Leveraging Breathing for Optimum Health and Performance - 2023 Thrive Practice #5
"Breathing is the first act of life, and the last. Our very life depends on it. Yet it is the one thing most of us do without thinking." - Andrew Weil
Breathing moves oxygen into our lungs and blood and removes carbon dioxide from our bodies. Oxygen gets transported in our blood—bonded to the hemoglobin in our red blood cells—to the working tissues of our body, like our muscle cells or neurone cells in our brain. Oxygen is drawn into the cells to power our mitochondria, which then create energy in the form of adenosine triphosphate or ATP. When we stop breathing, oxygen stops moving to our mitochondria, our energy gets used up, all cellular activity stops, and we die.
Breathing fuels our mitochondria, and mitochondria power our lives.
Your breathing muscles are so important that control systems in the body will take blood away from your arms and legs and redirect it to your respiratory muscles to keep you breathing when your body is getting tired. This defense mechanism to keep you breathing when you get fatigued is what I studied in my PhD research. Yes, believe it or not, you can earn a doctorate in breathing!
When we increase our physical activity, we deepen and speed up our breathing to supply our working muscles with oxygen and get carbon dioxide out of our blood. Movement and breathing are entwined together. When we breathe better, we can perform better in our activities, from physical workouts to how well we think. But the importance of breath goes beyond just athletes breathing to power their performances. Consider -
Singers and actors using their breath to share music and emotions with their audiences
A meditator directing their attention to their breath to calm and focus the mind
A parent giving their frightened child a hug and holding them until their breathing settles
A speaker or presenter breathing across their vocal cords to create vibrations that carry through the air to other people who hear their words and see the world in a new way
Breathing is also critical for those who push the limits of their potential. Athletes breathe deeply to power their performances. Mountain climbers breathe deeply to oxygenate as they get close to the sky. Free divers hold their breath to explore the ocean depths without scuba gear. Swimmers and rowers must breathe in time with their movements to be able to perform to their potential.
What do all these activities have in common? Whether to ocean depths or mountain peaks, for seconds of maximum power or hours of endurance, the simple answer is that they all depend on breathing.
Here are some ideas for using breathing to elevate your ability to move, be active, enjoy the sports that you love and supercharge your performance.
Under natural breathing situations, your breathing is controlled by automatic systems deep in your brain that keep your breathing matched to your metabolism. You don’t need to think about your breathing for this to happen—it’s completely automated.
During physical activity like walking, we will naturally adopt the most efficient and least costly pattern of natural breath. However, we can deliberately optimize and make our breathing more beneficial when we exercise by leveraging a phenomenon known as entrainment.
Entrainment is the matching of your breathing rhythm to your exercise movement patterns. Think about a rower. They must inhale as they lean forward to place the oar in the water. Then they exhale as the pull the oar through the water to propel the boat forward. Breathing must be entrained to the movement or the technique will fall apart and the exercise will seem extraordinarily difficult.
Similarly, swimmers must breathe in time with the stroke. If you breathe at the wrong time, you’ll inhale some water! Tennis players will exhale forcefully in time with hitting the ball, then breathe as efficiently and relaxed as possible to recover between points. This same idea holds true for paddling, walking, running, cycling, most racquet sports, most combative sports, yoga, Tai Chi, and many other activities.
In entrained sports, the idea is to align your exhale with the muscle contraction or power move of the sport. In tennis, this means exhaling with the shot. In Yoga, this means exhaling as you settle into the pose (for example, exhaling into downward dog).
In walking, jogging, running, cycling, swimming, and paddling you will settle into a breathing rhythm that matches your movement. Experiment with different patterns to find the rhythm that makes the exercise feel easier and more relaxed.
This alignment or entrainment happens on all rhythmic repetitive activities. When we bring the breath into alignment with the movement, the effort required to breathe and to move both decrease, making the activity seem much easier.
We hope this information helps you get some perspective about breathwork practices that lead you to an upward spiral of wellness!
If you want to learn more about breath, I cover that topic in the first chapter in my new book Powerhouse: Protect Your Energy, Optimize Your Health and Supercharge Your Performance.
If you want to try a cool app that leads you through some breathwork exercises check out “Othership”. You can download it at this link: https://www.othership.us/app.
Have a great month!
