Search Results for: breathing

September 3, 2021 By Srini Leave a Comment

Breathing #3: Breath Bank

A Tamil adage says that everyone gets a certain number of breaths deposited in their account on birth. You cannot increase or decrease it – but you can efficiently use the remaining balance and get more out of it. Do you know how to get more out of your breath? How to get a higher ROI? Let’s start with the number of breaths per minute.

How Do You Measure The Breaths in Your Breath Bank?

Measure the number of breaths per minute at 4 fixed time slots in a day and do it over one or two weeks and then get the average breath per minute. If the AVERAGE number is more than 12, then you are not very efficient in using your breath balance. If you are more than 18, then you are hyperventilating!

Hyperventilation depletes Co2 from your body. The interesting fact is that Co2 is critical for oxygen absorption in the cells for effective burning of the fuel. If you are hyperventilating, then there is Co2 imbalance and even though you may have a 97% oxygen saturation in your blood, the Oxygen just floats around without being effectively used in burning the fuel.

So, to use Oxygen effectively, you need a good balance of Co2 in your body. Also, as much as you hyperventilate while under stress, the other way is also true. When you hyperventilate, the body assumes you are under stress. You are chronically under stress AND you are not burning the fuel effectively… all due to a simple issue of incorrect breathing!

Slow breathing keeps the right balance between Carbon Dioxide and Oxygen in the body and remember both are needed for the efficient functioning of the body.

“Mind is the King of the senses and Breath is the King of the Mind”, says BKS Iyengar, a renowned Yoga Guru. James Nestor, says that an ideal breathing is 5.5 seconds inhale and 5.5 seconds exhale – so this is 11 seconds and your average number of breaths would also be 5.5 per minute.

Most of the religious prayers/chants/choirs were designed to make you breathe at a rate of around 5.5 to 6 per minute. Such prayer, no wonder, has magical curative powers.

You can practice slow breathing anywhere, any time and privately. Just be conscious of how you breathe! In fact, between every activity, meeting or zoom call, take 5 minutes off and practice conscious slow and deep abdominal breathing, you will do wonders in terms of your productivity.

“If you want to live, follow Eastern Medicine (Yoga, Ayurveda) and if you do not want to die, then follow Western Medicine” – Trainer Brian MacKenzie

This subject is still developing and research is still coming through under the Western Medicine and has been in practice over thousands of years in India by our Yogis.

Western breathing experts like Dr Buteyko, James Nestor and Anders Olsson, etc. have gone on record on the benefits of slow and rhythmic breathing. In fact, Dr Buteyko observes that 80% of the population is chronically hyperventilating!

Breathing is the only tool available to humans to connect to (and influence) their autonomous nervous system and therefore mind. If you develop awareness and therefore, better understanding, you can make breathing more efficient and positively impact your mind. Breathing is the MOST POWERFUL tool humans have. Fascinating isn’t it. But Simple. I average around 8 breaths per minute now and I have personally benefited significantly in terms of overall energy through the day, feeling good and less stressed.

Practices To Help You Achieve Slow Breathing

Being Conscious of breathing
Practicing Pranayama – Kapal Bathi, Ujjayi, Pursed lip breathing, Bhastrika
Breathing using the abdomen than the chest
Tummo ( Tibetan technique) or Wim Hof method

I am placing a customary caveat for the reader that this is not medical advice and you should consult your doctor. And unfortunately, the western medical system holds that less than 10 breaths per minute is a disease and it has to be cured.

If you want more details, medical and scientific evidence, please read more at https://breathe.ersjournals.com/content/13/4/298

Further read books/podcasts of James Nestor, Brian Mackenzie, Rangan Chatterjee, Anders Olsson

We hope this article helps you improve your breath bank balance. For more on breathing, check out Healthy Reads. To get breathing exercises from your GOQii Coach, subscribe to personalized coaching here: https://goqiiapp.page.link/bsr

Breathe Right & #BeTheForce

August 27, 2021 By Srini Leave a Comment

Breathing #2: Why Is Abdominal Breathing Important?

In my previous article, I spoke about breathing through the nose. In this article, let me take it a bit deeper and speak about abdominal breathing. It is observed that many of us breathe through our chest and our breathing is therefore shallow.

This issue compounds when you are awake, in the office, working on something important, tense, or under stress and hyperventilate. Shallow breathing compounded with hyperventilation leads to SUBOPTIMAL gas exchange.

We take so much care about nutrition and food, but we need to know how to burn it. Same as filling Premium Petrol, as well as knowing optimal driving techniques! Unburnt or sub-optimally burnt food is responsible for weight gain, diabetes and so many chronic lifestyle illnesses.

The goal of good nutrition is that it is absorbed well and burnt well. So, right breathing is equally, if not more, important than eating the right food.

Take this simple test to know how you breathe

Lie on your back with your knees bent
Place one hand or a small book on your chest and the other on your stomach.
Breathe normally, observe what is rising – the chest or the abdomen

Observe which is rising up and down. If it is your chest, you are shallow breathing and if it is the abdomen more than the chest, you may be closer to what is the right breathing.

See the picture below to understand why this is important

Lungs are narrow at the top and wide at the bottom – sort of “Inverted V” shape. The blood flow at the bottom of the lungs is approx. 10 times than the top.

Most of the bunch of grapes (alveoli) which are the instruments of gas exchange (topic to be explained later) is at the bottom of the lungs. Now, if you breathe through your chest, you are leaving more than 60% of your lung’s “installed capacity” unused.

CFOs will know that unused installed capacity is costly! Diaphragmatic breathing gives you High Return on Inhaled Air (investment)! Simple. You can observe animals breathing, for example observe a Cow – they breathe through the abdomen only. Somewhere in evolution, the modern human has forgotten the art of breathing.

The Additional Advantages Of Abdominal Breathing

Abdomen movement helps the movement of lymphatic fluids – unlike the blood, there is no pump for lymphatic fluids. Only muscular movement acts as a pump
Abdomen movement also continuously massages the parts of stomach like liver and intestine
Abdominal movement makes it easy and lighter for your heart to pump blood

Shallow breathing leaves air behind in the lower parts of the lung, making it vulnerable to easy infection. So, why don’t we use the abdomen for breathing and benefit from optimal gas exchange which in turn helps in supplying efficient fuel (oxygen) to burn the food you are eating?

If you want to make diaphragmatic breathing into a habit, you can follow Conscious Breathing classes by Anders Olsson or Wim Hof method (which I follow) or from any Yoga Guru.

We hope this article on abdominal breathing helps you. Do leave your thoughts in the comments below. For more on breathing, check out Healthy Reads or get these tips directly from your GOQii Coach by subscribing to personalized coaching here: https://goqiiapp.page.link/bsr

Breathe Right & #BeTheForce

August 10, 2021 By Dr. Naina Sudarshan 5 Comments

Breathing Exercises To Strengthen Lungs

Have you ever wondered how many breaths we all take in our lifetime? On average we take about 675 million breaths in 80 years of life. Breathing frequency and type are different in different stages of our life depending on age, altitude, pollution levels, smoking, weather and other factors. Our lungs are the main organs of respiration as they are responsible for an exchange of oxygen (O2) and carbon dioxide (CO2) to keep the heart, brain, and other functioning of the body normal. Lung function and lung capacity are determined through the efficiency of exchange of oxygen (O2) and CO2 in our lungs. Any ailments with lungs can affect the health of the entire body. Have you ever thought about keeping your lungs healthy too? We can enhance lung capacity, which means the quantity of air a lung can hold. Certain breathing exercises can help the body make use of all the oxygen inhaled by our lungs in a better way. Here are three simple breathing techniques to strengthen our lung capacity.

Pursed lip breathing

Pursed lip breathing is a simple breathing exercise which helps in slowing down breathing and emptying the Lungs completely.

Method:

Sit in a comfortable position, relax the shoulders, neck, rest the tongue on the floor of the mouth and close your eyes gently
Inhale through the nose for 2-3 seconds
Purse your lips as when you blow the candlea
Breath out all the air slowly for 4-6 seconds
Repeat this for about 5 minutes

This type of breathing can also be done when someone feels shortness of breath during or after exercise or any heavy work which lets plenty of air in and out of the lungs that helps in restoring the normal breathing pattern.

Diaphragmatic or Belly breathing

How often in a day do we pay attention to our breathing pattern? Do you do shallow breathing or deep breathing? The diaphragm is the main sheet of muscle in between the chest and the abdomen that helps in respiration. But, usually, we develop the habit of breathing through chest, neck and shoulder muscles which limits the amount of air filling in and out of our lungs. Belly breathing strengthens the diaphragm and enhances the pulmonary efficiency. Here is the best way to train yourself for diaphragmatic breathing.

Method:

Lie down on your back on a flat surface with the knees bent or sit comfortably on a chair with neck, shoulder and head relaxed
Place your one hand lightly on your abdomen and the other hand on the chest
Inhale deeply through the nose for 2-3 seconds as you fill all the air towards your abdomen
Pay attention to the hand on the abdomen moving up while making sure hand on the chest is not moving up
Now exhale all the air through the mouth (Pursed lips) while tightening the abdomen inwards. Make sure the hand on your abdomen is moving down
Repeat this breathing for 5-10 minutes to get the maximum benefits

Alternate Nostril breathing

This is a type of deep and slow breathing in Yoga in which inhaling, and exhaling happens through alternate nostrils. Long term practice of this breathing improves the total capacity of the lungs while boosting the pulmonary function markers. It is also meant to purify the lungs and the circulatory system throughout the body.

Method:

Sit straight on a flat surface with relaxed shoulders and neck
Start with deep inhalation and slow exhalation couple of times or for a minute
While folding the index and middle fingers of the right hand, make Vishnu mudra to close the right nostril with right thumb and left nostril with ring finger
At first, close the right nostril and slowly exhale through left nostril
Keep the right nostril closed and slowly inhale through the left nostril and feel all the air going upwards while filling all the air deep down till the abdomen
Once you inhale all the air possible, pause briefly for 2 seconds
Now close the left nostril with the ring finger and release thumb to open the right nostril
Exhale out all the air through the right nostril with a pause of 2 second at the end
As your still closing the left nostril, inhale slowly through the right nostril letting all the air into right side of the body with a short pause of 2 seconds at the end
Again, close the right nostril and open the left nostril to exhale all the air out

This is considered as one round of alternate nostril breathing. Continue this pattern for 5-10 minutes to get the maximum benefits.

Practising one or more of these breathing exercises under good guidance is proven to strengthen our lungs. Be sure to do these breathing exercises on an empty stomach as a safety measure. These are short yet very effective ways to strengthen our lungs and boost our immunity as well – a much needed thing for today’s times!

For more breathing exercises, meditation techniques and yoga, tune in to experts on GOQii Play or get these tips directly from your GOQii Coach by subscribing to personalized coaching here: https://goqiiapp.page.link/bsr

#BeTheForce

August 6, 2021 By Srini Leave a Comment

Breathing – A Forgotten Art

We eat 3-4 times a day, about 1.5kg of food, but we breathe 20,000 to 25,000 times a day – we intake about 20-25kg of air – We are not fully knowledgeable on breathing. Since it is an autonomous process, we do not – My research with Sleep naturally took me to research about “Breathing” and what I found out, woke me up (pun intended) and I decided to continue my blogs on Breathing.

3 external physical objects are consumed by us regularly. Life critically depends on them. Food, Water and Air. Food and Water can be paused through fasting for some time. But breathing cannot be paused beyond 10 minutes. Life will cease.

Only Free Divers can hold their breath for a maximum time of 10 minutes. We cannot and should not. Unlike eating food or drinking water, which are conscious activities, breathing is an autonomous process. It is controlled by the medulla oblongata, a part of the brain stem.

However, Both Indian and Chinese ancient wisdom has clearly found out that “Conscious Breathing” is the only process which can be used by human action to influence the brain functions and hence, the mind.

As evolving human beings, we have forgotten what is the natural and correct way of breathing.

Our modern lifestyle has robbed us of natural breathing. We have got to relearn

Correct Breathing
Conscious Breathing

Unfortunately, there is little or no focus on breathing from modern medical science.

Other than just asking you to breathe deep while checking heart/lung function using the stethoscope, I am not aware of any doctor visually observing or inquiring about how the patient is breathing!

My research into sleep took me naturally to breathing. So, I read James Nestor, the author of a recent bestseller on “Breath, the New Science of a Last Art”, Anders Olsson on “Conscious Breathing” and Wim Hof about the Wim Hof Method of breathing.

I acknowledge the above authors in taking up the cause of breathing and explaining lucidly about the science behind breathing, the anatomy concerning breathing and some breathing techniques which have given me massive improvement in my health and attitude to life over the past few months.

Correct Breathing

First let us learn about Correct Breathing and then I will talk about Conscious Breathing. So, what exactly is incorrect about breathing? All 3 aspects:

Breathing through the Nose
Using Abdomen and Diaphragm for breathing
Breathing Rhythmically and Slowly

Breathing through the Nose:
I wonder why I even should talk about this. Is this such a big thing? Then I really started observing the world around me – Shocking when I observed that my wife was breathing through her mouth during sleep (how I worked on it and corrected is a separate story).

We believe that it is ok to breathe through the mouth – this is as correct as eating through your nose! Nose is created to be the sole instrument of breathing! Period. Google it or look around when people are sleeping. Surveys and research says that at least 50% of people are breathing through their mouth during sleep! Add to this the percentage of people who have choked noses, COPD and other breathing issues!

We are talking about a VERY LARGE proportion of the human population incorrectly breathing.

How do you breathe? Do you know? Ask your partner to observe while you breathe.

If you have a dry mouth when you wake up, if you have a V-shaped upper palate (as against a U-shaped palate), If your tonsils are removed when you were a child, if you are snoring then IT IS QUITE LIKELY THAT YOU ARE BREATHING THROUGH YOUR MOUTH.

See what you are missing out if you breathe through your mouth?

Your nose captures impurities, particles, bacteria and viruses using the hair mucous surface in the nose when the inhaled air is going through.
Your nose heats up the air and moistens it using the moist mucous surface. Why is this important? The incredible process of Gas exchange in the lungs happens optimally only when the air is hot and humid (more about Gas exchange and the process/chemistry of breathing later).
It also adds the magical element of Nitric Oxide which is secreted in the sinuses. Nitric Oxide dilates the blood vessels as well as the air tubes of lungs, reducing blood pressure. Most Importantly, it KILLS the COVID virus (and any virus)

Tip: When you do Bhramari Pranayam (humming), you are releasing 15 times more Nitric Oxide into the breathed air and hence, practicing Bhramari Pranayama a few times a day during these days of the pandemic, can help you avoid getting infected.

A nasal spray to produce more Nitric Oxide in the nose to kill the covid virus is being tested and might get released soon. Also, there is a good side effect of Nitric Oxide – it is a vasodilator and helps in pumping more blood to sexual organs similar to Viagra.

So, why not simply hum and breathe through your nose?

PS: All of what is stated above is a summary of reading so many research articles and you can google about any of them.

I will be sharing more on breathing in the articles to come! Stay tuned. For more breathing exercises, check out Healthy Reads. To learn breathing techniques with the right guidance from a certified expert, subscribe to personalized coaching here: https://goqiiapp.page.link/bsr

#BeTheForce