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.
Yes, very good! I often notice differences in my resting heart rate on my Apple Watch depending on how I'm feeling, even when I haven't changed much physical activity.
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!
I don’t actually know how long I can hold my breath, but I did realize recently that in meditation-based breath control, I would rather hold my breath at the bottom of the exhale versus the top of the inhale. It seems a bit counterintuitive imo, but from what I’ve analyzed so far, the inhale gives me kinda a high, floaty feeling that makes me a bit dizzy (I have pretty extreme motion sickness and vertigo), which makes me worried. Whereas the exhale feels more grounded and calming, which doesn’t set off my fear reactors.
I have found that focusing on the breath during meditation, and doing breathing exercises such as box breathing, helps me manage anxiety. I recently read the book Breath by James Nestor, and he explains how harmful mouth breathing is. I’m now trying to train myself not to mouth breathe at night.
Liz, amen!! Switching from mouth to nose breathing is an epic game changer!
Mouth taping at night helped me solidify the switch. I’ve tried about four mouth tapes and settled on 3m kind removal silicone tape. https://a.co/d/4Yc5fQZ
In my life I've been "taught" to breathe by dozens over different people in different modalities over the years. The problem is they've all been wrong. We're all taught to overbreathe, which releases too much CO2, and CO2 is needed to move oxygen into our cells. Of course there's a time and place for "deep" breathing exercises, but in general Patrick Mcewan and others have shown we should be taking take slow, shallow breaths. So that's the bigger irony to me. Our medical system pretends to know soooo much and it really knows soooo little about how the body works.
I think a corollary of this is that few of use understand that just because we know how to do something or something feels intuitive to us, it doesn't mean everyone knows how to do that thing. Nobody teaches us how to be teachers in our everyday lives, but almost any profession or relationship involved some kind of teaching.
This is such a great post. There are so many things that we are not taught, yet essential to a good life. I learned most of this by trial and error and am still learning and updating these skills. I am working on my breathing skills, but I forget, especially when I really need it! Tips are welcome.
Love this post! I agree that different forms of breathwork for self-regulation should be taught in schools... it's essential 'How to Human' info!!
If anyone is curious to learn about the biological mechanisms for why longer exhales are calming (and visa versa), I wrote up a post here which might be of interest ;)
I started doing standup comedy because, because... I don't know. It's a terrible idea- I'm supposed to be focusing on the academic career I got all these dumb degrees for. But- in spite of my practical (fearful) self, I love comedy more than just about anything. Last year I started writing ideas for sets. Tonight (2/25) I have my first big show, and I'm feeling confident. Wish me luck!
Breathwork is so powerful, I think that’s why so few people actually do it! Like IFS, a little goes such a long way that it can be extremely confronting to begin.
Parts of me know that if I breathe better, I’ll bring more awareness to my life. But there are protector parts of me that are purposely trying to keep me from having that awareness!
So there is often a built-in war between the parts that want to keep me dissociated and out of my body and out of my breath, and the parts that want to be more mindful and aware.
I want to honor that sometimes people just aren’t ready for the intensity of breath work, even the littlest bit, because, if they have traumas that might arise from that level of awareness, it might not be the right time for them to bring that up into consciousness. I’ve personally had complete and total nervous breakdowns in yoga classes because of relaxing enough to suddenly trigger or allow deep traumas to rise up into my body.
Luckily, I’ve almost always had really safe teachers, and environments that helped me through those traumas, but not always! Which is one of the reasons why being super careful about choosing your breath work and yoga teachers is so important. Ideally, they would be trauma informed so that if any really curveball stuff comes up, they can help you with it.
Tim Feriss courageously and vulnerably shared his personal history about going to a meditation retreat, and having ultratrauma come up, and being super lucky that Jack Kornfield was available to help him through it. (https://tim.blog/2020/09/16/how-to-heal-trauma-transcript/amp/).
Admittedly, he was fasting, on a 10 day meditation retreat, and taking psilocybin, so the risk of intense trauma arising was high. But I personally have had traumatic memories arise simply from trying to do very mild breath work or run-of-the-mill yoga classes. So for anyone who has a really deep aversion to breath work, I want to extend compassion and the idea that it’s OK to wait on it!
Also, I find that my capacity to tolerate the intensity of breath work has phases. For a while, I was doing Buteyko breath work using the absurdly FREE Oxygen Advantage app (I have no idea why this app is free — it’s an absolute treasure trove of breath work, it’s astonishing!)
But I honestly think my entire nervous system wasn’t ready or capable of integrating that much awareness/intensity, and I just dropped off of doing it. I haven’t been able to get back to it, and instead of beating myself up about it, I’m looking at it as a dip into the deeper pool that I have a vision to get back into, but that I need to keep building up my capacity to handle.
So I love this post as both an invitation to consider breath work, which is so ridiculously powerful and FREE! And also a very compassionate reminder that if it isn’t available right now, that’s OK. One day it will be!
By doing whatever is available to prepare us for it, we will gradually over time get to a place where we can hold more awareness of our emotions and our feelings and our breath in these beleaguered, often traumatized, modern bodies of ours. Just ONE moment of awareness of our breath is often all we can handle. And that’s enough.
I agree with the no one teaches you to be human, and love the examples you listed.
My 5 year old spent the first 2 months of the school year learning breathing technique skills . I was pleasantly surprised how they’ve made it accessible and many options to help them regulate.
I’ve found it difficult myself to meditate and focus on my breath - so knitting or crocheting keeps my hands busy and regulates my breathing.
Very interesting post. Most of my early years I felt like I was on the outside looking in; everyone else had the "owner's manual" that I was missing. In my early 30's I started in recovery (been sober over 36 years now-yes, I'm in my 60's). I am a very slow learner. Sometimes you hear the same things over and over and then all of a sudden one day it "clicks." For some reason this reminds me of back when I started getting regular massages, twice a month, every other week. During the third session interesting things started happening. I became very aware of muscles releasing tension and relaxing. After a couple more sessions, one night on the way home from work, I became very aware that I was clenching my jaw. It was a little easier to let it go.
Still SUCH an underrated skill is breathing. It sounds so ridicuous but it's life-changing to get the hang of it. I wouldn't say I've mastered what it can do for us yet but even so I've noticed such a change since I started growing more conscious about it.
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.
Yes, very good! I often notice differences in my resting heart rate on my Apple Watch depending on how I'm feeling, even when I haven't changed much physical activity.
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!
I don’t actually know how long I can hold my breath, but I did realize recently that in meditation-based breath control, I would rather hold my breath at the bottom of the exhale versus the top of the inhale. It seems a bit counterintuitive imo, but from what I’ve analyzed so far, the inhale gives me kinda a high, floaty feeling that makes me a bit dizzy (I have pretty extreme motion sickness and vertigo), which makes me worried. Whereas the exhale feels more grounded and calming, which doesn’t set off my fear reactors.
I have found that focusing on the breath during meditation, and doing breathing exercises such as box breathing, helps me manage anxiety. I recently read the book Breath by James Nestor, and he explains how harmful mouth breathing is. I’m now trying to train myself not to mouth breathe at night.
Liz, amen!! Switching from mouth to nose breathing is an epic game changer!
Mouth taping at night helped me solidify the switch. I’ve tried about four mouth tapes and settled on 3m kind removal silicone tape. https://a.co/d/4Yc5fQZ
In my life I've been "taught" to breathe by dozens over different people in different modalities over the years. The problem is they've all been wrong. We're all taught to overbreathe, which releases too much CO2, and CO2 is needed to move oxygen into our cells. Of course there's a time and place for "deep" breathing exercises, but in general Patrick Mcewan and others have shown we should be taking take slow, shallow breaths. So that's the bigger irony to me. Our medical system pretends to know soooo much and it really knows soooo little about how the body works.
Patrick is the best!!! I LOVE Buteyko breathing! His FREE Oxygen Advantage app is the most amazing breathing app I’ve come across.
Also I love his accent!
I think a corollary of this is that few of use understand that just because we know how to do something or something feels intuitive to us, it doesn't mean everyone knows how to do that thing. Nobody teaches us how to be teachers in our everyday lives, but almost any profession or relationship involved some kind of teaching.
This is such a great post. There are so many things that we are not taught, yet essential to a good life. I learned most of this by trial and error and am still learning and updating these skills. I am working on my breathing skills, but I forget, especially when I really need it! Tips are welcome.
Love this post! I agree that different forms of breathwork for self-regulation should be taught in schools... it's essential 'How to Human' info!!
If anyone is curious to learn about the biological mechanisms for why longer exhales are calming (and visa versa), I wrote up a post here which might be of interest ;)
https://every.to/p/the-operating-manual-for-your-nervous-system
I started doing standup comedy because, because... I don't know. It's a terrible idea- I'm supposed to be focusing on the academic career I got all these dumb degrees for. But- in spite of my practical (fearful) self, I love comedy more than just about anything. Last year I started writing ideas for sets. Tonight (2/25) I have my first big show, and I'm feeling confident. Wish me luck!
Wish you all the luck there is!
Thank you!
Breathwork is so powerful, I think that’s why so few people actually do it! Like IFS, a little goes such a long way that it can be extremely confronting to begin.
Parts of me know that if I breathe better, I’ll bring more awareness to my life. But there are protector parts of me that are purposely trying to keep me from having that awareness!
So there is often a built-in war between the parts that want to keep me dissociated and out of my body and out of my breath, and the parts that want to be more mindful and aware.
I want to honor that sometimes people just aren’t ready for the intensity of breath work, even the littlest bit, because, if they have traumas that might arise from that level of awareness, it might not be the right time for them to bring that up into consciousness. I’ve personally had complete and total nervous breakdowns in yoga classes because of relaxing enough to suddenly trigger or allow deep traumas to rise up into my body.
Luckily, I’ve almost always had really safe teachers, and environments that helped me through those traumas, but not always! Which is one of the reasons why being super careful about choosing your breath work and yoga teachers is so important. Ideally, they would be trauma informed so that if any really curveball stuff comes up, they can help you with it.
Tim Feriss courageously and vulnerably shared his personal history about going to a meditation retreat, and having ultratrauma come up, and being super lucky that Jack Kornfield was available to help him through it. (https://tim.blog/2020/09/16/how-to-heal-trauma-transcript/amp/).
Admittedly, he was fasting, on a 10 day meditation retreat, and taking psilocybin, so the risk of intense trauma arising was high. But I personally have had traumatic memories arise simply from trying to do very mild breath work or run-of-the-mill yoga classes. So for anyone who has a really deep aversion to breath work, I want to extend compassion and the idea that it’s OK to wait on it!
Also, I find that my capacity to tolerate the intensity of breath work has phases. For a while, I was doing Buteyko breath work using the absurdly FREE Oxygen Advantage app (I have no idea why this app is free — it’s an absolute treasure trove of breath work, it’s astonishing!)
But I honestly think my entire nervous system wasn’t ready or capable of integrating that much awareness/intensity, and I just dropped off of doing it. I haven’t been able to get back to it, and instead of beating myself up about it, I’m looking at it as a dip into the deeper pool that I have a vision to get back into, but that I need to keep building up my capacity to handle.
So I love this post as both an invitation to consider breath work, which is so ridiculously powerful and FREE! And also a very compassionate reminder that if it isn’t available right now, that’s OK. One day it will be!
By doing whatever is available to prepare us for it, we will gradually over time get to a place where we can hold more awareness of our emotions and our feelings and our breath in these beleaguered, often traumatized, modern bodies of ours. Just ONE moment of awareness of our breath is often all we can handle. And that’s enough.
I agree with the no one teaches you to be human, and love the examples you listed.
My 5 year old spent the first 2 months of the school year learning breathing technique skills . I was pleasantly surprised how they’ve made it accessible and many options to help them regulate.
I’ve found it difficult myself to meditate and focus on my breath - so knitting or crocheting keeps my hands busy and regulates my breathing.
Very interesting post. Most of my early years I felt like I was on the outside looking in; everyone else had the "owner's manual" that I was missing. In my early 30's I started in recovery (been sober over 36 years now-yes, I'm in my 60's). I am a very slow learner. Sometimes you hear the same things over and over and then all of a sudden one day it "clicks." For some reason this reminds me of back when I started getting regular massages, twice a month, every other week. During the third session interesting things started happening. I became very aware of muscles releasing tension and relaxing. After a couple more sessions, one night on the way home from work, I became very aware that I was clenching my jaw. It was a little easier to let it go.
To honest with you, I had to check how long I can hold my breath. 30sec 🤣
I will always be impressed with free divers that can dive like 100 meters with just one breath.
Me too, it’s incredible!
Lovely insights
Still SUCH an underrated skill is breathing. It sounds so ridicuous but it's life-changing to get the hang of it. I wouldn't say I've mastered what it can do for us yet but even so I've noticed such a change since I started growing more conscious about it.
We are starting to teach this in schools now, though, which I think is a fabulous step forward.
Great post. It's a nice way to start my week with my mind in the right place.