A matter of life and breath

Try this little experiment (and don't force it): You'll need to have a clock handy with a second hand to count how long you hold your breath.  Start by breathing normally for a minute or so, don't try to change anything just trying to be calm. Then breathe out and don't breathe in until you feel like you really need to (this is the bit you should not force) and time how long between the end of the exhalation and the inhalation.

The reason I'm suggesting you do this is inspired by a talk I went to on Breathing Pattern Disorders by Leon Chaitow (an Osteopath that has written the textbooks on virtually all techniques used by bodyworkers) and there were some real eye openers on how common this could be.

How long did you manage? 10 seconds? 20 seconds? 30 seconds? more? Apparently we should be able to hold our breaths for approximately 30 seconds with ease, however most of us find this difficult.  My own score this morning was 20 seconds. This means that we are breathing too much so we could be suffering from Hyperventilation Syndrome (HVS) and this is a problem as we are expelling too much Carbon Dioxide (CO2) from our bodies.

Most of us know that we breathe in oxygen (O2) and breathe out CO2 as a waste product, but the level of CO2 in our blood plays an important role in our systems as it helps to keep our body at a particular pH balance between acid/alkali (within a very specific range).  If this pH balance becomes took alkali then the haemoglobin in the Red blood cells struggle to let go of the O2 that our body needs to function properly. Symptoms can range from headaches, lethagy, neck ache, back ache, and anxiety amongst many others.

Some of the other things that were interesting from the talk were that this mostly affects type 1 personalities, it is more common in women (and progesterone raises women's breathing rate during their menstrual cycle), that this can have far reaching consequences on the quality of our life.

What happens is that we breathe into the top of our chests rather than using the diaphragm to fill the whole lung cavity.  This then has a knock on impact on the stability of the low back (through the "core" muscles of the obliques, transversus abdominus and pelvic floor) and through fascial connections to the limbs as well because we are not using things properly.
.
Our bodies become habituated to the level of O2 and alkali in the blood so any changes to this can induce feelings of anxiety (which will then negatively feed back to more hyperventilation) and so trying to retrain needs to be a long slow approach: 5 minutes each morning and night as a focussed effort but forgetting about it and getting on with your life the rest of the time.

In his talk Leon Chaitow showed us a video of retraining (The Nutri Centre filmed the whole talk and it is available in its entirity on their YouTube Channel) but the first part is to focus on the out breath for short periods. This is done by using the pursed lips exhalation.  You put your lips together and blow a thin stream of air our, gently as if you were blowing out a candle about 1 foot away (put your finger there to feel it) and you empty the lungs as fully as you can.  Close your mouth and count for 1 second before you breathe in through your nose.  Do this for 20 cycles of breathing morning and night for a week and then try holding your breathe to see if there is a difference.

You can find the video on The Nutri Centre website here.