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Developing familiarity and a sense of comfort with, and
confidence and trust in, breathing mechanics, is essential to learning good
breathing. Learning to make
diaphragmatic breathing the dominant form of breathing is fundamental. Chest breathing is inefficient, labor intensive, and can make
breathing seem difficult, even exhausting.
It usually requires faster breathing, which may introduce a sense of
urgency and anxiety about breathing.
It makes completion of exhale difficult, which can trigger
breathlessness, chest tightness, and worry about getting the next breath. It may create a sense of feeling confined,
restricted, and trapped, setting the stage for feeling defensive and
insecure. Chest breathing makes
breathing intentional, and “requires” that you “take” a breath! Intentional breathing, conscious or
unconscious, interferes with diaphragmatic control. It brings a sense of struggle to breathing,
a behaviour that should otherwise seem automatic,
effortless, and easy. Chest breathing
is a quick and easy way to deregulate chemistry. Chest breathing often triggers muscle posturing, even in
muscles entirely unrelated to breathing, which can result in tension and
pain, including headache. Muscle
posturing based on shifting from diaphragmatic to chest breathing is known as
dysponesis,
and it shows up when people feel defensive in their bodies, e.g., in muscles
related to previous injuries. Muscle
defensiveness, however, is only the tip of the “defensiveness iceberg,” and
is likely to be part of a much larger defensive configuration embedded in
other physiology and in personal experience, including emotion and cognition.
Experiencing
the effects of chest breathing versus diaphragmatic breathing is a part of
the learning process involved in mechanics play. Diaphragmatic breathing is essential to maintaining healthy
body chemistry: chemoregulation is achieved primarily
through diaphragmatic control.
Adaptive diaphragmatic breathing simply “happens” in accordance with
brainstem reflexes, and doesn’t need your “help.” It is effortless, efficient, quiet, slow,
and gentle, but not deep.
Self-defeating forms of diaphragmatic breathing, however, may also be
easily learned, consciously or unconsciously, as a reinforced operant behaviour.
Unlearning these forms of diaphragmatic breathing is also addressed
through mechanics play. Here is an
example: Breathing
for relaxation can go wrong. A psychologist in gave her corporate clients homework
exercises for relaxation training, which invariably included diaphragmatic
breathing practice. Not infrequently,
however, her clients would report their displeasure in doing the exercises,
which she had interpreted as “Type A” discomfort with relaxation and inner
focus. Upon working with a CapnoTrainer, however, she discovered to her surprise,
that many of her clients had been practicing overbreathing! Without realising it, deep breathing had
transported them into severe states of hypocapnia. During her initial experience with the CapnoTrainer, she tested an executive in the office, who
had refused to continue his relaxation homework assignments, and found that
upon “relaxing” his PCO2 levels dropped for 40 to below 20 mmHg! Copyrighted by Behavioral
Physiology Institute, |