Body Awareness
The mind’s first step to self-awareness must be through the body.
—George Sheehan
Breath awareness is body awareness. When you stop for a moment and focus on even a single breath, following it into your lungs and noticing the complex array of sensations, something wonderful happens—you are in your body, even if only briefly. You are reeled in from the future or the past, wherever your mind has wandered, and at that moment you are at the controls, the wizard behind the curtain. You are in command of your body, senses, and will. You are able to take stock of your physical body, how it feels, whether it is energized or fatigued, tensed or relaxed.
It has now become clear how our thoughts and emotions directly affect our physical state. Although the oldest cultures in the world have been saying so for at least five thousand years, Western science and medical research have finally, in recent decades, come to the same conclusion. By developing a keen awareness of your body, you become more aware of your mind and emotions, whether your attitude is negative or positive and whether your thoughts are the source of any physical stress or discomfort. When that happens, when you become aware of the state of your mind, body, and emotions, you can consciously exercise control over them. You can let go of stress and turn your thoughts in more positive, productive directions. The more you practice this, the more you develop the habit of awareness, the more control you can exercise over your life.
In addition to being an unsurpassed vehicle of awareness, the way we breathe has subtle but powerful and far-reaching effects on our physiology. Having a clearer picture of the relationship between body and breath can help us understand the range of possibilities when it comes to exercising control over our bodies, our health and, hence, our performance.
Let’s take another moment and play with our breath. This time, let your posture go (if it hasn’t left already). In your best Quasimodo imitation, release your spine and let it curve forward. Let your shoulders drop and your chin come forward in the way it might if you’d been hunched over your desk or laptop for a few hours.
Notice how you are breathing. Nice full, deep breaths? Probably not. If you are like the rest of us, you are most likely taking short, shallow breaths into the top of your lungs. Why? Because it’s easy.
Now, straighten yourself up, shoulders back, head up, and take a deep, slow, full breath. Notice the difference in how the two feel. Notice how much easier your breath flows. Becoming aware of that difference is a critical first step toward actual conscious breathing and finding your perfect breath.
How We Breathe
Each inhale begins with your diaphragm—that unsung muscle in your body that cuts across the middle of your torso, just below the ribs and acts like an elastic seal around your lungs. To initiate a breath, the diaphragm is flexed downward, creating a vacuum in the upper chest cavity, which causes air to be drawn in. As the air flows in through your nose—you should always breathe in through your nose if possible—the air is filtered, moisturized, and heated or cooled to match the body’s internal temperature. The air is drawn deeper and deeper into the lungs until it reaches the alveoli, which are the tiny air sacs that are attached to the smallest capillaries of the blood’s circulatory system, where freshly inhaled oxygen is exchanged for carbon dioxide and other waste that the body generates.
The fresh oxygenated blood circulates throughout the body and is delivered to every single one of the estimated 100 trillion cells in your body, where it is used to create nearly all of the energy needed to power the incredible collection of systems that constitute our bodies.
The waste that is collected by the blood and delivered to the lungs is expelled with the next exhale, but few people realize that 70 percent of the waste that our bodies generate is removed by the breath. Only 30 percent is removed via sweat and elimination. So taking slower deeper breaths not only increases the energy your body is receiving, but is also crucial to cleansing your body of the waste and toxins that your metabolism generates.
The job of making sure that our body is continuously supplied with plenty of life-giving oxygen is handled by the respiration center at the base of the brain in the medulla oblongata. Whether you are awake or asleep, it constantly senses the balance between the oxygen (O2) and carbon dioxide (CO2) in your blood. When the CO2 levels get too high the brain increases the signal to the diaphragm and other respiration muscles, causing them to increase the rate and depth of breathing. When the O2 levels are too high, it decreases the signal and lets the breathing muscles relax.
The signal from the brain to the diaphragm is carried by what is considered to be the most important nerve in your body—the vagus nerve. The name is derived from Latin, meaning “vagabond” or “wanderer,” because the vagus wanders to many parts of our body, innervating our heart, lungs, gastrointestinal organs, as well as our ears, the muscles that control speech, and our sweat glands. The vagus nerve is also a part of the parasympathetic nervous system which is responsible for returning the body to a relaxed, regenerative state after the fight-or-flight mechanism (characterized by racing heart, short shallow breathing, and a rush of adrenaline) has been activated. The ability of certain breathing techniques to counteract the effects of anxiety and panic attacks—such as heart palpitations, sweating, and upset stomach—is at least partially attributed to their ability to stimulate the vagus nerve (and thus the parasympathetic nervous system) due to its proximity to the windpipe as it descends from the brain, through the neck down into the chest.
In addition to providing every cell and system in our body with a continuous supply of energy, the act of breathing affects our physiology in several other important ways. Most people are at least vaguely familiar with our respiratory/circulatory system, but there is widespread mystery regarding our lymph system, though it is every bit as important. Lymph is the fluid that surrounds every cell in your body. The oxygen and other nutrients carried by the bloodstream are delivered to the lymph surrounding your cells. The cells are able to extract the oxygen and other nutrients from the lymph but also deposit waste into the lymphatic fluid that the bloodstream is unable to remove. The lymph circulates through the liver so that the waste and toxins can be neutralized, and then to the kidneys for filtering. Though the lymph system is twice as big as the circulatory system, it does not have a heart-like pump to aid its circulation. If the lymph does not circulate, the waste and toxins build up around the cells and choke them like trash on the street during a garbage strike.
The lymph system depends on muscle movement, gravity, and breathing to keep the lymph flowing so that the body can be cleansed. The movement of the diaphragm during deep breathing can play an important role in the circulation of the lymph and protecting the body from bacteria, viruses, and other threats to our health.
Conscious Control
Although our breathing is automatic, activities like showering and swimming would be difficult and unpleasant if we were not able to exercise conscious control over our breathing. Nature has thoughtfully given us control over our breathing so that we can use it to our advantage when it can help us with the task at hand, whether it be swimming, healing, or deepening our spiritual life. And it can almost always help us with the task at hand.
As we will see in later chapters, our unique ability to control this simultaneously conscious and autonomic function gives us control that most of us never dreamed we had. Breath control can directly affect our heart rate, our emotions, our immune system, our blood pressure, our digestive system, our physical performance and stamina, and the overall chemistry of our body. Developing the capacity and awareness to affect our experience and our response to the world allows us to take direct control in creating the life and experience we desire.
When we first learn to swim, it takes a tremendous amount of concentration (and a lot of swallowed water) to learn how and when to breathe, but eventually it becomes second nature and we can swim and dive without ever giving any thought to our breath. Similarly, when we first begin to develop the awareness of our breath, it takes intention and a lot of conscious effort and practice, but in time we find that it is always there when we need it. When the power of our breathing is combined with its direct effect on the capabilities of our mind, muscles, and health, we are able to move to a higher level of living.
Intentional Healing
Of all the benefits that come from conscious breathing and breath awareness, the effect on our health is perhaps the most profound. Beyond supplying all of the body’s health-related systems and mechanisms with the energy they need to function properly, good health plays a direct role in our ability to ward off viruses, bacteria, and other diseases, as well as in the vitality of our heart and circulatory system. When the body is repairing itself, each step of the process is limited by the amount of oxygen available, and that is something we can affect. We can increase the level of oxygen in our system. Our emotions have also been shown to directly affect our vitality and wellness. Anger, depression, grief, and anxiety affect us physically in ways that we did not imagine in generations past and the breath affords us access to these aspects of our mind and body that we had assumed to be beyond our reach.
Stress—Your Biggest Enemy
It is hard not to worry about our health. We are constantly bombarded by frightening information about the water we drink, the food we eat, the air we breathe, our environment, and the disease du jour. There are many factors that affect our health: genetics, environment, diet, chance. Some of these variables we can control, some we can’t. It is very important to focus on the things we can control; otherwise we are just making the situation worse!
One of the most important health factors that we can control is stress. Stress, specifically chronic stress, is poison to our system—literally. The more we learn about how stress affects the body, the more we realize just how much impact it has on our health.
Several recent studies have estimated that as much as 90 percent of all doctor visits are stress related, and studies done in the United States, England, South Africa, India, and Australia have found that the majority of work absenteeism and job turnover is directly caused by stress, costing businesses in the United States alone more than $300 billion per year, and affecting countless personal lives. Additionally, college medical centers are seeing more and more students for stress-related ailments.
So what is stress doing to us that sends so many people to the doctor’s office? That is now fairly well understood. Chronic stress is a major factor in heart disease, high blood pressure, hardening of the arteries, all of which are epidemic in our society. Those three diseases together kill more people than any other cause by a factor of ten. In addition, chronic stress plays a major role in:
Perhaps most important, stress depresses our immune system, making us more susceptible to viruses, infections, and other diseases. It is a major health care crisis of huge proportions and it is now obvious that we cannot underestimate or ignore the role that stress plays in our health and well-being.
So what can we do about it? Clearly we can’t get rid of all the causes of stress in our lives. That would, of course, be impossible (and ill advised), but we can control how stress affects us.
There are many excellent activities and techniques for managing and relieving stress. A healthy diet, regular exercise, and plenty of sleep are just a few. The problem for most people is that when they are stressed out, overworked, overextended, and overwhelmed, the first things thrown out of the lifeboat are healthy diet (hello chips, fast food, candy, and alcohol), sleep (there just aren’t enough hours in the day), and regular exercise (“I promise I’m going to start again—next week!”). It is a cruel joke, but the things that are most important for relieving and managing stress are the things that we are least likely to do when we become stressed!
As it turns out, intentional breathing is the most effective weapon we have to combat and counteract the harmful effects of stress. In a nutshell, intentional breathing reverses nearly everything that chronic stress does to our bodies. Wellness expert Dr. Andrew Weil once stated that, “If I had to limit my advice on healthier living to just one tip, it would be simply to learn how to breathe correctly.”
Conscious deep breathing causes our blood vessels to dilate and become more elastic, increasing circulation in the body and making them more resistant to cholesterol and hardening of the arteries. It also lowers your blood pressure and reduces inflammation, which improve your heart health. Again, perhaps most important of all, intentional breathing boosts your immune system making your body more resistant to viruses, infections, and other diseases. (For more in-depth information about stress see chapter 10.)
Accelerate Healing
In addition to being an effective preventive health regimen, intentional breathing is a remarkable healing agent as well. There are thousands of years of supporting anecdotal evidence, and common sense tells us that providing energy to every cell and system in our body, especially the ones involved in protection and healing, should boost our body’s ability to heal. Several recent studies have made a compelling case for the healing properties of intentional breathing. At the University of Massachusetts, a study was done with patients afflicted with severe psoriasis (as profiled in Saki Santorelli’s book, Heal Thy Self). Both the test group and the control group received their regular treatments, which consisted of three thirty-minute sessions a week in an ultraviolet light bath. The only difference was that the test group practiced stress-reduction techniques, such as meditation and deep breathing, but only while they were in the light bath.
The researchers were amazed to find that the group that practiced the meditation and deep breathing techniques healed four times faster than the control group! They were so surprised that they repeated the study a second time to verify the results. Since then, at least two more studies have been released that validate evidence of the healing properties of conscious breathing as well as the thousands of years of anecdotal reports.
It is impossible to control all of the complex variables that impact our health and ability to heal, but by taking full advantage of the preventive and healing power available to us through the simple act of intentional breathing, we can dramatically improve our health and quality of life. Best of all, you are doing it a thousand times every hour. It doesn’t require a new set of cross-trainers, new work-out clothes, or a club membership. The cost of this powerful prescription, this amazing preventive health system, is awareness—developing your mental and physical capacity to tune in to your breath, mind, and body.
Using breath awareness as a means of illuminating the state of our body, thoughts, and emotions, gives us an additional measure of control over our lives. After we have a picture in our mind of the many ways the breath affects our body’s ability to perform, maintain, and heal itself, we can begin to put this newfound knowledge to work for us. We become more aware of the body’s language and signals. When your muscles need to summon that extra measure of energy to fuel your all-out effort, it is your breath that delivers it. When the body is under attack, we can stop and intentionally provide more energy and focus to the body’s defenses. That cold or flu that is coming on may give us an early warning if we are paying attention. When stress and difficult, unresolved emotions occupy your mind and cloud your thinking, your body will let you know. If we are aware, we can stop and acknowledge the issues we are facing, take them by the horns and counteract self-defeating, cascading effects of stress and negative thinking. Taking this profound, powerful step is as simple as stopping right now and noticing your breath.
(For more in-depth information about healing, see chapter 11.)