Do you need breathing lessons?

LOCKDOWN TENSION Boudicca Fox-Leonard on the wellbeing trend that’s a breath of fresh air in troubled times

Take a deep breath in. It’s a command we all hear at times of stress. Somehow we know that, when harnessed correctly, breathing has amazing curative, calming powers. Yet how we each do it varies greatly, and with wildly differing results.

In the past three months, how we inhale and exhale has been the subject of breathless discussion. If anything, Covid-19’s affect on the respiratory system has highlighted how uncertain many of us are about how we should be breathing, in spite of the fact that each day we breathe 25,000 times, take in 30lbs of air into our lungs and consume about 1.7lbs of oxygen.

Could you be in need of breathing lessons? JK Rowling certainly thought we could all benefit from a few pointers: she shared a video by Dr Sarfaraz Munshi, showing a breathing technique to help recover from coronavirus symptoms.

The techniques involved taking five deep breaths, holding your breath for five seconds, then on the sixth breath forcing a big cough – covering your mouth, naturally.

Yet how often do we pay attention to our breath? Let alone practise breathing techniques? As I race to meet the deadline for this article, I can feel the tension making me hold it. And yet oxygen is the food our cells need, Katia Boustani, founder of Global Breathing Awareness, tells me. “At a time when most of the other information we are receiving is spurring us into ‘fight or flight’, breathwork can bring us back to our natural state, which is ‘rest and digest’”.

In today’s loud and unstable world, anxiety plays a big part in the way we breathe. Rebecca Livingston, a respiratory physiotherapist at University College Hospital (UCLH), retrains people’s breathing patterns and helps them undo habits that are causing symptoms of breathlessness, chest tightness, pain and dizziness.

She often sees young people with no underlying lung disease, who have stressful, high-powered jobs. “The stress manifests in their breathing pattern and they end up coming to A&E with breathlessness and a cough,” she says.

Ironically, we’re talking during a snatched 10 minutes in her busy schedule. I want to know the most common mistakes people make when they breathe.

“Many people are gulping down big volumes of air rather than taking small, regular breaths,” she says. “Normal

‘Most people constrict their breath. Instead, see how fully functioning your breath can be’

respiratory rate should be about 10-12 breaths per minute.”

A lot of the people she sees breathe using their shoulders and neck, which causes them to breathe shallowly into their upper chest. “What people should be doing is breathing diaphragmatically from their belly,” she says.

Meanwhile, regulating your breathing will serve little purpose if you’re doing it through your mouth. “Your nose performs a really important function in that it filters the breath you breathe in and humidifies it so it’s just the right temperature when it hits your airways. When [you breathe] through your mouth, you bypass all that and get cold, dry air straight to your chest. That can cause your airways to be uncomfortably dry and tight and irritable.”

James Nestor is an investigative writer who carried out a Stanford University experiment in which for 20 days he only breathed through his mouth – the conclusion being that, if he had continued it for much longer, he would have developed chronic snoring and obstructive sleep apnoea along with hypertension and metabolic and cognitive problems.

His book Breath: The New Science of a

Lost Art is due to be published in July. Speaking to me from his home in San Francisco, he says: “If there’s any good to come out of this foul flu, it’s that people are paying a lot more attention to how they’re breathing. In the day, we’ve got masks on, and at night, we’re anxious and get tightness in our chests from nervousness. I think this is a longoverdue conversation.”

He says how we breathe goes right down to a cellular level, affecting how our bones develop. “It affects us just as much as how we exercise or what food we eat. You can never really be healthy unless you’re breathing correctly.”

Yet this is not new knowledge. Ancient cultures have been practising breathwork for millennia. In yogic philosophy, pranayama is the art and science of breathing to cleanse, balance and gain control over the universal life force known as “prana”.

“Prana” means “vital energy” or “life force” and “ayama” means “to expand”. Accordingly, pranayama is expansion of the vital energy.

The late yoga teacher BKS Iyengar spent an hour a day practising pranayama, and even that wasn’t long enough, he said. For him, the breath was the vehicle of consciousness. “By its slow measured observation and distribution, we learn to tug our attention away from external desires toward a judicious, intelligent awareness.”

Your average Western-style yoga class neglects pranayama beyond ujjayi breathing (a type of breathing that regulates heat in the body) favouring the more acrobatic and challenging asana (postural) practice of yoga, but during lockdown, as a yoga teacher, I’ve found myself introducing more breathwork into my classes, techniques such as humming bee breath and alternate nostril breathing; the former for its calming quality, the latter for its startling power to clear a bunged-up nose. To hone some of these techniques, I had an hour-long session online with wellness clinic Chiva-Som in Thailand, which is offering free introductory sessions on Zoom.

Pranayama is one of the main pillars of Chiva-Som’s teaching, thanks to its ability to reduce anxiety, lower and stabilise pressure, and aid relaxation.

Over an hour, my teacher, Kamlesh, gently guides me through various techniques, such as threepart breathing; filling your lungs with air, as though you are breathing into your belly, rib cage, and upper chest. Then you exhale completely, reversing the flow. With my whole body expanded and full of oxygen I feel like a powerful lion. Afterwards I feel energised but calm.

I resolve to make time, 5-10 minutes a day, for pranayama.

Livingstone however cautions that such techniques shouldn’t be confused with quotidian breathing. Taking

overly deep breaths all the time, she says, leads to overbreathing.

“Your body gets used to that overbreathing, so when you’re at rest and your heart rate is low, those people are breathing as if they are walking up a hill. So the minute they start to walk anywhere, their metabolic needs increase but their breathing is already elevated, so they begin to feel breathless quickly.”

Nicola Price, founder of Inspirational Breathing (see inspirationalbreathing.com for details of online classes), who practises pranayama techniques, agrees: “Yogis constrict their breath a lot, which then manipulates it and they can’t get back to a normal fully flowing breath. I’ve seen the carnage that can happen when yogis take their ujjayi breathing, which makes them feel wonderful on the mat, into the rest of their lives.”

She says that, while there are great reasons for doing different breathing techniques, such as alternate nostril and humming bee breath, they shouldn’t be done all the time.

Instead, her advice is to be aware of your breath. Observe what happens when something emotional comes up. “Most people constrict their breath,” says Price. “Instead, see how fully functioning your breath can be. See what happens when you smell a flower, or fill your lungs with sea air. Your life experience is reflected in your breathing pattern.”

‘It affects us as much as exercise. You can never be healthy unless you’re breathing correctly’

‘Many people gulp down big volumes of air rather than taking small regular breaths’