Breath in Hindsight
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New awareness has shown me that I’ve never used my diaphragm correctly.
I can’t be the only person to realize I’ve only grazed the surface of something I thought I understood perfectly well. Maybe you too have experienced something like this.
Breathing in the Rearview Mirror
I’ve always included breathing in my teaching and writing. But a revived interest in breathing has shown me how little I’ve actually understood about it, and how inefficiently my own body has been doing it, for decades. I now see—and fully feel—that I’ve never used my diaphragm completely. Yikes! This elucidates so much about my health, my stamina, and life in general.
In my first book, Rolfing Movement Integration, published in 1993, I wrote the following about breathing.
Efficient and full use of your breathing apparatus is your first defense against gravity’s downward pressure. To understand how this works let’s look at the apparatus of respiration – the lungs, the rib cage, and the diaphragm.
At that time, influenced by Ida Rolf’s emphasis on “freeing the ribs “, the rest of my chapter is concerned with mobilizing the rib cage as an essential feature of upright posture.
I now see that the exercises I presented there had several good outcomes inspired by Rolf’s teachings. Mobilizing the ribs helps ease tensions in the spine and provides better foundation for both the shoulders and head. The exercises also evoke awareness of the three-dimensional structure of the thorax—most of us have little awareness of our width and depth. We go through life as one-dimensional “fronts”. But however desirable 3D body awareness was—and is—it had nothing to do with teaching correct breathing. I didn’t even mention the diaphragm beyond the fifth paragraph of a chapter I had entitled “Every Breath You Take”.
I’m not putting myself down. I was only teaching what I had learned and experienced. No one had taught me that my habitual breathing pattern—what I experienced—was deficient. Because very few people understood it then. Even now, few people understand.
Don’t Take a Deep Breath
By 2007, when The New Rules of Posture came out, I had done more research into the topic of breathing. I now knew something about the biochemistry of respiration, about the importance of breathing through the nose and the effect chronic over breathing (“it’s like overeating,” I wrote) on health issues like low back pain, headaches, digestive problems and mental health. But on reviewing my “Healthy Breathing” chapter, it’s clear that I still thought about breathing as subsidiary to my two big loves: posture and movement. I now see that breath is primary and essential to both.
Hindsight is a powerful perspective.
The Buteyko Method
In the 1950’s Dr Konstantin Buteyko, a Ukrainian physiologist, developed a series of breathing exercises designed to reduce chronic hyperventilation, i.e., taking in too much air, too fast. Although largely unsupported by the medical community due to insufficient research, his work has gained exposure since the 1980’s when studies showed improvements in patients with chronic asthma.
I made passing mention of Buteyko in The New Rules, but looking back, I realize that my interest at that time was also passing.
Two dynamic teachers of the Buteyko method are now offering this work to mainstream audiences—Patrick McKeown and Robin Rothenberg. Both have extensive YouTube archives, books, and trainings. They have inspired me to revisit my interest in this unconventional and revolutionary approach to the rehabilitation of breath.
Get on the Breathing Bandwagon
I’ll likely have much more to say about breathing in the future, once I’ve managed to carve out the time I’ll need to devote to it the way I want to. To change the respiratory pattern of a long lifetime, I’ll need an hour or more every day for at least a year. Meanwhile, I hope this little essay has inspired you to look into breathing on your own. The teachers mentioned above are a good start.
At the very least I hope you will begin observing your own breathing patterns. What you’ve assumed about your breath may not be the whole story.
For example, when asked, most people will tell you they breathe through their noses. There’s a cultural bias against “mouth breathers” so nobody wants to be one. But if you look around, you’ll see how many people are living with their mouths mostly open. Notice people walking down the street, sitting in traffic, sitting at their desks, looking at their phones, watching TV. Notice the actors’ performances on the screen. Not to mention the wide incidence of snoring and sleep apnea.
Here’s a way to begin paying attention to your personal breathing habits.
Next time you’re in a hurry or are doing some chore that you’d rather not be doing, ask yourself the following:
At this moment am I breathing
Fast or slow?
In my upper chest or diaphragm?
Noisily or silently?
Through my nose or mouth?
By taking in a little or a lot of air?
Thank you for reading and considering, and for sharing.
© 2023 Mary Bond