You’ve been breathing all wrong: Expert
KUWAIT: Breathing is an involuntary action that humans naturally take all day long. But how many times does one pause and question: Am I breathing properly? Nearly never. According to Abeer Al-Osaimi, a certified transformational breath coach, almost everyone breathes much shorter and shallower than they’re biologically supposed to be, as they fail to maximize the use of their lungs’ full capacity.
The inefficient use of the lungs tends to limit the reach of oxygen to our body cells, which causes a defect in their function, negatively affecting our quality of living, Osaimi noted. “Our breath is our connection with life. The more deeply we breathe, the more deeply we can live life,” she said.
Osaimi explained that we are all born with a normal and healthy breathing pattern. But, as we grow up and face different incidents in life, almost everyone tends to react to them by suppressing their emotions as a survival mechanism. Subsequently, people’s breathing habits change in response to the repeated encounters of these arousing emotions such as facing short or rapid breathing during moments of sadness, anxiety or fear.
Transformational breathing is a deep breathing technique that Osaimi uses to help people through the release of negative emotions and physical pain that has been built up in their minds and cells for years. During the exercise, one gets into a very deep state as their long-suppressed emotions and buried pain come to shore. Osaimi referred to people she has dealt with during sessions, who expressed feeling pain in parts of their bodies that were hurt years ago due to accidents or abuse. “The process triggers memories that one might think they almost forgot, only to realize they have been embedded in their bodies all long,” said Osaimi.
For that, she highlighted the importance of learning to let go of these negative feelings as they can subconsciously influence one’s life. “Every action that you take in life is merely based on your internal emotions. The more you can release these emotions, the better life you’ll lead,” Osaimi said.
Kuwait Times went to experience this deep breathing session to see how the process goes. It starts with monitoring the normal breathing pattern, learning to control it by focusing on creating a harmonious continuous rhythm between each inhalation and exhalation, and focusing on gentle deep abdominal breathing into the nostrils until the belly is full of air before slowly exhaling the air out of the nose. Through the repetition of this exercise in the long term, deep breathing, according to Osaimi, works on developing one’s mental, spiritual and physical states.
Osaimi noted that deep breathing can enhance one’s focus levels, as 40 percent of oxygen goes directly to the brain. It also works on strongly facilitating their mental states and wellbeing, as it helps one reach an emotionally stable and relaxed condition. “It can let you regain strength, balance and grounding with life,” Osaimi noted.
On the spiritual side, it improves one’s mind-body connection, bringing them to become more self-aware, which helps one stay more engrossed in the moment and stop zoning out into random negative thoughts and memories. Osaimi believes the impact of this state is very profound, as it feels like cleaning dust from inside. “While people keep looking for peace from the outside world, this breathing technique makes them realize that peace can only be found within,” she said.
On the physical level, she explained that deep breathing can feed our cells with enough oxygen, which can save us from diseases such as cancer that is prone to grow in places of our bodies that are low in oxygen. “It truly turned out that it’s our suppressed emotions that make us sick,” she asserted. It also purifies our bodies from toxins, enhances blood circulation and the digestion process and acts as a massage for the organs in our lower abdominals.
According to Osaimi, the science of transformational breathing was developed in the ‘70s and is now trained in around 54 countries in almost 10 different languages. It’s a practice that has highly been embraced in the Gulf, including Kuwait, where multiple cases showed a very quick recovery from different diseases, just through learning proper breathing.