BREATHING Archives

January 26, 2022 By GOQii 9 Comments

2 Breathing Techniques For Better Sleep

Do you have trouble getting sleep despite the fact that you are tired? Sleeping well is an art. It needs a perfect blend of healthy habits and control of mind. A clean body and mind, relaxed mood, physical exercises, and perfect dietary control are some of the basic sleep-inducing methods. However, one of the best ways to bring the body into its relaxed state is – BREATHING! How do breathing techniques for better sleep work? Let’s find out!

Breathing Techniques For Better Sleep

Breathing deeply has been proven to affect the heart, the brain, digestion, the immune system and even the expression of genes. Research has shown that breathing exercises like Pranayama can have immediate effects by altering the pH of the blood, or changing blood pressure. But, more importantly, they can be used as a method to train the body’s reaction to stressful situations and dampen the production of harmful stress hormones and help induce sleep.

Here are 2 important breathing methods to calm the mind and induce sleep naturally.

1. The 4-7-8 Technique

How To Do It?
This process is recommended by Dr. Andrew Weil, a practitioner and teacher of integrative medicine for the last thirty years. To do this exercise, sit up in bed with your back straight or lie down on a straight back and press the tip of your tongue on the roof of your mouth right behind your front teeth. Maintaining that position, close your mouth and inhale through your nose for four counts, hold that breath for seven counts, and then exhale through your mouth around your tongue for eight counts. Repeat this pattern until you have completed four full breaths.

How It Works?
The 4-7-8 breathing technique is effective because it encourages the fast removal of carbon dioxide. Doing so equates into a better preservation of the bicarbonate pool; our reservoirs for helping maintain an appropriate pH balance. Also, it allows the lungs to become fully charged with air, allowing more oxygen into the body, which promotes a state of calm.

2. Left Nostril Breathing

How To Do It?
Simply take your right hand and with your fingers outstretched, block off your right nostril by putting gentle pressure on it with your right thumb. Be sure to keep the rest of your fingers straight and pointing up. With a long, slow, deep breath, gently inhale through your left nostril. Then, just as gently, exhale long, slowly and completely, again through the left nostril. Do this for at least 3 minutes; chances are you might doze of even before that!

How It Works?
When we’re under stress or feeling anxious, we tend to breathe mostly out of our right nostril, which is connected to our left brain. This activates our sympathetic nervous system, the channel responsible for the classic stress response – dilated pupils, increased core temperature, sweating, and increased heart rate and blood pressure. And when we start breathing through the left nostril the parasympathetic system gets activated which slows us down and helps our body automatically run its day to day jobs of digestion, elimination, sleep cycles and more.

Apart from these 2 breathing techniques for better sleep, you can also try meditation or mindfulness by just observing your breath as it goes in and as it comes out. Connecting with this rise and fall of the breath, and noticing where you feel that breath move within the body can help you begin the process of relaxing tense muscles and create a coherent heart pattern which brings an instant state of tranquil and helps you drift off to peaceful deep sleep.

We hope this article helps you sleep better! Do you meditate before you go to bed? What helps you sleep better? Leave your thoughts in the comments below! For more articles on sleep, check out Healthy Reads or you can get tips directly from a GOQii Coach by subscribing for personalized health coaching here: https://goqiiapp.page.link/bsr

#BeTheForce

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 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