Reflections on 30-years; Breathe
In reflecting on 30-years of teaching Yoga, I have arrived at three points that I consider essential parts of physical practice - Embody | Align | Breathe
In the prior two blog postings, I unpacked my thoughts on Embody and Align, and today I'd like to explore what I mean when I say breathe.
Breathing is certainly an essential part of the Modern Postural Yoga (MPY) practice, though not always for the reasons that are mentioned. For example, there is a pernicious myth that deep breathing increases oxygen concentration of the blood. While this claim may sound alluring, it's just not true. The body keeps blood oxygen concentration very tightly bound within certain limits, and all the deep breathing in the world is not going to alter this concentration very much. Even if deep breathing did alter concentrations of blood oxygen, would this be desirable?
How many of you consume foods or supplements that are considered anti-oxidants? If you do, you already have a sense of how excess oxygen can cause damage. The damage that arises from oxygen exposure is well established, both in cars and in bodies.
Where I live, cars tend to get rusty when they get older, and we generally blame this rusting on the salt that keeps the roads clear in the Winter. Despite this widespread belief, cars don't rust because they get wet or are exposed to salt, they rust because the metal is chronically exposed to oxygen (Rust is slang for oxidation). The water, ice and salt hold the oxygen molecules against the metal, so it appears as though the ice and salt are the causes of the rust, though they're only the mechanism of delivery - oxygen is the culprit.
In bodies, the stress arising from excess oxygen in the tissues is called oxidative stress. Excess oxygen exposure is a stressor, and causes all manner of problems. A quick story: in my second year in grad school, I took an excellent class on exercise physiology. As part of this class, we were tasked with designing an experiment. One of my classmates ran with this challenge, and considered techniques to help improve the marathon world-record. He presented an elaborate scheme to supply marathoners with pure oxygen for the duration of the race, potentially enabling world-class runners to break the mythic 2-hour marathon time.
As he pitched his idea, the classroom crackled with suppressed laughter. While it probably wasn't the kindest response, the snickerers immediately recognized that this hours-long exposure to pure oxygen would assuredly run afoul of the Institutional Review Board (IRB, the agency tasked with keeping research participants from harm). Oxygen is great stuff, though only in the tiniest concentrations. Too much oxygen is harmful to tissues, as surely as botulism and arsenic are toxic to tissues. Deep breathing does not increase blood oxygen concentration, though many people then point to claims that deep breathing is part of Yoga because it is relaxing.
For better or worse, the claim that relaxation arises from deep breathing should also be scrutinized. I cite a study in my MS thesis (Grossman and Taylor, 2007) that pokes big holes in the deep-breathing-is-relaxing claim. In both human and non-human animal studies, Grossman and Taylor provide considerable evidence that deep breathing reduces a measure of cardiac stress, but doesn't necessarily reduce the actual stress. In terms of what is measurable, the jury is still out on whether deep breathing is or is not relaxing. As far as I'm concerned, deep breathing makes the cut for reasons other than relaxation and increased blood oxygen concentration.
By now you may be wondering, if deep breathing neither increases blood oxygen concentration nor is proven to be relaxing, then why did it make the cut in Embody | Align | Breathe? Breathe made the cut because unrestricted breathing has many great benefits for the structural body. Most people live with places that are stiff and sore. I've come to view these stiff and sore places as stagnant, rather than inflexible. And the remedy for stagnation is not stretching, but restarting the body's normal, healthy respiratory movements. Each breath is accompanied by internal movements; the diaphragm, ribs, viscera, etc. They all move with the breath. In the state of optimal health, I've observed that these respiratory movements occur everywhere in the body. From the top of the head to the soles of the feet, breathing generates an internal oscillatory movement that is similar to a mother rocking her baby. In the absence of (or restriction in) these respiratory movements, stagnation creeps in. And stagnation tends to be accompanied by soreness, tension and/or a feeling of stiffness.
In embodied practice, a light-touch awareness of deeper breathing can help jumpstart the respiratory movements in the tissues. These respiratory-driven movements, in turn, keep stagnation at bay. As the body's natural state is vitality, the absence of restriction predicts a return to the profundity of baseline vitality. In the interest of keeping the tissues naturally hydrated through the internal movements that naturally occur with breathing, I believe that some intentional work with breath makes the cut, as part of Movement Lab's foci: Embody | Align | Breathe.
In the prior two blog postings, I unpacked my thoughts on Embody and Align, and today I'd like to explore what I mean when I say breathe.
Breathing is certainly an essential part of the Modern Postural Yoga (MPY) practice, though not always for the reasons that are mentioned. For example, there is a pernicious myth that deep breathing increases oxygen concentration of the blood. While this claim may sound alluring, it's just not true. The body keeps blood oxygen concentration very tightly bound within certain limits, and all the deep breathing in the world is not going to alter this concentration very much. Even if deep breathing did alter concentrations of blood oxygen, would this be desirable?
How many of you consume foods or supplements that are considered anti-oxidants? If you do, you already have a sense of how excess oxygen can cause damage. The damage that arises from oxygen exposure is well established, both in cars and in bodies.
Where I live, cars tend to get rusty when they get older, and we generally blame this rusting on the salt that keeps the roads clear in the Winter. Despite this widespread belief, cars don't rust because they get wet or are exposed to salt, they rust because the metal is chronically exposed to oxygen (Rust is slang for oxidation). The water, ice and salt hold the oxygen molecules against the metal, so it appears as though the ice and salt are the causes of the rust, though they're only the mechanism of delivery - oxygen is the culprit.
 |
| This old vehicle was heavily oxidized. Carbondale, CO |
As he pitched his idea, the classroom crackled with suppressed laughter. While it probably wasn't the kindest response, the snickerers immediately recognized that this hours-long exposure to pure oxygen would assuredly run afoul of the Institutional Review Board (IRB, the agency tasked with keeping research participants from harm). Oxygen is great stuff, though only in the tiniest concentrations. Too much oxygen is harmful to tissues, as surely as botulism and arsenic are toxic to tissues. Deep breathing does not increase blood oxygen concentration, though many people then point to claims that deep breathing is part of Yoga because it is relaxing.
For better or worse, the claim that relaxation arises from deep breathing should also be scrutinized. I cite a study in my MS thesis (Grossman and Taylor, 2007) that pokes big holes in the deep-breathing-is-relaxing claim. In both human and non-human animal studies, Grossman and Taylor provide considerable evidence that deep breathing reduces a measure of cardiac stress, but doesn't necessarily reduce the actual stress. In terms of what is measurable, the jury is still out on whether deep breathing is or is not relaxing. As far as I'm concerned, deep breathing makes the cut for reasons other than relaxation and increased blood oxygen concentration.
By now you may be wondering, if deep breathing neither increases blood oxygen concentration nor is proven to be relaxing, then why did it make the cut in Embody | Align | Breathe? Breathe made the cut because unrestricted breathing has many great benefits for the structural body. Most people live with places that are stiff and sore. I've come to view these stiff and sore places as stagnant, rather than inflexible. And the remedy for stagnation is not stretching, but restarting the body's normal, healthy respiratory movements. Each breath is accompanied by internal movements; the diaphragm, ribs, viscera, etc. They all move with the breath. In the state of optimal health, I've observed that these respiratory movements occur everywhere in the body. From the top of the head to the soles of the feet, breathing generates an internal oscillatory movement that is similar to a mother rocking her baby. In the absence of (or restriction in) these respiratory movements, stagnation creeps in. And stagnation tends to be accompanied by soreness, tension and/or a feeling of stiffness.
In embodied practice, a light-touch awareness of deeper breathing can help jumpstart the respiratory movements in the tissues. These respiratory-driven movements, in turn, keep stagnation at bay. As the body's natural state is vitality, the absence of restriction predicts a return to the profundity of baseline vitality. In the interest of keeping the tissues naturally hydrated through the internal movements that naturally occur with breathing, I believe that some intentional work with breath makes the cut, as part of Movement Lab's foci: Embody | Align | Breathe.
Comments
Dare I ask what your thinking is now about the Full Commitment Exhale for calming the nervous system and helping to reduce the effects of stress?
Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us; I hope you will continue to do so!
With gratitude,
Julia