The beautiful thing about life is that there are never-ending opportunities to learn new things.  The only thing we have to do is be open to the possibilities & the changes that new knowledge will bring.

I personally love learning new things.  I love having my small world expanded by a new concept or a new thought process.  I LOVE having my mind blown by information & ideas that I never before even remotely considered.  The feeling of “I had NO idea that even existed” is addictive to me…like sugar for my brain.

I have many ways to ensure that I intersect with new ideas.  I read, I read a lot of different types of things (like magazines, blogs, newsletters, fiction, non-fiction, biographies, research), I belong to a book club so I can hear participant’s varying interpretations of the same book & I have regular meetings with people who also love to learn (like Antonio Gonzalez of TriTown Bicycles!).

It was through my book club that I was introduced to a book that has made me realize just how little I know about a very basic thing – breathing.  Breathing.  We do it all the time.  Every day.  All day.  All night.  Every body breathes.

Over the years I’ve done a bit of learning about breathing.  I work with athletes…so I talk about breathing fairly regularly.  I encourage my swimmers to experiment with different breathing patterns.  I use breath focus & belly breathing techniques as a way to relax & calm my clients who are anxious in water.  I’ve done yoga & meditation work – both of which are centered around breathing.

Then I read “Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art” by James Nestor & wow…I quickly realized how very little I actually know about breathing!  It was…pun completely intended…mind-blowing!

The basics:

• We overbreathe.  In other words, we breathe too much, too often, too fast.
• We typically breathe through the wrong orifice.  Our nose is meant for breathing…our mouth is not.
• How we breathe changes how we feel.  The base of the lungs contains parasympathetic (rest & digest) nerves whereas the top of our lungs house sympathetic (fight or flight) nerves.  Therefore, deep slow belly breathing, which uses the diaphragm to pull air deep into the lungs, relaxes us.  On the other hand, short fast breathing, which uses the intercostal muscles (muscles between the ribs) keeping the air high in the lungs, amps us up.
• Nose breathing begets nose breathing.  Mouth breathing begets mouth breathing.  By breathing primarily through your nose, you can physically change your soft palate structures to make nose breathing easier, more comfortable & more effective.  The same goes for mouth breathing…which in turn makes nose breathing harder & more uncomfortable.

There were two aspects of breathing that I found most interesting.  Truthfully, these two concepts surprised me because I realized that how I thought they worked was 180deg opposite of how they really work.

1.  Train Your Soft Palate

We can physically change the shape of our soft palate to improve our ability to breathe through our nose.  I have NO idea why I never considered this before.  I mean…we can change just about every part of our body through training, repetition & focus.  Want a better cardiovascular system?  Start walking, then walk some more, then run a bit.  Want better foot mechanics?  Walk barefoot & wear flatter shoes.  Want better mental focus?  Meditate & practice being in the moment.  It’s all trainable.  So why not the inside of your mouth & nose??  I’m amazed I never considered this before now!

2.  Breathing = Feeling

Obviously, how we breathe & how we feel are directly connected.  But…I had it backwards!  Take the example of going from sitting to walking to running.  As we change exertion levels our breathing changes.  When sitting we breathe through our nose & our breath rate is slow & deep.  We feel relaxed.  Start walking & our breath rate quickens a bit.  We often include a bit of mouth breathing & as a result, we breathe more shallowly & we feel less relaxed.  Break into a run & now we’re 100% mouth breathing – hard, fast, shallow & well beyond that relaxed state we experienced at rest.  All these years I’ve wrongly assumed that the change in relaxation was due to increased effort level – you work harder, you’re less relaxed.

But really that change is connected to whether we’re breathing out of our nose or our mouth!  The reason we feel more or less relaxed has less to do with effort level & more to do with HOW we breathe!  This makes perfect sense to me when I think about my clients who are afraid of water.  When they’re standing on the side of the pool looking at the water, they are often extremely anxious.  Anxious, mouth breathing…but standing in one place…not doing high intensity exercise.  If you listen to their breathing in that moment you’d think they were running a 10k!  And, the way we reduce their fear is to focus on their breath – concentrating on the inhales & exhales, slowing it down so that they can breath gently (which often means through their nose).

Why I never connected this concept to exercise is beyond me!  If the WAY we breathe affects how we feel, then we can exercise at a fairly high intensity level, breathe through our nose & maintain a very relaxed state.  Taken one step further…if we breathe through our nose & maintain a relaxed state, then we can stay much more aerobic (versus anaerobic) in our energy usage at even at faster paces!

Why would staying aerobic longer be helpful?  Well, endurance athletes…the longer you stay aerobic (and the more aerobic you stay), the more body fat you’re using for energy.  And when we use more body fat for energy…we spare our glycogen (stored muscle carbohydrate) stores.  And when we spare our glycogen stores…we can go longer, farther & faster on less ingested food!  Win, win, WIN!

 

So, there you have it, folks.  Some new ideas on a seemingly mundane topic like breathing.  I’ve been like a kid in a candy store after reading this book.  There are all kinds of new things to try, techniques to work on, skills to experiment with.  Like anything new all of it is awkward, uncomfortable & frustrating.  I can’t do more than about 01 min of nose breathing while slooooow running before I feel like I’m suffocating.  Mtn biking has been a bit more successful…but only because of the downhills (for a bit of recovery).  If it weren’t for the downhills I’m  not sure I could do it at all!  Walking, however, is getting slightly easier.  And weight training…that I can do 100% nose breathing.

But as bizarre as it all is, I love it!  There’s nothing like having new stuff to work on.  I enjoy the process of being a fumbling beginner who has NO clue.  I really like experimenting & experiencing little “a-ha’s” along the way.  It’s all good.  It all means that I’m making progress, I’m improving, I’m changing!  Here’s to life-long learning!