Breathing Exercises: Good Ones, Bad Ones; Which Is Which And Why?

Breathing is so natural and involuntary that we often take it for granted. This is a wake-up call for all those who are not using their breathing to its full potential. This blog talks about breathing exercises and aims to re-educate you correctly, optimally and to your full potential. It is rather unusual for many of us in the Western world to consider the importance of good breathing techniques and breathing development. After all, we are always breathing, aren't we?

Doesn't it seem a little silly to pay extra attention to something we do naturally? Notice your own breathing. Isn't each breath actually very shallow? Well, they may or may not be appropriate depth, balance, and ease. Like the taste of chocolate, if you have never experienced optimal depth, balance, and ease of breathing, how will you know whether you have it or not?

Correct Breathing: A Potent Weapon Against Modern-day Health Crises

From stress and anxiety to low immunity and fatigue, today’s health challenges are linked to shallow, inefficient breathing. Modern medicine can treat symptoms, but the way you breathe can transform your well-being. When practiced on a daily basis, breathing development can improve your health, performance, and longevity. 

Importance of Breathing in Ancient Culture

Ancient cultures always knew the breath was sacred. There are numerous beneficial physiological mechanisms that are triggered when we turn our attention to the breath and then increase its ease, depth, volume, and balance.

As H. David Coulter writes in The Anatomy of Hatha Yoga:

"Cautions to be judicious and respectful of breathing exercises abound in the literature on hatha yoga. And it does indeed seem from anecdotal reports of explorers in this field that the rhythm and record of our respiration resonates throughout the body. It seems to accentuate whatever is in the mind, whether it be benevolence, or malevolence, harmony or disharmony, virtue or vice.

On the negative side, experienced teachers report that quirkiness of any sort, gets accentuated in students who go too far. 'It might be an abusive streak, laughing inappropriately, speaking rudely, flightiness, twitchiness, or nervous tics. Right to left physical imbalances also become exaggerated. 

Unfortunately, novices often close their ears to warnings; having become addicted to their practice, they will not be denied. Competent teachers of hatha yoga will be watchful of these simple matters and wary of tutoring refractory students. Even the beginning exercises discussed in this chapter should be treated with respect.

Apart from psychological concerns, the special physiological hazards of bad breathing techniques are that they can cause problems without giving us traditional signals warning us against doing something harmful. In athletics, the practice of asana, experiments with diet, or just tinkering with any subject in the physical world, we depend on our senses to tell us that we are exceeding our capacity or doing something inadvisable.

But breathing exercises are different. In that realm we are dealing with phenomena that our senses, or at least our untutored senses, are often unable to pick up, even though they can still affect the body. And because of this, advanced exercises should be undertaken only by those who are adequately prepared."

 H. David Coulter, Anatomy of Hatha Yoga , p 131.

From this, we can understand that breathing isn’t just mechanical. It affects your thoughts, emotions, and energy. When done incorrectly, it can do more harm than good. 

Understanding How Breathing Really Works

The breathing diaphragm is much more than a mechanical shifter of air. It is, above all, a muscle of emotional expression. Most people have had experiences of just how infectious it can be when someone nearby suddenly and spontaneously laughs or yawns. We usually laugh or yawn right along with them.

Why?

Because there is both a physiological and an energetic response in the diaphragm that causes it to react in sympathy with what is being expressed by someone else. 

Singing, for instance, relies on the importance of wanting to express emotion. If the diaphragm is thought of only as a pump, then such thinking will greatly diminish its function and limit its invaluable contribution to vocal expression. At that point, one's personal vocal expressions will have to develop a good breathing technique to compensate for the lack of spontaneous and reflex action in the diaphragm. Bad breathing techniques not respecting this are often limiting and counterproductive.

Firstly, see the lungs below and notice how they are mostly in the sides and back and not very much in the front.