Tidbit Tuesday - Breathing
Hello,
Welcome to another Tidbit Tuesday where we aim to teach you something new about health, nutrition, lifestyle, training, and so much more, every week!
Today we are talking about BREATHING, something we all do 25,000 times a day, yet most of us do it incorrectly or haven't even begun to tap into its lost art.
Breath work can play an important role in our everyday life, improving your training sessions, boosting your immune system, and greatly reducing your stress while improving your resiliency.
One of the greatest gifts you can bestow upon yourself, or any of your loved ones—including your children—is an intimate relationship with the breath. When we can control our breathing in any scenario then we will be able to maintain control of ourselves, and the situation. But it turns out breath work is about more than conscious activation of your immune and nervous systems. The expansive list of benefits—from nitric oxide production, to CO2 retention, to mental clarity, to aerobic capacity, to a decrease in salivary and plasma cortisol, to faster sleep onset—have been discussed repeatedly in Spiritual and Religious realms, and now more than ever in science as well.
Breath work goes beyond the physical and mental. For example, we know that, based on a concept called “cardiac coherence,” a long, relaxed exhale activates your parasympathetic “rest-and-digest” nervous system, slows the heart rate, and increases the heart rate variability. While hastily sucking your breath in with stressful chest breathing and shallow exhales is not only a fast track to initiation of stressful heart rate and nervous system patterns, but also a sign that you've set aside trust to instead greedily consume the air around you, like a young child stuffing their face with all the birthday cake they can find or (perhaps more relevant to our times), a nervous shopper buying every roll of toilet paper at the department store.
On a practical level, the breathing exercises relax you, calm you down and center you. Breathing exercises are a way to calm the mind when you are feeling stressed out. The exercises can help you feel more awake in the morning, and can help you fall asleep at night.
A multitude of research has repeatedly proven a link between stress and breath, and scientists have figured out that you can actually relax your brain through your breath and that you can also speed up stress reactions and cortisol release via hyperventilation. But even more fast-acting than the gene-altering effects is the ability of breath to be able to train the body's reaction to stressful situations and dampen the production of excessive stress hormones.
Short and rapid breathing is controlled by the sympathetic nervous system, which is part of your “fight or flight” response, while slow, deep breathing stimulates the parasympathetic reaction, activating the “rest and digest” response.
Contemporary science confirms what generations of healers have observed through centuries of practice: Breath awareness can turn on the body’s natural abilities to prevent and cure illness. The mental and physical stresses of modern life, such as anxiety, frustration, sexual dysfunction, insomnia, high blood pressure, digestive woes, and immune dysfunction can all be addressed through conscious control of your breath. In addition, it can increase energy, accelerate healing, improve cognitive skills, and enhance mental balance.
One of my favourite tactics for breathing is called BOX BREATHING – taught to Navy Seals as a simple tactic for quieting the mind during periods of extreme stress – The technique is simple: close your mouth and slowly breathe in through your nose for four counts. Hold your breath for four seconds. Then slowly exhale through your mouth for a count of four. Hold the exhale for another four counts. Doing this a few times through will help you achieve a more relaxed state.
Truly astounding, the power of breath to relax or perform. Breathe your way through incredibly intense, stressful or painful parts of your life, but also, you can also target your breath to amplify your nervous system and focus on performance!
Below is a link to an article by Ben Greenfield with an in-depth walk-through on 30 different breathing techniques. Pick which ones are best for you and practice them for 5 to 10 minutes each day to perform optimally and get the most out of your day.
Also, find a book by Dr. Belisa Vranich titled “Breathe”. In the book, Dr. Vranich shows us how breathing the right way can help with stress, illness, and a whole host of issues with a 14-day program to improve physical and mental health.
https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/health-fitness/mens-health/30-ways-to-breathe-better
What about breathing and activity or sport?
When using our breath for performance standards, something that is greatly overlooked, we must consider proper bracing technique for moving safely and effectively. The bracing sequence is the bedrock from which all safe, dynamic, and high-volume athletic movement is generated. Consider it a new weapon to practice with and master as you apply it to all the positions and movements of sport and life.
The idea is to make the bracing sequence instinctual so that you can reproduce the same neutral, stable position in any situation. Repeat the sequence any time you need to prepare yourself for an activity or just to re-align your posture. Also, if you can cultivate the mindset that anything other than a braced neutral spinal position is feasting on your athletic potential and opening the door to pain and injury, your athletic potential will soar.
The bracing sequence:
Starting from a relaxed/compromised position.
1) Screw your feet into the ground
· Position your feet directly under your hips and parallel to each other. Externally rotate from your hips by screwing your feet into the ground – more specifically, keeping your feet straight, screw your left foot into the ground in a counterclockwise direction and your right foot into the ground in a clockwise direction. Note: You’re not turning your feet outward; you’re just exerting force in an outward direction.
2) Squeeze your butt
· Set your pelvis in a neutral position by squeezing your butt (which you can do concurrently with step 1). You will always end up in the right position because those glutes were engineered to support your pelvis and spine. You don’t need to keep your butt at full tension; just activate your glutes and then reduce the tension to maintain a neutral pelvic position.
3) Take a deep breath in
· Lock your pelvis and ribcage in place by using your abdominals. You can’t move with your butt squeezed, so you need to lock in the position by engaging your abs. Think about it like this: Glutes set position, and abs brace position. You need at least 20% tension in your ab to set and maintain a braced neutral spine for basic positions like sitting, standing, and walking. To execute this step, continue squeezing your glutes and take a big breath in through your diaphragm (belly).
4) Balance your ribcage over your pelvis and get your belly tight as you exhale
· As you let the air out, balance your ribcage over your pelvis and tighten your belly, stiffening as you exhale. It’s not sucking in or hollowing. It’s not even drawing in; it’s stiffening in place as you exhale. As the musculature of your trunk compresses toward your midline, you create intra-abdominal pressure around your spine, resulting in a more rigid lever. The idea is to breathe into that tight space as if you were putting compressed air into a steel tank. You don’t make the tank tight around the air; you put the air into the rigid tank.
5) Set your head and shoulders in a neutral position
· Draw the heads of your arm bones back, spreading your collarbones wide as you externally rotate your shoulders and turn your palms toward the sky. As you do so, center your head over your shoulders, focusing your gaze straight ahead. Think about aligning your ears over your shoulders, hips, and ankles.
6) Finish in your ideal position
· To complete the sequence, let your arms fall to your sides, keeping your thumbs pointed forward and your shoulders externally rotated. The goal is to align your ears over your shoulders, your ribcage over your pelvis, and your hips over your knees and ankles.
Finally, you’re ready to tackle life with an organized, braced neutral spine which will allow you to transition from one functional position to another. Whether you’re playing sports, at work, or just going about your day, you are constantly transitioning from one position to another. As well as rotating. To ensure safe, optimal, and transferable movement patterns, you need to start in a braced neutral position and maintain that position as you rotate or transition into your next position.
Happy breathing!
Coach Sean
