feel so much better.
Try it today. Try it right now. Just notice.
Conversation Starters
Did anyone teach you how to be a human?
How long can you hold your breath?
What do you do to regulate yourself when you’re stressed?
Something fun you’ll be doing in the next few days.
A fun activity to try if you have a wearable device that tracks your heart rate. Take deep breaths into your belly and watch your resting heart rate immediately drop. When we breath into our belly, it tells our body that we are safe (activates the parasympathetic nervous system to "rest and digest".) Yoga teacher here. 😎 Breathing is amazing.
I started going to yoga classes because I wanted a way to improve my lung health, and reduce asthma attacks, that would allow me to carry on smoking (cigarettes and weed!). Yes, I know.....
I HATED the breathing practices! I couldn't breathe through my nose because allergies meant it was always blocked, so the breath parts of yoga actually stressed me out completely.
Then I started yoga teacher training, and had to figure it out. I was advised to try ditching dairy products, and within a week or two, I could breathe through my nose. A complete revelation!
By the time I finished my training, I could not only breathe properly through my nose all the time, but the self regulation skills it had given me had helped me quit smoking and drinking (which I also had previously been addicted to).
Saved by the breath? I certainly think learning to breathe well was a BIG part in my healing!