There’s more to breathing than just sucking in oxygen and blowing out carbon dioxide. How we breathe also has a big effect on our body, says Mark Westmoquette
In recent years, breath training programmes have become widespread – and for good reason. Stress affects breathing via a negative feedback loop, causing the breath to speed up and become shallow, which in turn makes us feel more stressed.
But what’s now well understood is that we can consciously reverse this feedback loop. When we take active control of our breath, we can create a virtuous circle where steady breathing engenders feelings of greater calm and focus.
Many senior company executives who have undergone breath training say that learning how to breathe properly has changed their lives (https://www.fastcompany.com/3049108/this-breathing-exercise-can-help-you-stay-focused-at-work). For example, Bill Reilly, current marketing director of Apple Pay, said in a Harvard Business Review profile that by taking three deep breaths each time he sat down at his desk helped him relax during the course of a busy day – including just before meetings. Reilly found that sustained periods of conscious breathing helped him ‘restore his perspective while enabling him to take a fresh look at a question or problem and come up with new solutions’. For him, those three breaths turned into 30-minute meditation sessions once he started seeing the benefits.
To understand what’s happening here, we need to look the world of stress physiology. The human stress reaction has been hard wired into our body over millions of years of evolution. If the brain perceives a threat (be that physical, emotional, or even existential), it will initiate a fight or flight reaction. It’s important to appreciate that whether you’re facing a pack of lions, or about to go into an important client meeting – or indeed if you just can’t find a parking space when you get home from work – your body will have a stress response (albeit at different intensities). This whole-system reaction involves the release of hormones like adrenaline which causes an increase in heart rate, an intensifying and narrowing of the awareness, and – importantly for our purposes – the tensing up of certain muscles.
Of all animals, only humans stand up on two legs. This leaves our vulnerable soft belly facing forwards (towards an attacker). That means one of the first things we’ve learnt do when under threat is to brace our belly by tensing the abdomen. Many people in our chronically stressed-out modern society hold a permanent level of background tension in their belly which can be very detrimental to their health.
The abdominal muscles form one of three sets of muscles we use for breathing. At rest, we breathe using the diaphragm. Breathing in causes the belly to swell as the diaphragm pulls down. During physical exertion, we employ the intercostal muscles (between the ribs) to expand the chest for greater in-breath, and the abdominals to squeeze out for greater out-breath.
When the abdominal muscles tense up (even if only slightly), the belly will no longer be able to swell so easily with the in-breath and the diaphragm becomes restricted. The intercostals therefore take over, causing the breath to become ‘chesty’ and shallow.
The fight/flight reaction is controlled by the arousal-focussed sympathetic branch of the nervous system. Our resting state is controlled by the parasympathetic nervous system. Under relaxed conditions, breathing in causes a slight arousal of the system, shifting the emphasis towards the sympathetic system and causing the heart rate to increase slightly. Breathing out causes a shift back to the parasympathetic mode and a subsequent decrease in heart rate. This natural rise and fall in heart rate with the breath is known as respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) and is a special case of the more general measure of heart rate variability (HRV). Having a high HRV has been associated with a sense of wellbeing and with lateral, integrative and creative thinking.
During a fight/flight reaction, however, HRV decreases (or even drops to zero) as the parasympathetic system no longer exerts a calming effect on the out breath.
Cardiac coherence is a term that has emerged in recent years that refers to a high level of order, stability and harmony in your body’s systems, similar to being ‘in the zone’ or in a state of ‘flow’. Having a coherent system means having a high HRV when you’re relaxed, but also an ability to switch quickly into and – importantly – back out of more stressed (i.e., lower HRV) states. The more resilient and flexible your system is, the faster you’re able to switch gears between different states. The interesting thing is your actual heart rate isn’t what matters – you can be in a coherent state with a slow or fast heart rate. It’s having a high HRV that you’re after.
So how do you train yourself to have a more coherent system and function at a more optimal level? It starts by making a habit of paying attention to your breath. Since meetings can often be stressful, it makes sense to use the time before going to a meeting (be that in-person or online) to do these five simple things so you can be at your best:
1Establish your posture. If you’re standing, have the weight even between the feet and stand tall. If you’re sitting, sit up comfortably with an aligned, relaxed poise.
2Be mindful. Drop your attention onto your breath and, before you make any conscious changes, notice how you’re breathing. Becoming aware of the breath without changing it is already quite a skill. You can place a hand on your belly if that helps. Notice if your breath is long/short, shallow/deep, smooth/irregular, in the belly or chest? Is it easy to determine these things or not?
3Establish rhythm. Research shows that the best way of moving towards a coherent state is by establishing a regular breath rhythm. So, again without making any conscious changes, start to count the length of your natural in and out breaths. Is your out-breath longer than the in, or is it the other way around?
4Regulate the rhythm. Now you can take some conscious control. Some groups advocate a fixed ratio of in/out breath (e.g. ‘box breathing’ as taught in the military); whereas others encourage you to lengthen the out-breath (personally I like 7/11 breathing). Consciously slowing down the pace of the breath is also important. With practice, it’s not hard to extend the length of the exhale to around six seconds or more. Take it easy and gradually – a long breath isn’t better if it’s strained. As you breathe, try to do so smoothly with an even flow rate. Start by taking just three regulated breaths, then go into the meeting. As time goes on, you can extend this to one minute of conscious breathing.
5Stay focussed. This is the skill of mindfulness. As you breathe, do your best to focus on the feeling of breathing, and if your mind wanders, gently guide it back.
Mark Westmoquette is an Astrophysicist, Zen Teacher and the author of Mindful Thoughts for Stargazers, Stars, and The Mindful Universe. See more at markwestmoquette.co.uk
