We are surrounded by advertisements, infomercials, news articles, posters, signs, audio, and video telling us that we need to stop and breathe. Wait a minute if I was not breathing I think I would know it? Yes, we are all breathing but not like we used to breathe in the days and times when we hunted for our food, pounded our own corn into flour, knitted our own clothes, walked everywhere and even beat our own eggs. In our faced paced world today we are living in a state of sympathetic overload or dominance. What that means is that our nervous system and thus all of our organs and brain are running in high gear. When that happens, our breathing is more shallow and rapid thus causing increased cortisol (stress hormone) that signals our immune system to produce lower white blood cells which are used to fight off infections and police our bodies for mutated/potential cancer cells. Blood is shunted(moved away) from our core to our arms and legs so we can run from this danger or stress our bodies are perceiving. Our bodies PH changes and that causes all the flora in our gut to change so the bad flora over grows, our skin ph changes so that it smells different and feels different. Our digestive tract at first speeds up but as the stress response continues, day in and day out, our digestive tract fatigues, contracts and spasms. As a result of the shallow more rapid breathing we are not able to breath in large quantities of oxygen to nourish our cells providing a necessary ingredient in the production of energy. Additionally, we are not fully exhaling which causes a built up of carbon dioxide and other toxins in the body. So, our bodies essentially become a backed up sewer line with all the debris slowing, stalling then backing up, sitting there and fermenting and stinking up the joint. In our bodies we experience decreased energy, brain fog, lowered immune system, digestive problems, more frequent infections, dry skin, pimples, need to use more deodorant because we smell different........
In the days when we used to hunt for our food, walk to gather our food, sit and have to pound out corn to make flour, darn our own socks, even beat our own eggs we were able to take the time to breathe correctly. We had to pace our selves and our breathing otherwise we would not be able to do all that needed to be done. Thus our bodies were in more of a balance between sympathetic (fright and flight) and parasympathetic (rest and digest) modes of operating. Let's think about this. If you were out hunting for your food do you think you would be successful if you were breathing quickly, moving quickly, acting or feeling jittery. You would starve to death because the animals would hear you, smell you and sense some strange agitated/unsettled presence in their forest and stay away. To be a good hunter you have to be calm, blend into the forest, breath slowly in and out, move slowly and rhymically or not move at all. That is parasympathetic living. Very different from our fast paced lives of today. Let's look at those that did not hunt but rather were in charge of taking care of the day to day needs. The ability to sit for long periods of time and pound corn into flour required a comfortable position, focus and developing a rhymical motion, and breathing so that it could be sustained for an extended period of time. Even the act of darning clothes requires a steady hand, flowing motion of needle and thread all of which requires controlled breathing. If not you would prick your finger with the needle, pound your finger with a rock, get off a bad arrow shot.....
But today in our fast paced world we must take breathing classes, yoga classes, meditation classes to remind us how to breathe normally, restore us to a more balanced state. If we just put more balance into our day, sometimes quick sometimes slow, we wouldn't need to make time to remember to breathe correctly we would be living correctly.
But, until that time comes let's talk about how to breathe correctly to help our bodies maintain a more balanced nervous system.
Ideally, we should be breathing in (inhalation) for a count of 6 and breathing out (exhalation) for a count of 6. This type of breathing help keep our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems balanced. Inhalation stimulates our sympathetic nervous system. It puts or keeps us in fright and flight mode. Exhalation stimulates our parasympathetic nervous system. This is the state that allows for rest, digest, repairing of our bodies. It is also the state that allows our brains to focus and perform more efficiently. Parasympathetic nervous system allows us to have a steady hand to shoot the arrow, type on a keyboard, throw a dart and hit the bullseye. When we are too sympathetic we lose fine motor skills. We are just running for our lives.
If you would like to continuing learning about breathing, Richard P. Brown MD, has done extensive research and teaches how to breath properly. He also has several books on the subject. One of which is called Healing Power of the Breath.
http://www.breath-body-mind.com/richard-brown-md.php
