WHY DO WE FOCUS ON THE IMPORTANCE OF BREATH-AWARENESS IN CLASS?
“BREATHE IN. FEEL YOUR EXHALE.” WHY DO WE WANT YOU TO FEEL YOUR EXHALE?
First things first, we are not mental therapists. We have our 200HR certification in yoga training and have done extensive research and practice with yoga combined with breathwork. In today’s society, there are high levels of chronic stress with very limited tools to help us overcome it. According to WebMD, there are many different ways to cope with stress, like exercise, relaxing your body, eating well, talking with a therapist, or deep breathing. While most of those forms of coping seem accessible, there is only one way that is constantly available to you 100% of the time… your breath. When we are aware of our breath or we feel our exhale, we are putting ourselves into a state of being here now, like Molly described in our last blog, because your breath is happening right now, in this very moment.
In this blog, we wanted to explain why we put emphasis on bringing your attention to your breath, in and outside of class. Believe it or not, most of us involuntarily learn inefficient breathing as we grow into our adult selves. But I’ve been breathing my whole life, how can that be inefficient? Majority of us breathe using our mouth, which uses your back, chest, and neck to deliver air in and out of your lungs, whereas nasal deep breathing depends solely on your lungs and diaphragm. When your lungs are healthy and elastic, the diaphragm is able to contract more easily, increasing the volume of air entering and leaving your body. As an added bonus, there has been evidence in recent studies that diaphragmatic breathing, or deep nasal breathing, had a positive impact on mental health.
(FULL) DIAPHRAGMATIC BREATHING
We use our diaphragm while we breathe, but do we use it to its full capacity? Experts suggest probably not. Diaphragmatic breathing involves the full contraction of the diaphragm during exhalation and the expansion of the belly during inhalation. When we are able to fully utilize our diaphragm for breathing, rather than rely on our upper chest or back, we are able to bring more oxygen in, build a carbon dioxide (CO2) tolerance within our bodies, which then allows for more oxygen to reach our muscles. This type of breathing not only enhances your breath volume but it can increase your physical performance in different activities, like hot yoga.
Try it now.
Come into a seated position and place your hands at the base of your ribcage. With your mouth closed, place your tongue to the roof of your mouth. Breathe in and out through your nose. Next, try doing this same breath pattern without moving your nostrils and instead bring your attention to the back of your throat. Almost if your throat becomes a bendy straw, creating a resistance-type sound. Fill your lungs by expanding your stomach and then exhale with pulling your ribcage inward. This is breathing using your diaphragm to its full potential.
When we introduce deep diaphragmatic breathing into our lives, we can improve the body’s physical performance. But how?
I’m going to get into a little science, so stay with me... A protein in our blood, called hemoglobin, attaches to oxygen and gives our muscles the boost of energy we need to move. In order to maximize the amount of oxygen in our hemoglobin, there needs to be sufficient CO2 in our muscles to complete this transfer of gases. The process of limiting or speeding up our breath means that we are inefficiently delivering oxygen and CO2 to the rest of our body. Diaphragmatic breathing can help increase the amount of CO2 in our muscles by slowing down our breathing and building a CO2 tolerance. This increases the transfer of oxygen to your muscles, creating more energy for your body to use. The diagram below depicts the transfer of oxygen from hemoglobin to our tissues - in order to do this, there needs to be enough time for the gas exchange to take place - this is where CO2 tolerance comes into play. The slower we exhale, the slower CO2 is released from our cells and this creates CO2 tolerance.
How does CO2 tolerance work and why is it important? Breathing through your mouth or rapidly hyperventilating, does also lead to elevated levels of CO2 in your body, however, because you are breathing so fast, there is not enough time for oxygen to reach your tissues. We want to slowly exhale our CO2 from our lungs for there to be enough time for oxygen to reach our muscles for optimal physical performance.
When you hyperventilate, the speed of your breath ultimately drives you to a panic alarm state feeling the urge to breathe more. When our mind goes into “alarm-mode” it can lead us to an impulsive fight or flight state channeling our sympathetic nervous system, which we then become reactive without understanding what is actually happening. For example, hold your breath in for 20 seconds, pause and notice how your mind starts to panic for air. “We are in danger” is what our mind tries to convince us but we can train ourselves to sit with these thoughts rather than act on them, sound familiar? This drives our bodies into our parasympathetic nervous system, allowing our body to return to its normal day-to-day routine without feeling stressed.
FULL DIAPHRAGMATIC BREATHING BENEFITS
According to Healthline, “One of the biggest benefits of diaphragmatic breathing is reducing stress.” Below are a few more benefits.
Helps reduce levels of cortisol in the body aka The Stress Hormone.
It can lower heart rate.
It can lower blood pressure.
It helps to improve muscle core stability.
It causes efficient gas exchange within the body leading to heightened fitness performance.
HOW DOES ALL OF THIS APPLY TO HOT YOGA?
In a Wisconsin Power Yoga hot yoga class, we frequently instruct for a loud group breath or “to breathe loud enough so your neighbors can hear you.” The combination of breath-focused attention plus the heat puts you into a state of being 100% present because frankly, it takes a lot of focus to practice vinyasa yoga in 95 degrees with 70% humidity. But that is the point, to bring you into the present moment, where you are able to focus on what you are doing, while you are doing it. Use your breath as a tool to guide you throughout class to help you determine what your level of physical activity should be. In other words, if you can’t continue to focus on your nasal breathing or if you reach a point of being “air-hungry”, that is your cue to take a break into child's-pose and then join in when you can come back to your calm breath.
This type of breath-work is not easy and requires patience with yourself and your practice. Like I stated above, breathing slowly through your nose and using your diaphragm rather than your upper chest can bring more oxygen to reach your muscles providing an effortless physical practice.
MEDITATION AND WISCONSIN POWER YOGA
We will get into meditation a lot more in our next blog but here is a glimpse into its significance. Our teachers, Philip Urso and Renee Deslauriers with Live Love Teach, describe the power of breath-awareness as, “Whether you are meditating or not, if you do not like the way you feel, notice your breath. It’s simple but effective: The practice of putting your awareness on your breath pulls your consciousness away from thinking into presence, every time.” If you would like to read more from them, click here.
We like to incorporate meditation into our classes because we value the importance of becoming aware of our meta-mind, or the part of our brain that notices what is happening right now while being in a state of non-reactivity or accessing our parasympathetic (non-stress) nervous system. One misconception of meditation is while focusing on the breath, all thoughts should be removed. Contrary to this belief, a part of learning how to meditate is to watch the process of these thoughts coming into our consciousness and then choosing to redirect your attention back to your breath. Some may think that drifting off into thought means that they’ve failed to meditate but conversely, they’ve achieved meditative “success”. When you practice with us at Wisconsin Power Yoga, remember that the goal is to be able to watch your thoughts and not react, rather than try to remove the thoughts from appearing in your consciousness.
As Molly and I dive deeper into breath significance, we will be sharing it with you! Remember to breathe, sweat and RESET - we’ll see you in class.
Aimee Bielinski
Sources
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5455070/
https://www.healthline.com/health/diaphragmatic-breathing#benefits
