Breathing: The Perfect Breath

[Explor­ing Life] In Per­fect Breath­ing the authors describe the per­fect breath as being the mar­riage between breath aware­ness and con­scious breath­ing. [1] Breath aware­ness is a form of body aware­ness focused on breath­ing pat­terns and the result­ing influ­ence these pat­terns have on our body, mind, and spirit. Con­scious breath­ing refers to the abil­ity to apply spe­cific kinds of breath­ing tech­niques that are designed to improve our health and well being. The per­fect breath is there­fore an act of dis­cern­ment that inte­grates pro­pri­o­cep­tion (i.e. the abil­ity to sense the posi­tion and loca­tion and ori­en­ta­tion and move­ment of the body and its parts) and con­scious inten­tion.

The Cul­ture of Breath

Through­out our edu­ca­tion we may be exposed to some gen­eral ideas about breath­ing dur­ing phys­i­cal exer­cise or learn some basics of the res­pi­ra­tory sys­tem in health class, but we usu­ally grad­u­ate from our edu­ca­tion know­ing lit­tle about what con­sti­tutes healthy nor­mal breath­ing or what the poten­tial dan­gers are when our breath­ing pat­terns become abnor­mal. When we make our annual visit to the doc­tor for a phys­i­cal we undergo a range of tests that check to see if the body is in a state of nor­mal health (mean­ing the absence of dis­ease or symp­toms that indi­cate the pres­ence of a dis­ease). The qual­ity of our breath­ing is not ana­lyzed as part of the exam­i­na­tion (at least in my expe­ri­ence) and as a result we tend not to under­stand breath­ing as a valu­able focus for diagnosis.

West­ern cul­ture seems to assign lit­tle impor­tance to nat­ural breath­ing and how it impacts our health and sense of well being. Since our sense of what is impor­tant in life is inti­mately con­di­tioned by our cul­tural envi­ron­ment, the con­nec­tion between health and breath­ing is given lit­tle attention.[1] How­ever, none of this means that breath­ing should not be an essen­tial focus in our lives. The ancient spir­i­tual tra­di­tions of East­ern cul­tures, for exam­ple, have con­sis­tently empha­sized the fun­da­men­tal impor­tant of devel­op­ing cor­rect breath­ing habits as a means to develop body, mind, and spirit. In these cul­tural con­texts, focus­ing atten­tion on the qual­ity of breathe and breath­ing is a basic assump­tion. Learn­ing from the expe­ri­ences of other cul­tures is a valu­able way to improve our own.

The Prin­ci­ples of Nat­ural Breathing

“Healthy,” “nat­ural,” “cor­rect,” “quiet,” “per­fect,” or “mod­er­ate” breath­ing are all adjec­tives used to describe ideal states of breath­ing. For the sake of sim­plic­ity, I will gather these terms under the term nat­ural breath­ing. The word “nat­ural” refers to the state of our breath­ing under nor­mal every­day con­di­tions, not the kind of breath­ing we are doing while exer­cis­ing or endur­ing moments of sud­den stress. The word “nat­ural” also invokes the qual­ity of breath­ing that is the most ideal for pro­mot­ing and main­tain­ing gen­eral health and well being. It is there­fore a form of breath­ing that is nat­ural, not unnat­ural, to body and mind. The inves­ti­ga­tion here then focuses on what con­sti­tutes the most effec­tive way to breathe under nor­mal conditions.

What are the basic prin­ci­ples of nat­ural breath­ing? The sum­mary below is based on a review of three resources: a) David Coulter’s Anatomy of Hatha Yoga; b) Mary Bond’s The New Rules of Pos­ture; and Den­nis Moore’s The Tao of Nat­ural Breath­ing. In each I was specif­i­cally look­ing for the core prin­ci­ples that revealed the author’s per­spec­tive on what con­sti­tuted nat­ural breath­ing under nor­mal every­day life con­di­tions. In other words, explor­ing the con­scious manip­u­la­tion of breath­ing through exer­cises, such as those found in Yoga, is not within the scope of this article.

I found five basic prin­ci­ples of nat­ural breathing:

1. Silence: The quiet breath lit­er­ally means that noth­ing is heard when breath­ing. Both the inhala­tion and exha­la­tion are silent.
2. Rhythm: The exha­la­tion is longer than the inhala­tion. The prac­tice of quiet breath­ing requires atten­tion to length­en­ing and fully com­plet­ing the exha­la­tion. Length­en­ing the exha­la­tion slows the heart rate, reduces blood pres­sure, and reduces fear and anx­i­ety in the mind.
3. Open­ness: Nat­ural breath­ing engages the mus­cles of the lower chest and diaphragm. Since most blood flow occurs in the lower area of the lungs when we are upright, it is impor­tant that breath­ing nat­u­rally engages the entire chest and diaphragm in an effort­less and sub­tle manner.
4. Path­way: In quiet breath­ing, both inhala­tion and exha­la­tion are pass through the nose. This dif­fers from con­trolled breath­ing exer­cises in which exha­la­tion is often through the mouth. The nose adjusts the mois­ture and tem­per­a­ture of the air, and fil­ters out unwanted debris. Fur­ther, the resis­tance offered by the nose improves the deliv­ery of oxy­gen to the blood­stream and engages the diaphragm properly.
5. Pos­ture: There is an inti­mate rela­tion­ship between pos­ture and breath­ing. For exam­ple, if we sit in a slouched man­ner, nat­ural breath­ing becomes impos­si­ble since we are clos­ing our chest and diaphragm. This means that poor pos­ture can in fact pro­mote abnor­mal breath­ing habits, which in turn leads to a degra­da­tion of body and mind. There­fore, the cul­ti­va­tion of healthy breath­ing must be done simul­ta­ne­ously with the cul­ti­va­tion of healthy posture.

Nor­mal breath­ing pro­motes a state of equi­lib­rium across body and mind. This means that we both feel bet­ter and think with greater clar­ity and con­cen­tra­tion. If our breath­ing is any­thing other than nat­ural then a neg­a­tive impact occurs on our body and mind. We may even begin to develop anx­i­ety about not breath­ing prop­erly an

The Envi­ron­ment and Nat­ural Breathing

Regard­less of how well we have mas­tered nat­ural breath­ing, the qual­ity of what we are actu­ally breath­ing in is largely beyond our con­trol. The his­tory of civ­i­liza­tion is at least to some extent a his­tory of eco­log­i­cal destruc­tion. Pol­lu­tion and toxic emis­sions are unavoid­able con­stituents in the air we breath. In addi­tion, we ingest numer­ous a wide range of chem­i­cals and genet­i­cally mod­i­fied organ­isms that orig­i­nate in our food sup­ply. It seems impos­si­ble to com­pletely avoid addi­tives to prod­ucts which we con­sume. Preser­v­a­tives such as sodium, found in vast amounts of our food sup­ply, are an obvi­ous cause of ill­ness and dis­ease. These chem­i­cals merge with our cir­cu­la­tory sys­tem through our diges­tive sys­tem and skin, and there­fore have a direct impact on the qual­ity of our breath. There is lit­tle known, to my knowl­edge, about how the exten­sive use of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal med­ica­tions impact breathing.

In spite of the sever­ity of this prob­lem, it does no good to live in fear of these issues or aban­don the cul­ti­va­tion of nor­mal breath­ing. Mod­ern soci­ety with its mer­cu­r­ial pri­or­ity of mate­r­ial con­sump­tion over human well being is obvi­ously mis­guided. Devel­op­ing pat­terns of healthy breath­ing in the face of these larger prob­lems can only serve to help increase the qual­ity of our lives. It remains to be seen if soci­ety will embrace enough san­ity to restruc­ture its pri­or­i­ties and place greater value on being proac­tive rather than reac­tive with respect to health, well being, and the environment.

The Impor­tance of Nat­ural Breathing

Under­stand­ing and devel­op­ing the habit of nat­ural breath­ing is basic to being proac­tive in health and well being. Even though our own cul­ture may not assign enough value to nat­ural breath­ing through edu­ca­tion and health care, it is a basic con­stituent of a proac­tive approach to gen­eral health and well being. The word spirit comes from the Latin spir­i­tus mean­ing breath. East­ern spir­i­tual tra­di­tions have con­stantly main­tained that nat­ural breath­ing and the reg­u­la­tion of breath is fun­da­men­tal to cre­at­ing a sense of equa­nim­ity and bal­ance across body, mind, and spirit. The prac­ti­cal devel­op­ment of nat­ural breath­ing is essen­tial to the improve­ment of our over­all qual­ity of life.

Notes

1. Lee, Al and Don Camp­bell. Per­fect Breath­ing, 2009. Down­load the Per­fect Breath­ing Work­book.
1. Mod­ern sci­ence is con­duct­ing valu­able research into breath­ing and its affects on our health and well being. My opin­ion is, how­ever, that we do not gen­er­ally place enough impor­tance on it from a cul­tural perspective.