Breathe

Breathe

What is most important form of movement? Ludicrous as it might sound, the answer is breathing. Life starts with the breath. The average human takes around 20,000 breaths per day, and depending on how you take them; whether fast or slow, through your mouth or nose; your bio-chemistry reflects a certain degree of health.

It's ironic then that we take this for granted. Think about it: If I take food away from you, you'll last for weeks as long as you have water. That's called fasting. If I take water away from you, it'll take around 3-5 days for you to parish of thirst. Now imagine if I take your oxygen away. 5 minutes under and brain cells begin to die. 10 minutes and you'll likely suffer a coma and permanent brain damage. Over 15 minutes and your dead. Beyond 10 minutes, and you probably wouldn't want to continue living anyways.

Oxygen is a necessity down to the cellular level, but this wasn't always the case for life on earth. Quite the opposite. The first life appeared on earth about 4 billion years ago, and it was comprised primarily of prokaryotic, single-celled organisms. These guys disdained oxygen and breathed carbon-dioxide instead which was then very plentiful, while the waste-product created was oxygen. Then, 2.5 billion years ago, came a different kind of life: The multi-celled Eukaryote. Comprised of multiple Prokaryota, The Eukaryota were different in that they used the previously discarded oxygen as fuel and this would prove to be an important step in the evolutionary process. It turns out that oxygen respiration yields 16 times more energy production than that of carbon-dioxide. With all the extra energy to go around, a new threshold of evolutionary possibility was realized, and more complex life-forms were the result.

Virtually, all complex life that we see today, from plants to animals are forms of Eukaryota. Humans themselves are a mere extension of this evolutionary pathway. Your body is comprised of hundred of billions of eukaryotic cells and each one of them require oxygen to thrive. When you stunt your breathing, you starve them of that life, and this is the root of many diseases that plague humanity.

Hunter-gatherers don't have to remember to do breath exercises. Moving the body requires energy and they move a lot through out the day, sometimes very strenuously. As they labor, their breath labors as well, and this keeps their vascular system strong and healthy.

Western society for the most part has observed very little the power of breathing. According to current medical analysis, it matters little whether you breathe through your nose or through your mouth. Fast or slow, full or shallow? What's the difference? And yet, one quick look at our anatomy will show how flawed such thinking is.

The respiratory muscles include the nasal concha, larynx. diaphram, the intercostals between the ribs, the abs, and the muscles of the neck. All in all, these muscles account for 10-12 percent of your muscle mass depending on your size. That's a lot! And just like all other muscles, they atrophy without use. If your “beach body” muscles atrophy, its not the end of the world. You can still live a reasonably healthy life. But if you're breathing muscles atrophy, you've got a problem.

All together, 1 billion people world-wide suffer from some form of respiratory condition. Bronchitis, Asthma, Pneumonia, emphysema, or lung cancer, the single common denominator is always lack of breathing. To add to this, Cardio-vascular illnesses are the number one killer in the world. Part of the reason why our cardio-vascular systems deteriorate is because of our lack of breathing.

Breathing and the autonomic nervous system

Stress is perhaps the most wide-spread ailment people suffer from, and yet it doesn't have to be that way. If you are stressed, it simply means you are not in control of your stress response.

The world doesn't control your stress levels. You do through how you use your breath. This is no secret. Yogis have been honing the powers of the breath for thousands of years. Navy SEALs and high-preforming athletes are doing various breathing techniques as we speak to create a particular state of body and mind. Let me explain:

The lungs are covered in nerves which are connected into both parts of the autonomic nervous system. Your sympathetic nervous system controls your fight-or-flight while the para-sympathetic controls your rest-and digest state. Depending on how you're breathing, you shift your body into one of the two.

Short and shallow breathing leads to a stressed state. This is caused by nerves in the upper-lobes of the lungs that directly connected to your sympathetic response. When you breathe rapidly, you stimulate these nerves, which then signal your brain to release cortisol and adrenaline, thus creating a fight-or-flight state. As you move deeper into the lower lobes of the lungs, you see nerves that are connected to the para-sympathetic nervous system. As you breathe deeper and slower cycles, air moves further down into the lungs and your para-sympathetic nerves become activated, thus signaling the body to relax. By stimulating these nerves, you can thus keep your body relatively relaxed, and you can even access deeper states of meditation.

The modern crux is that we simply don't have time to get to these states of mediation, and expecting to "remember to breathe," while caught in throes of a busy life like expecting swim with lead weights attached to your ankles. We need modern fix for a modern society.

Tummo: 20 breaths for a clear head

The average westerner simply doesn't have time to sit and breathe for 30 minutes a day. We don't even have 10 minutes. The following exercise can get you to a clear mental state in less than 2 minutes. For this, we can turn to a technique from ancient India: Tummo breathing.

-Find a place to sit or lay down comfortably.

-Breathe deeply through the nose until you feel the thoracic cavity expand to its' limit, breathe out completely, flexing the stomach muscles as you do so. Do this for 20 breaths.

- Hold the last breath at the top, you should feel pressure in the lower abdomen if you have filled the lungs completely.

-Hold the breath for as long as you feel comfortable doing so.

-After the breath hold, breathe in slowly through the nose, and hold the recovery breath for 5-10 seconds.

Why it works: As you continue to inhale and exhale, the ratio between oxygen and CO2 increases in the body. This causes the system to become more alkaline, and leads to less of a need to breathe. By holding the inhale, you allow air to sink down into the lower lobes of the lungs. This is important because in those lower lobes, there are nerve endings that are directly connected to the para-sympathetic nervous system. By pushing upon those nerve endings, the system signals the body to relax. Through 20 breaths and a breath hold, you therefore have conscious control over your autonomic nervous system.