DEEP BREATHING EXERCISE FOR A CALM DAY

Deep breathing, voluntary deep breathing, is different than catching your breath.

One is a physical necessity, the other is aimed toward mental health.

‘Breathing and mental health? Oh come on, give me a break.’

Sure, here’s a break: Hold your breath as long as you can, then a little longer.

Still holding? Good. Don’t look at a clock, don’t time it, hold your breath until you can’t hold it any longer.

A little more, just a little more.

Now exhale. Easy stuff, right? That’s not the deep breathing we’re talking about.

Your first exhale after holding your breath came out in a rush. So did your next inhale.

What just happened is what happens in the octagon if you’re unlucky. You just tapped out.

Fighters tap out with help, like getting choked senseless. If they don’t tap out, they pass out. It looks like they died when the ref is slow to call it, or misses the tap, laying there unconscious.

That’s a mental health thing, getting choked all the way out. Know your limits.

Don’t pass out, breath out. Be a good sport.

Deep Breathing For Better Mental Health

Impaired breathing creates one need above all others: getting more oxygen, getting a better breathing rhythm, a regular flow.

It’s never an issue until it is, then it’s a big issue. The biggest. For a reminder, hold your breath again.

You can impair your breathing on purpose to build lung capacity, or learn how to relax into better breathing habits.

The Alexander Technique has an opinion:

F. Matthias Alexander, the developer of the Alexander Technique, knew from his own experience a thing or two about gasping for breath, and how to overcome this problem. As early as 1903, he wrote: “Imagine the folly of narrowing an air tube when desiring to force a larger volume of air through it: and yet this is exactly what occurs in ordinary breath-taking.” When Alexander began teaching his method, he was known as the “breathing man” because he was able to help so many of his students regain the full use of their breathing mechanisms.

Could it be that asthmatics are particularly prone to constricting their nasal and throat passages when trying to take deep breaths? And could it be that this is caused by poor breathing habits, habits that may well have been learned in early childhood? If so, reeducation of the sort the Alexander Technique provides could make a huge difference in their lives.

Ask the right questions, get the right answers.

Eventually, after enough reading and research, or illness, one answer comes up more often than others:

Breath is the answer. This is a link to the website breathistheanswer.com. It explains the Alexander Technique from a local point of view.

Thanks, Fay.

Altitude Training Mask

Can you build better breathing habits by restricting your breath?

There is a science answer.

The short answer to the question of whether you should invest in an altitude training mask is: No.

Breathing against resistance in training doesn’t result in an increase in the amount of oxygen you can take in per minute when you remove the resistance. In other words, the strength of your intercostal muscles and diaphragm aren’t limiting factors in your ability to fill your lungs. When people report feeling like they can breathe deeper, it is likely because breathing deeply or forcefully has helped the muscles loosen up and increased the mobility of your ribs. You’ll notice the same thing if you have to take a few weeks off from exercise; after a workout or two you feel like you can take bigger breaths because your chest has loosened up.

Does this sound like a reflection of the Alexander Technique? Here’s more from trainright.com:

Athletes who live at altitude acclimate to the elevation by developing more red blood cells. That means they can train effectively at that altitude, but their power still declines when they go up into the mountains outside of town. The bigger benefit to living at altitude is the ability to go down to lower elevations for training camps where elite athletes can take advantage of increased oxygen carrying capacity in an environment where there’s more oxygen. They don’t do the opposite. They don’t live at 6,000 feet and go up to the top of mountain at 12,000 feet to do their intervals.

Mexico City Olympic Altitude

We all benefit from the inventions and innovations of extreme performance.

Like athletic performance:

ALTITUDE – Living High and Training Low: Training at high altitudes has been popular among runners since the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. From the results of those Games it was obvious that to compete well at high altitude it is necessary to train at high altitude. It is not clear, however, whether training at altitude provides an advantage for competitions at sea level. The few well-controlled studies have found mixed results when athletes train at altitude to prepare for sea level races. Yet, places such as Boulder, Colorado, and Albuquerque, New Mexico are practically shoulder-to-shoulder with world-class athletes and wannabes seeking the high altitude edge. 

Like space exploration:

The products of space exploration touch lives in more ways than people think. For example, anyone who has ever had a digital x-ray, or a mammogram, or a CAT scan, or been hooked up to a heart monitor, or had specialized heart surgery to clear blockages in their veins, they’ve benefited from technology first built for use in space. 

Like auto racing:

Success in auto racing lives and dies by innovation. After all, it was technological breakthroughs that led to motorsports in the first place, and we’ve been determined to improve performance ever since. But professionals aren’t the only ones who benefit from better technology: in many cases, innovations on the track have trickled down to the cars we all drive today. We examined at five of the greatest improvements to auto racing.  

It’s breathtaking to think of how much more we’ll learn from those working the edge of failure when they don’t fail.

Health, technology, and safety are more than abstract ideas when they have a direct effect on us individually.

They all come from better science, applied science, like wearing a mask during the covid pandemic, like washing hands, like social distancing.

Be on the cutting edge, be somebody who knows when to stand up.