Twenty percent of the oxygen you breathe is used by your brain. Let that sink in for a minute. While it doesn’t sprint, do CrossFit, or pole-dance, that 10-pound blob in your skull eats up 20 percent of the oxygen you breathe. That’s pretty intense, and if you don’t breathe well, it will surely affect your endurance in your workouts. But it will also affect much more, er, mind-blowing things, like memory, productivity, judgment and, yes, the balance of hormones and neurotransmitters necessary for optimum mental health.
Sit tight; we’re going to talk about detoxing your brain, keeping it young, and the truth about nose versus mouth breathing.
Get your breathing on, and by the end of this book you’ll have:
• a larger hippocampus (for learning, cognition, memory, and emotional regulation)
• a heftier temporoparietal junction (for perspective, empathy, and compassion)
• a sturdier brain stem (the pons, where regulatory neurotransmitters are produced)
So, let’s say this a different way: remembering your PIN, troubleshooting, multitasking, organizing yourself, organizing others—all of these activities need oxygen, cell fuel, to work correctly. And vice versa. So, is your brain not working quite right? You might be low on fuel.
Yikes! Deep breath. So what do I do, doc, you ask? My answer is that you need to add a short breathing/meditation/mindfulness practice to your day. And before you judge and assume that you need a yoga mat and incense, all I’m talking about is taking a few minutes to pay attention to your breath … which is, in essence, meditation (which is, yes, being mindful). Having a breathing routine or at least knowing about breathing and taking a couple of seconds a day to focus on it, is being mindful.
Perhaps you’re going to say one of the two following things: “I don’t have time” or “I’m one of those people who can’t meditate.” But what if I told you that every time you pay attention to your breath—and I do mean just a few seconds of hearing and feeling it go in and out of your body—you’re practicing mindfulness? Do it for a few minutes and it is meditation—it’s as simple as that. And while it might be nice to have a special room in your house where you can perform daily meditation rituals throughout your day, all you have to do is take one baby step—and it might end up being just right for you.
If you’re trying to be healthier, wanting to live longer and better, or wanting to heal, you must have a meditation or mindfulness component on your to-do list. 48 Period. Recent research has been confirming this conclusion with ever more evidence as chemical changes, physical brain volumes, and meticulously set physiological markers are tracked and recorded. 49
Slow breathing isometrics help lengthen your concentration and focus, and are in themselves a form of meditation. They also force you to control your muscles over longer periods of time thereby developing your breathing in a subtler but important way. Add counting breath practice to your routine; the goal should be to do this breathing for a specific length of time, and then increase the time as you become more confident of your technique.
Here’s cool research: People who were trained in mindfulness had lower pain sensations than people treated with morphine. Researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center found significant reductions in long-term pain for fibromyalgia patients, as well as reductions in incidences of depression and emotional exhaustion.
• Tactical Breathing: This is an exercise I demonstrate in class, one that’s used in the military to induce calm. 50 Inhale for 4 counts, then hold for 4 counts, exhale for 6 counts, and hold for 2 counts. Repeat.
• Coherent Breathing joins your heartbeat and your breath. Intuitively, it makes sense: they should be “talking to” and in line with each other (see figure 11 ). You want to aim for 5 to 6 breaths a minute (with a resting heart rate of about 60). If you inhale for 5 seconds and then exhale for 5 seconds, your body parts are working in unison, in harmony. This type of breathing promotes optimal health and the synchronicity of your body (heart rate variability). 51
Whichever count makes you happy, the most important part is that the breath be a Lower-body Breath, and that you focus on the exhale being thorough and long.
Want to calm down even further?
1. Hum on the exhale (or as some people like to do, sigh).
2. Maintain your rhythm by using a metronome app, your own heartbeat, or music with a beat.
3. Tip forward and back (Rock and Roll Breath) as you inhale and exhale, which adds a really mesmerizing rhythm.
Figure 11
Some variations by people you may know:
1. Tony Robbins: Inhale for a 5-count, hold the breath for a 20-count, and exhale for a 10-count (and do this 3 times a day).
2. Mark Divine: Inhale for 5 seconds, pause and hold for 5 seconds, exhale for a controlled 5 count, and pause on the exhale for 5. Repeat. You can also choose a 4-count or a 6-count (often called “Box Breathing”; See his book, Unbeatable Mind ).
3. Al Lee and Don Campbell: Inhale through your nose for 3 seconds. Purse your lips and exhale, while letting your cheeks inflate. Draw the exhalation out to a count of 10, or as long as you’re able. Try to get every last bit of air out of your lungs (often called “Pressure Breathing”).
4. Dr. Andrew Weil: Close your mouth and inhale quietly through your nose to a mental count of 4. Hold your breath for a count of 7. Exhale through your mouth to the count of 8. Repeat cycle (often called “Relaxing Breath”).
I don’t like breath counts that have a “pause” or “hold” for patients who are Breath-Holders. If you’re a Breath-Holder, pick a breath count without a pause.
Coherent Breathing maximizes the heart rate variability (HRV), a measurement of how well the parasympathetic nervous system is working. Changing the rate and pattern of breath alters the HRV, which causes shifts in our nervous system. A higher HRV is associated with a healthier cardiovascular system and a stronger stress-response system. Breathing at a rate that is close to one’s ideal resonant rate—around five breaths per minute—can induce a significant and immediate improvement in HRV.
As in isometrics, slow conscious breathing helps you gain control over your body. Moving a lot of weight with enthusiasm may be good as part of a regular workout, but using your body weight slowly and effectively works critical muscles.
There’s another important component in this brain-boosting meditation: memory. Memory is the key that connects you to others and establishes your identity. Meditation and mindfulness help to detox your brain, working wonders for the memory parts of the brain, not only thickening them for protection but also reducing free-radical stress, increasing blood flow, increasing oxygen delivery to the brain, boosting memory performance, and preventing memory-related diseases.
FAQ: So my bad breathing is making me spacey? Yes, in so many words. Think about it: You have more stress, less sleep, and less oxygen in your body. Something is going to break. Brain fatigue may indicate the consequences of neurological oxidative stress.
Some of the most impressive effects of stress on the brain are hippocampus atrophy, shrinkage of the hippocampus or prefrontal cortex (the area of the brain unique to humans), and even neural death in some brain regions. The hippocampus, a vital brain region for episodic, spatial, and contextual memory, has many cortisol receptors, which makes it especially susceptible to stress.
Severe stress lasting weeks or months can impair cell communication in the brain’s learning and memory regions. 52 Increased stress hormones lead to memory impairment in the elderly, and learning difficulties in young adults.
There are many facts, myths, and legends surrounding the effects of aging, some interesting and others downright scary. 53 So here are some to inform you—and hopefully reassure you—about your lungs, oxygen, and how your brain ages:
1. The lungs mature by age twenty-nine, and yes, thereafter, aging is associated with progressive decline in lung function; however, that doesn’t mean there is nothing you can do. You are now taking the steps to better breathing that can help you to decelerate the process.
2. Experts agree that there are four basic changes that affect lung function as aging occurs: a decrease in motor power, a decrease in the elastic recoil of lung tissue, a stiffening of the chest wall, and a decrease in the size of the intervertebral spaces. Again, lung function can be positively impacted by Horizontal Breathing.
3. Exhales become less efficient with aging, due to an increase from 25 percent (at 20 years of age) to 40 percent (at age 70) in residual lung capacity, which accounts for a barrel-like appearance in the chest wall. 54
There are several “scaries” affecting seniors that you’ll probably read about in the news, which should ensure that everyone keeps doing breathing exercises every day:
• The structural changes (e.g., chest wall) impair the total respiratory system compliance (the measure of the lung’s ability to expand) and can lead to difficulty in breathing.
• “Senile emphysema” occurs when the lungs lose their supporting structure, which causes loss of elasticity in the alveoli.
• An effective cough, important for airway clearance, can be impaired when respiratory muscle strength decreases with age.
FAQ: My grandmother says she feels like her breathing is fine, but it doesn’t seem right to me. Any ideas? You’re probably right. Research shows older adults tend to suffer shortness of breath (dyspnea), oxygen deficiency (diminished ventilatory response to hypoxia), and abnormally elevated carbon dioxide levels in the blood (hypercapnia), all of which makes them more vulnerable to ventilatory failure (e.g., heart failure, pneumonia, etc.).
Dementia has many forms and causes, but one of the most common unifying factors among all of the varying forms is oxygen deprivation to the brain. “Oxidative stress” directly affects brain health in dementia patients. Even the degree of dementia can predict the rate of oxygen flow and uptake.
Consequently, breathing, meditation, and exercise impact brain function as they fuel oxygen to the brain and, in turn, support the autonomic systems, cognition, and memory in seniors.
Your brain and body react very differently to whether air comes into your body through your nose or your mouth.
As an everyday breathing style, mouth breathing (unless you’re doing these exercises or running hard) is bad. Period. 55 Moreover, mouth breathers tend to lean forward with their head and shoulders, which can cause neck and upper thoracic structural dysfunction. Mouth breathing can also disrupt the pH balance of the blood, making it too alkaline. Alkalosis can lead to feelings of apprehension, anxiety, and chronic pain conditions.
Nose breathing, on the other hand, has its own benefits, including increased CO2 saturation in the blood, which creates a calming effect. 56 In addition, there is the question of protecting the lungs. The nose—not just your nostrils but the passages deep inside—contains structures (turbinated bones and mucus membranes) dedicated to the filtration and conditioning of the air we breathe, which means if you don’t use your nose, there’s all kinds of bad stuff going directly into your mouth and lungs.
FAQ: If nose breathing is best, why not start doing the exercises this way? Since most people are nose breathers, switching temporarily to the mouth for these exercises makes you pay attention to the breath. You’re less apt to go back to a dysfunctional Vertical Breath if you’re breathing through your mouth. Once the Lower-body Breath becomes more natural and your muscles get stronger, you should definitely switch to your nose—at the very least for the inhale.
If you want your brain to take care of you, you need to take care of it. To meet your daily meditation requirements, either do a Counting Breath mindfulness session for a few minutes (between five and fifteen), or do the more advanced, tough, two-part breath we’ll talk about soon. You might find you like one more than the other, or that each makes you feel good in a different way, so you can alternate or do them both every day.
48 A thought-provoking Web site with an eye-catching name, Elephant Journal *it’s about the mindful life, offers many articles of interest on green wellness, food, yoga, and, of course, mindfulness and meditation.
49 A report published in 2013 stated that “participants in the mindfulness intervention group experienced significantly less emotional exhaustion and more job satisfaction than participants in the control group.” (Ute R. Hülsheger et al., “Benefits of Mindfulness at Work: The Role of Mindfulness in Emotion Regulation, Emotional Exhaustion, and Job Satisfaction,” Journal of Applied Psychology 98, no. 2 [2013]: 310–25.)
50 http://www.med.navy.mil/sites/nmcphc/Documents/health-promotion-wellness/psychological-emotional-wellbeing/Combat-Tactical-Breathing.pdf .
51 You can read more about “Coherent Breathing” and “Total Breath” in The Healing Power of the Breath by Richard Brown and Patricia Gerbarg.
52 An interesting study by a Harvard neuroscientist finds that meditation not only reduces stress, it literally changes your brain: Sara W. Lazar et al., “Meditation Experience Is Associated with Increased Cortical Thickness,” NeuroReport 16, no. 17 (2005): 1893–97.
53 Dr. Norman Doidge points out that “as we age and plasticity declines, it becomes increasingly difficult for us to change in response to the world” (p. 232); however, his book The Brain That Changes Itself presents the theory of “neuroplacity”—the ability of the brain to change and adapt to new circumstances—in a clear and straightforward way. An excellent read.
54 For more on this subject, Gwyneth A. Davies and Charlotte E. Bolton, “Age-related Changes in the Respiratory System,” in Brocklehurst’s Textbook of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology (Philadelphia: Elsevier Saunders, 2010).
55 Check it out: Paul Chek has four hours of information about this online in his “The Challenges of Mouth Breathing” videos. In 240 minutes you’ll be an expert (sort of), too.
56 Coach Lisa Engles sums up the advantages of nose breathing succinctly: Our nose is made to breathe; nasal breathing disarms the body’s stress response; and there’s a direct correlation between nasal breathing and heart rate (exertion levels). See her book Breathe Run Breathe.