Better Breathing In The Land of COVID: (The Journey There….)
The Journey to Breathing Better: A Yoga Therapist's Perspective
I've been thinking a lot about breathing over the years—in fact, since I started practicing yoga in August 2002. I've been especially thinking about it these last two years, but differently now as we enter the start of the third year of this pandemic. COVID has affected so many people of all ages, genders, races, and continents. Many have unfortunately experienced the worst outcome possible, and countless others are suffering long-term consequences months after the initial acute phases have passed. This has caused me, through recent research, to realize that the majority of humans don't breathe correctly. Most animals do... Hmmm.
Where This All Began
As the lone middle-aged male walking into that yoga studio on the first day, the idea of focused breathing began as a curiosity for me—more of a by-product of yoga, almost as a hobby if you will. Unbeknownst to me, my teacher was indoctrinated in the "out-there," transformational Kripalu Yoga tradition. It was none other than Yoganand Michael Carroll. As a person who has danced with anxiety in various iterations for periods of my life, both consciously and semi-consciously, I realized intentional breathwork was better than external substances for controlling anxiety, depression, and your garden-variety apathy.
For those of you unfamiliar or under-initiated, power breathing (aka pranayama) as taught in the Kripalu tradition was intended to be transformative—to change your worldview, to question "everything" you thought you ever knew. Suffice to say, Yoganand would guide us most every time by uttering at some point during our class, "Make your practice as strong as you're willing to make it!" with the understanding that if you immerse in these techniques long enough, you'll realize you did too much. Or as my friend, yoga teacher, and studio owner Jillian says, you'll end up with a "prana hangover." Still, it's a lesson we all needed to learn.
Why would a person want to practice so intensely? Well, according to the masters, we need to:
Shake up our ego
Interrupt the incessant need to be validated
From the anatomical and physiological perspective, the powerful breathwork also frees up fascial restrictions in and around the tissues in the abdominal wall and releases some of those psychological restrictions in the human mind
This took me into the realm of coming to understand why the ancients practiced what they did, and how essential it was (and is) to my own physical, spiritual, and emotional well-being. What I did not understand at this time was much of the biochemical and biomechanical science behind it.
January 2015: My First Myofascial Dissection Lab
After completing massage school and hundreds of yoga immersions—classes, workshops, and teacher trainings—and then becoming certified as an E-RYT500 and yoga therapist, I took it upon myself to begin looking into the science behind proper breathing. I enrolled in Tom Myers, Todd Garcia, and Elizabeth Larkam's five-day intensive in Phoenix titled "Fascial Dissection For Movement Therapists."
As it happened, all five students standing alongside me in front of recently deceased "Martha" were interested in the human parts responsible for respiration. What a delightful coincidence! We learned the physical connections between the vocal, respiratory, and pelvic diaphragms—all tethered, along with the heart and pericardium, to the spinal highway and rib cage. We also learned that if one of these structures wasn't "playing nice," none of them would or could.
This caused me to think back to words I learned long ago by the famed architect Louis Sullivan: "Form Follows Function" (from my earlier days as a builder and construction guy). As I immersed deeper into the study of human anatomy and physiology, I was called to turn Louis's phrase around to say "Function Follows Form," as I saw (and continue to see) most of us humans with pretty lousy posture, and therefore, with pretty lousy respiratory habits. (It works the other way too!) I went from remodeling historic homes to remodeling bodies. (BTW: Bodies are way harder to change...)
January 2020: Connecting Breathing Practices in the Medical Community
As timing would have it, and as the universe deemed necessary, I was introduced to Madhavi Parikh, a physician's assistant for Dr. Russ Greenfield, an integrative medicine specialist at the Novant Cancer Center here in Charlotte, NC, who learned about my emphasis on breathwork as a mainstay for most all my yoga classes. We had a meaningful conversation that led to my leading a six-week pranayama (breathwork) class attended by some of their colleagues in the medical and wellness fields. This has since led me to use breathing as a stress management skill for physicians, staff, and their patients in recovery or remission from various types of cancers.
March 2020: COVID-19 Arrives in America
I was in New York getting ready to board a flight home after a weekend of visiting my daughter. The 1:15 flight was canceled due to low numbers of passengers, and the following "make-up" flight two hours later had only about 20 people on board a one-hundred-fifty-seat aircraft. I hadn't seen a plane that empty in 20 years. I knew something was different. Something was wrong.
It was also about this time that, thanks to Whitney Hodges, a fellow yoga teacher and colleague, I was turned on to a podcast interview with none other than James Nestor, researcher and journalist extraordinaire. I promptly bought his book Breath and was down the rabbit hole in earnest, enrolling in a year-long dissection lab here in Charlotte, NC, to continue my research into the anatomy and physiology of breathing.
And then came Patrick McKeown, brilliant author of The Oxygen Advantage and more recently The Breathing Cure, who has spent the bulk of his life researching the biomechanics, biochemistry, and cadence for optimal breathing for various conditions, including COVID patients. Combining the ancient wisdom, my own personal anecdotal reports, and modern science has led me to explore in earnest ways to breathe for our very best health, whether we're ill with some respiratory infection or simply trying to avoid one.
January 2021: Dawn of "The Breathing Club" / "The Virtual Breathing Clinic"
Timing is an interesting phenomenon. I don't know why, but I took it upon myself to launch into various projects centered around breathing for better health. Since COVID shut down my live yoga classes, my bodywork, and private yoga practice with one-on-one clients for about six weeks, I figured I'd better do something. So in addition to moving my in-person classes online, I launched a pilot class which I called "The Breathing Club" and began working to create an online instructional learning program geared toward physicians, medical staff, and patients called "The Virtual Breathing Clinic" with Carol Davis of "Inspiring More" and Eric Mugele, creator of "Breakthrough Advocates." I have since provided this to Dr. Anthony Cooley, pediatric physician and associate professor at Emory University Hospital and Medical School, where we're looking to provide this online program to assist with stress management among medical professionals.
Oh Yeah, This COVID-19 Thing I Was Promising to Talk About...
So going about my work each day, triple-vaxxed and masked, I, being a curious fellow, am honestly (and mostly) a student of human behaviors. As this applies to the pandemic, I observe how people walk, act, and protect themselves (or not!) in the Land of COVID. I can be hypercritical, especially when I see so many people seriously ill, making their family members ill, and so many people dying from this disease. And then there are the folks we now refer to as "Long Haulers," ones dealing with the long-term effects of the post-acute phase of COVID. This is happening way too often because people won't mask up or won't get vaccines—vaccines, mind you, that work, vaccines that won't implant a chip in you, and vaccines that WILL keep you alive and pretty safe from the effects of COVID, even if you do contract the Omicron variant.
What I've learned as I continue to see way too many people (healthcare workers included) sporting "chin diapers" (you know what I mean...) where the mask doesn't cover the orifices that spread this virus, but somehow in their own minds meets regulatory compliance with the signs that say "face coverings must be worn to enter this building!"
What I have come to discover is that quite honestly, most people don't know how to breathe properly even without a mask on. But then create a "paper or cloth" border wall between the mouth, nose, and outside air, and people really feel like they're suffocating. Nothing will trigger your sympathetic nervous system more quickly than feeling like you are suffocating. Fear is a powerful leader of thought processes... So let's all offer at least a little compassion for the unaware that there is a cure, and an easy one that's, in many cases, proven to be 100% free!
Some Considerations / Some Facts
We humans are mostly hyper-ventilators, breathing on average about 25,000 breaths per day. That's about three times more than we should breathe.
Many of us are mouth breathers, letting in environmental toxins and drying out our air passageways, introducing foreign objects due to lack of a proper filter, and creating inflammation as a result. We are breathing too fast, too much, and too shallow.
Noses are for breathing. Mouths are for eating and talking.
Improving our tolerance for CO2 will enhance HRV (heart rate variability) and pull more oxygen off the red blood cells for the rest of our body to enjoy.
It also enhances our relationship to our vagus nerve, the one responsible for reminding us how our organs are doing (pretty important info).
Nose breathing also enhances the use of nitric oxide, which is a booster to our immune system function.
Mouth breathing increases the likelihood of snoring, sleep apnea, and interrupted sleep patterns, which may contribute to anxiety, depression, and poor concentration.
So What Do We Do About This?
Practice slowing your breathing rate down gradually. Work to slow your rate down to 6-second inhales / 6-second exhales. (This can take some time, but this will make mask wearing so much easier as good habits of slow nasal breathing are improved upon.)
Once that becomes easier, try lengthening the exhalation even more. Try perhaps a 6/8 or 6/10 ratio of inhale to exhale for helping symptoms of anxiety or stress.
Pause to notice the calming effects on your nervous system and how that has positive effects on your entire body.
Remember that conscious healthy breath patterns don't have to be loud or forceful. Although many "yogic breathing" techniques are loud, forceful, and intense, you can safely practice many of these techniques in public or even while driving, where the formula is LSD (light, slow, deep).
Practicing these techniques in the waking hours will (over time) improve your breathing patterns while sleeping as well.
Consider "mouth taping" at night as we can't always control which airway we'll use while sleeping. Small inexpensive strips of surgical tape may be used, unless there is a pronounced obstruction in the nasal passages, or use MyoTape, which allows for occasionally breathing through the mouth when necessary.
In Conclusion
Improving our respiratory habits overall will increase our immune system function, make mask wearing not such a big deal, and protect ourselves, our families and loved ones, and the public in general.
For more information and to schedule a consultation for individual conditions, reach out to me at jeffreyshoaf.com.
