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Learning about breathing is not simply making a
measurement. It is about a partnership
exploration, client and practitioner.
Understanding that breathing is behaviour, is vital to a productive exploration. Breathing changes immediately and
significantly as a result of thoughts, feelings, people, physical experience,
sense of self, and specific life circumstances. A client may breathe well in front of you,
but deregulate immediately in front of her/his spouse, supervisor, or
teacher. During the session, the practitioner conducts a breathing
interview for purposes of identifying: (1) deregulated
breathing patterns and counterproductive breathing mechanics, (2)
physical symptoms, performance deficits,
cognitive changes, and emotions associated with breathing, and (3)
learning histories that may have set the stage
for learning overbreathing. During the interview, changes in PCO2 and breathing
mechanics based on changing conversational content are continuously
monitored. Before the session, clients
are required to complete the Breathing
Interview Checklist, a historical accounting of possible
breathing-related symptoms
Practitioner observations of breathing are recorded on the Practitioner Checklist throughout the
session. If the session is to be
conducted on the Internet, the client also fills out the Personal Checklist, which substitutes for practitioner
observations. The following kinds of
considerations are explored, discussed, and evaluated: ● What are the specific breathing complaints? ● When did the complaints first appear? ● What are the associated symptoms and deficits? ●
What emotions and thoughts accompany the
symptoms? ●
What kind of self-talk about breathing is there? ●
How does the breathing behaviour
interfere with performance? ●
What are the specific triggers, including when,
where, and with whom? ●
Is there fear associated with breathing? How so? ●
Is breathing a “struggle?” How so? ●
Is the deregulation specific or pervasive? ●
Are there “unexplained” symptoms that tie together
with the breathing? ●
How does your client cope with the breathing
challenges? What does s(he) do? ●
What are his/her opinions about why s(he) breathes the way s(he) does? Learned overbreathing behaviour may be triggered by any of the following: ● task challenges, e.g., cars,
planes, computers ● social
situations, e.g., meeting people,
authority figures ● emotional circumstances, e.g., relationship issues, anger problems ● physical
limitations, e.g., pain,
discomfort ● learning environments, e.g., testing, school, skill acquisition, ●
past trauma, e.g., injuries, emotional abuse ● disease, e.g.,
asthma Reviewing CapnoTrainer® recordings
in the context of behavioural observations, client
comments, checklist data, and interview content, provides for development of
testing strategies for experiential exploration of breathing and its effects. Copyrighted by Behavioral
Physiology Institute, |