Tag: anxiety

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The Surprising Breathing Mistake That Everybody Makes

“Take a deep breath.”

Have you ever been told to do that? I certainly have! “Breathe deep…” that’s what instructors have told me during hard workouts as I sweat and sputter for air. I’ve had kind friends tell me to “just breathe deep!” when I’m going through a stressful moment.

This sounds like a good idea, because deep inhales calm you down, right? Well…actually no.

In fact, taking a deep breath is the last thing you want to do if you’re trying to calm down!

One of the best things you can do to calm and destress is to hold your breath.

Sounds crazy, I know! Because everyone always tells you to breathe, and we’ve all heard that breath-holding is really bad for us. That is true but also NOT True! Okay…let me break this down a bit.

Holding our breath is really unhealthy if we are unaware that we are doing it.

Disorders such as sleep apnea are harmful, unconscious forms of breath-holding. We want to avoid this for sure!

A new form of unhealthy, unconscious breath-holding is becoming more common and leading to all kinds of problems. This type of breath-holding occurs when we are constantly shifting between tasks and never focusing on one thing for a sustained period of time. Without realizing it, we forget to breathe.

Our current lifestyle promotes this scattered attention. With computers, phones, and watches pinging us all day long we can’t stay focused even if we try!

This form of unconscious breath-holding, now dubbed “email apnea” is very problematic- leading to poor digestion, increased stress hormone production, increased blood pressure, a dampened immune system, decreased ability to focus, and interrupted sleep. After months or years of this, your neck and shoulders get tight on top of everything else.

So why am I telling you that you should hold your breath? Because when you consciously hold your breath, all sorts of wonderful things happen.

Breath Holding for Clarity of Mind

Yes, it’s true, when you hold your breath you start to feel anxious, irritable, and hyper-focused on getting air in. But this momentary air hunger results in a state of peace and calm once you are finished with the technique. Over time this relaxed state becomes more and more prominent because your tolerance to carbon dioxide is increasing and your breathing patterns are becoming normalized at rest.

Yogis have been practicing breath-holding techniques for thousands of years.

At that time they already knew that there were health benefits, and now we know the science behind it.

By exposing the chemical sensors in your arteries to greater and greater levels of carbon dioxide by holding your breath, you restore normal breathing patterns that have been disrupted due to minor (or major) stressors in your life.

Yogis would often use breath-holding techniques as a way to prepare for sitting in meditation because as breathing normalizes, thinking becomes clearer.

But don’t worry! You don’t have to meditate to get all the benefits. Just doing the breathing techniques are enough.

Breath-Holding and Anxiety

Breath-holding techniques have been shown to help with anxiety and depression disorders (of which 50% of Americans will suffer one of).

The problem is, patients with anxiety have a much greater fear of holding their breath. To avoid the sensation of air hunger- which is inherently anxiety producing- they over-breathe.

Over time, their chemical sensors tolerate less and less carbon dioxide, and it becomes harder and harder to hold your breath. This cycle creates more anxiety, more over-breathing, and so on.

Slow breathing is taught to people who suffer from panic attacks because it increases carbon dioxide levels without the fear-inducing capacity of breath holding. So, if you know that you tend toward anxiety or panic attacks, try slow breathing first.

If you are feeling stressed, anxious, or panicky, your body is already increasing your oxygen levels and reducing your carbon dioxide levels. If this continues, a panic attack can occur. By increasing and maintaining higher levels of carbon dioxide, the anxiety can be prevented before it even starts.

So, instead of taking a deep breath, try holding your breath!

This will increase your carbon dioxide levels and trigger your chemoreceptors to increase your tolerance to carbon dioxide. At first, while holding your breath, you may feel MORE anxious, uncomfortable, irritable. Your body will scream at you to breathe. But AFTER you hold your breath, the opposite happens. You become relaxed, calm, clear-headed.

Precautions

A word of warning: do NOT try this technique if you are pregnant or if you have cardiac issues or heart problems. This technique is also not appropriate for children under age 12.

How to Do It:

To practice breath-holding, make sure to breathe slowly and smoothly in through the nose and out through the nose. If your breath becomes ragged or uneven, or you are feeling very anxious or panicked, reduce the time of holding until you can perform the exercise comfortably while still reaching the sense of slight urge to inhale.

Here’s what to do:

  1. Slowly inhale to the count of four.
  2. Exhale fully but slowly also to the count of four.
  3. Hold your breath when you are done exhaling for a count of four.
  4. Repeat this breath cycle for 1-2 minutes.
  5. You can increase or decrease the count depending on if it feels easy or too challenging, for example holding each stage for only 2 seconds if it feels very hard, or 5 seconds if it feels easy.
  6. *Aim to hold the breath for the same duration as the inhalation and the exhalation. This is a goal to work toward if holding your breath is hard initially.

A few things to keep in mind:

  1. Don’t over-effort to hold your breath, work within your range of sensing some air hunger but not over doing it.
  2. Practice this technique sitting or laying down. Do not do this technique while standing.
  3. Keep your mouth closed and breathe through your nose as much as possible.
  4. Practice this breathing technique on an empty stomach if possible.

Potential Health Benefits:

  1. Improved diaphragm function.
  2. Increased lung capacity.
  3. Cleared out residual, dead air from the lungs. 
  4. Restored function of the respiratory center in the brain (due to the increase in carbon dioxide during breath-holding).
  5. Increased oxygen off-loading to tissues, resulting in improved breathing efficiency and endurance.
  6. Reduced stress and anxiety.
  7. Clearer thinking.
  8. Improved circulation.
  9. May help with relieve digestive problems, allergies, asthma, and auto-immune disorders.
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Whiplash, Pain, and the Brain.

Earlier this week it snowed a lot. Then it melted, and froze overnight. And when I took my dog out for her morning walk, well, you can probably guess what happened. I didn’t make it 20 feet from my door before my feet slid out from under me on a patch of ice and I landed hard on my butt, with my head being painfully snapped back. I was, of course, a little stunned and went back to my house to survey the damage. No broken bones, just some bruises. Over the next few days I monitored myself for signs of concussion, which , thankfully, there were none, but what I did have was a painful stiffness and ache in my neck when I tried to move my head. “Oh great,” I thought. Whiplash.

An Icy Morning.

When I first walked into my house after slipping on the ice, these were the thoughts in my head, “oh no, you have a delicate neck. This is going to be so bad. You are going to be dealing with this for months. What if you have another concussion? That’s going to really mess you up…” and on and on.

Luckily, I had the knowledge and training to know that these thoughts would be the most significant factor in my speed and completeness of my recovery. Even though it was hard, I started to change my self talk. I said to myself, “this is not that bad. You’ll get over it soon with a couple days for your strained muscles to heal. You didn’t hit your head, and there are no signs that anything is seriously wrong. You’re going to be ok.”

At first, I didn’t believe these words I told myself, but I kept up with it. And, over the course of the day, I started believing a little bit of it. But more importantly, my body felt less tense and guarded. Now, three days later, my neck pain is almost completely gone. I didn’t have to go to a chiropractor or have needles stuck in my neck. I didn’t have to do any special exercises except some breathing to calm my nervous system. I didn’t even have to change my daily activities and still did what I would usually do, including exercise.

Of course, it’s not always that easy, and it has not always been the case for me to get over neck pain that quickly. I have had many neck injuries of varying severity, and the pain of them has plagued me for many years of my life. I tried everything, acupuncture, chiropractic, and of course several physical therapists. Those all helped, but my neck pain never really went away until I changed the way I thought about my pain. I know, I know, it sounds like I’m saying, “it’s all in your head.” Which is just not true. But, it is true that a lot of it is in how your head and your body talk to each other.

Pain and the Brain

You see, the brain determines levels of threat, and sends signals to our body on what to do accordingly. When your brain perceives high threat, it starts emitting neurotransmitters that tell your body to tense, to breathe more shallowly, and halt healing processes.

This is actually really good. For example, let’s say you’re a wild human and you get attacked by a tiger. You find yourself bleeding and injured, and your brain knows that it needs to get your muscles tensed and ready to go so that you can hoof it back to your village before you die in the middle of the prairie. (Do tiger’s even live on prairies? Anyway, you get the idea). Your brain, in that moment, is not worried about healing. Healing occurs when you get back to the village and your wounds can be tended, you are safe.

But what if you never get to the village? What if the stress of getting attacked by a tiger is replaced with the stress and worry that’s associated with chronic neck pain, the fear that you will never get better, the threat of having to deal with a stiff neck on top of all the other things you are having to deal with in your life right now?

In this scenario, your body never gets a signal to relax, to soften your tensed muscles, to release a cascade of neurochemical transmitters that promote healing. You become caught in a troublesome feedback loop: your muscles get’s tense, which causes your brain to percieve threat. As a result of that percieved threat, your body get’s more tense. And on and on, until you find yourself dealing with months to years of pain with no one able to explain to you why it won’t go away.

Getting out of the Cycle of Pain

I have been there, in that loop. I have a tendency to go back there, maybe it’s just how I’m wired. I have to actively, consciously, change the way I think about my body and pain in order to subvert that loop. And it works. I also use relaxation techniques and mindfulness meditation practices to assist me in this process. But what has been so fascinating to me is that this is the missing link in healing from chronic pain, and, perhaps more importantly, preventing it in the first place.

This is not news to the medical community; there have been plenty of studies linking a patient’s outlook on recovery to how well they actually recover. This mind body connection is starting to become more popular in pain management, but in most cases it is not emphasized or even acknowledged in our healthcare system. Certainly, there are appropriate times to seek invasive modalities or even surgery, but shouldn’t we start with an intervention that is very low risk and potentially very high reward in regards to resolution of symptoms?

I have created some resources to help you manage your pain and to prevent yourself from developing chronic pain syndromes. It starts with being able to sense and feel your body, in a non-threatening way. This will allow your brain and body to get out of the cycle of threat and pain and back into fluid, alternating, reciprocating motion.

Getting Back in Your Body

A great place to start getting back in your body is with this simple 5 minute Guided Body Awareness Technique. (You should try it, it’s really relaxing!)

Five Minute Body Awareness Exercise.

Remember, pain is not just in your body, and it’s not just in your brain. Whoever says that mind and body are two separate things is just wrong. You can’t treat one and not the other and expect to change the patterns that we live in. If you find yourself in chronic pain, be kind and gentle with yourself. Reconnecting with the sensations in your body is the first step to letting go of these stuck patterns.

May you find ease in your body.

– Dr. Derya

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