Breathing: Conscious Breathing

[Explor­ing Life] Con­scious breath­ing refers to spe­cific tech­niques designed to improve breath­ing through the con­scious reg­u­la­tion of breath. In com­bi­na­tion with breath­ing aware­ness, con­scious breath­ing leads toward the goal of attain­ing the per­fect breath. [1] The health and well being ben­e­fits of nat­ural, nor­mal, or per­fect breath­ing span body, mind and spirit, and in this sense improve the qual­ity of our expe­ri­ences in life. An fun­da­men­tal require­ment of con­scious breath­ing is mind­ful­ness, or the abil­ity to focus and hold our con­cen­tra­tion on a sin­gle object, in this case our breath­ing, with a spe­cific inten­tion or pur­pose in mind. In this sense, con­scious breath­ing is a path­way to phys­i­cal heal­ing and health, men­tal sta­bil­ity and clar­ity, as well as spir­i­tual explo­ration and growth.

Con­scious Breath­ing: Basic Principles

Con­scious breath­ing is a means to opti­mize the bal­ance of oxy­gen and car­bon diox­ide in the blood stream. The main pur­pose of the res­pi­ra­tory sys­tem is allow for the effi­cient exchange of oxy­gen and car­bon diox­ide. The con­cen­tra­tions of oxy­gen and car­bon diox­ide in our blood deter­mines the fre­quency of breath­ing: an increase in the con­cen­tra­tion of car­bon diox­ide stim­u­lates an accel­er­a­tion of breath, while an increase in the con­cen­tra­tion of oxy­gen stim­u­lates a decel­er­a­tion of breath. The body auto­mat­i­cally adjusts our breath­ing pat­tern in a con­stant effort to main­tain a desir­able bal­ance of oxy­gen and car­bon diox­ide in the blood stream.

Con­scious breath­ing must be prac­ticed care­fully. If the car­bon diox­ide lev­els in the blood­stream become too high or too low both the body and mind are neg­a­tively impacted. [2] It is pos­si­ble, then, to con­sciously con­trol our breath­ing in ways that improp­erly alter the bal­ance of oxy­gen and car­bon diox­ide in the blood and place us at risk. If these improper tech­niques over extended peri­ods of time we are lit­er­ally prac­tic­ing abnor­mal breath­ing pat­terns that only serve to trau­ma­tize both body and mind.

When we breath con­sciously, we engage our mind in the breath­ing process through some kind of inten­tion. The end effect of con­scious breath­ing is a change in the con­cen­tra­tions of oxy­gen and car­bon diox­ide in the blood stream. Chang­ing this con­cen­tra­tion alters the dynam­ics of every cell in our body, and there­fore our feel­ing, thoughts, and emotions.

Con­scious breath­ing is unity of sci­ence and art. It is sci­en­tific in the sense that it is essen­tial to under­stand and prac­tice only those tech­niques that pro­duce a pos­i­tive effect. It is an art in the sense that we bring our pow­ers of cre­ative atten­tion and inten­tion to our body and mind in order to enhance our health and well being.

Con­scious Breath­ing Exercises

Con­scious breath­ing exer­cises focus on con­trol­ling the three key func­tions of breath­ing: a) inhala­tion; b) exha­la­tion; and the c) pause or rest­ing point. The tech­niques used to exer­cise con­trol over breath­ing gen­er­ally fall into three cat­e­gories: a) Rhyth­mic Breath­ing; b) Sen­sory Breath­ing; and c) Con­tem­pla­tive Breathing.

Rhyth­mic Breathing

The idea of main­tain­ing a spe­cific ratio of inhalation-(pause)-exhalation is fun­da­men­tal to all con­scious breath­ing exer­cises. The ratio is not intended to mea­sure sec­onds in absolute time, but is an indi­ca­tor of a golden mean for breath con­trol. Incor­rectly prac­ticed, con­scious breath­ing can have adverse effects. For exam­ple, it is exha­la­tion that the exha­la­tion is longer than the inhala­tion, oth­er­wise abnor­mal breath­ing and its adverse side effects will result. The use of a rhythm also pro­motes mind­ful­ness by focus­ing the mind on main­tain­ing a spe­cific breath­ing rhythm.

2:1 Rhythm: 2:1 breath­ing is a Yoga tech­nique that involves exhal­ing twice as long as inhal­ing. The actual amount of time taken is depen­dent on the indi­vid­ual. For exam­ple, some indi­vid­u­als may find a three sec­ond inhala­tion fol­lowed by a six sec­ond exha­la­tion ben­e­fi­cial, while oth­ers may shorten or lengthen the actual time involved. Ini­tially what is most impor­tant is to ensure the ratio is in tact. As our body adjusts to the breath­ing tech­nique, it is likely that a nat­ural length­en­ing of the cycle will occur but there should be no stress appar­ent. When prop­erly prac­ticed, the ben­e­fits of this tech­nique are aimed at pro­duc­ing a sense of calm and induces the relax­ation of body and mind. In this exer­cise the rhythm pro­duced is one of smooth con­stant motion.

4:7:8 Rhythm: Dr. Andrew Weil rec­om­mends a breath­ing exer­cise that mod­i­fies the 2:1 breath­ing tech­nique by intro­duc­ing a pause. He calls this exer­cise The 4–7-8 (or Relax­ing Breath) Exer­cise[4]. Inhala­tion (through the nose) is main­tained to a count of four, then the breath is held to a count of seven, and exha­la­tion (through the mouth) is main­tained to a count of eight. The most impor­tant aspect of this exer­cise is to main­tain a ratio of 4:7:8 and adjust the speed to elim­i­nate any sense of stress or dis­com­fort. There is no rec­om­mended quan­tity of air so the assump­tion is that a com­fort­able amount of air that pre­serves the ratio is desir­able. Dr. Weil refers to this tech­nique as a “nat­ural tran­quil­lizer for the ner­vous system.”

The Six Sec­ond Breath: The Six Sec­ond Breath [5] is sim­i­lar to the 2:1 breath, but is timed more rig­or­ously. Both the inhala­tion and exha­la­tion are two sec­onds, and the pause between each is one sec­ond. Thus, each breath cycle is timed to be exactly six sec­onds. This mode of breath­ing, the authors sug­gest, should be the default, or nor­mal, mode of breath­ing at all times.

Sen­sory Breathing

Sen­sory breath­ing is focused on exer­cis­ing spe­cific kinds of sen­sa­tions within the body. The exer­cises are gen­er­ally not timed, in other words, the mind is not occu­pied with count­ing. The rhythm of the breath is a result of the sen­sa­tions being embraced. increas­ing the capac­ity of both the inhala­tion and exhalation.

Foun­da­tion Breath: The Foun­da­tion Breath [6] is an exer­cise designed to pro­mote deep breath­ing by con­sciously inhal­ing and exhal­ing to capac­ity. Pauses in between each motion are used. The pur­pose of the exer­cise is to reac­quaint the body with full nat­ural breath­ing, and to instill this breath­ing pat­tern as an uncon­scious habit. In other words, the Foun­da­tion Breath is lit­er­ally the foun­da­tion of all breath work.

Alter­nate Nos­tril Breath­ing: Pranayama, a San­skrit terms com­mon to Yoga, means breath con­trol. One of the more impor­tant breath con­trol tech­niques is alter­nate nos­tril breath­ing. The method is sim­ple: a) close one nos­tril and com­plete an inhalation-exhalation cycle; then b) release and close the other nos­tril and com­plete one breath cycle. Prac­ticed con­sis­tently, this exer­cise calms the ner­vous sys­tem and helps to focus the mind.

Con­tem­pla­tive Breathing

Con­scious breath­ing and med­i­ta­tion are closely linked. Bud­dhist med­i­ta­tion tech­niques com­monly iden­tify a sin­gle object as the focus of a med­i­ta­tion ses­sion. By con­cen­trat­ing on the object, the inten­tion is to focus on the present moment. This has a calm­ing affect on the mind and thought process tends toward greater still­ness. In this sense, med­i­ta­tion pro­motes deep relax­ation of both body and mind.

Con­tem­pla­tive breath­ing means focus­ing on a spe­cific inten­tion as a means to guide breath­ing. The inten­tion can be an affir­ma­tion, a par­tic­u­lar qual­ity (e.g. com­pas­sion), a men­tal image or visu­al­iza­tion, or an object. The pur­pose is the move both breath and thought in per­fect unity, until breath­ing and the mind become indis­tin­guish­able from one another. In other words, the breath lit­er­ally car­ries thought, and thought lit­er­ally is breath.

Tich Nhat Hanh pro­vides the fol­low­ing recommendation:

Breath­ing in I know that I am breath­ing in.
Breath­ing out I know that I am breath­ing out.

We do not need to con­trol our breath. Feel the breath as it actu­ally is. It may be long or short, deep or shal­low. With our aware­ness it will nat­u­rally become slower and deeper. Con­scious breath­ing is the key to unit­ing body and mind and bring­ing the energy of mind­ful­ness into each moment of our life. [7]

In con­tem­pla­tive breath­ing there is no con­scious count­ing or tim­ing of the breath. Occu­py­ing one’s atten­tion with count­ing, in this case, only serves as a dis­trac­tion. The sutra, or short verse used, may be impro­vised using the under­ly­ing pat­tern, “Breath­ing in I… Breath­ing out I…” A spe­cific men­tal image or imme­di­ate set­ting can also be the object of con­tem­pla­tion. The crit­i­cal aspect of con­tem­pla­tive breath­ing is the the object of aware­ness pro­vides the energy to nat­u­rally reg­u­late the breath — with­out the inter­ven­tion of the mind. It remains con­scious breath­ing since we are observ­ing and wit­ness­ing its movements.

Notes

1. The idea of the per­fect breath as a com­bi­na­tion of breath aware­ness and con­scious breath­ing is found in Per­fect Breath­ing. Addi­tional infor­ma­tion can be found at PerfectBreath.com and the Per­fect Breath­ing Blog.

2. See Abnor­mal Breath­ing: The Need For Aware­ness for the effects of too much or too lit­tle car­bon diox­ide in the blood stream on both body and mind.

3. See Nat­ural Breath­ing: The Space of Equa­nim­ity.

4. See The 4–7-8 (or Relax­ing Breath) Exer­cise (accessed Feb­ru­ary 2009).

5. See Per­fect Breath­ing: The Six Sec­ond Breath

6. See Per­fect Breath­ing: The Foun­da­tion Breath.

7. See Plum Vil­lage Prac­tice Cen­ter: Breathing