Deep breathing

[yello]

In an effort to manage stress, I've been reading up on (and practicing) deep breathing. This might sound odd but I hadn't found it easy to do - the reading bit was ok, the practice not so much. For starters, breathing on a count wasn't natural and just begged questions. How quickly do you count? How deep do you breath?

My clever watch tells me that I have a good VO2Max for my age. A full deep breath for me was invariably taking longer than any suggested count. I was short/shallow breathing really. My (not so?) clever watch is worse; it's tick down of 4 was leaving me woefully short of a full breath. It really disrupted my natural breathing pattern. It was causing me anxiety I read more and found a comment on a sports watch forum.

The person more-or-less ranted about the silliness of deep breathing, how the body has a natural patternand forcing it to do otherwise was daft. Leaving aside that a natural pattern can be disrupted by such things as anxiety, and ignoring the rant aspect, I saw that there was a truth in what was being said. Then the other morning, I found my truth.

I'd woken with body battery fully charged, anxiety free, and realised/experienced that I was breathing deeply and slowly at my own natural rhythm. Eureka. I now have a breathing profile that I can return to in times of stress. The inbreath is sligher longer and slower than the outbreath, and I naturally hold each for a few seconds. It feels perfectly natural.

This morning, on our morning dog walk, I was talking to my wife about it. She does yoga. She remarked that she finds yoga easier if she moves with her natural breathing (inhalation, exhalation) rather than changing her breathing pattern to match the movements.

Perhaps I should have spoken with her in the first place

 

[ColinJ]

The person more-or-less ranted about the silliness of deep breathing, how the body has a natural pattern and forcing it to do otherwise was daft.

Poppycock!

I was in hospital for 9 days and having daily blood tests and vital signs monitoring. After a few days the nurse gently slapped my wrist during the tests and told me to breathe. I was bewildered and asked why she'd said that. It turned out that every time she came near my arm with a needle I stopped breathing altogether and it was completely messing up my blood oxygen saturation, blood pressure, and pulse rate readings! I was completely unaware that I was doing it.

... a natural pattern can be disrupted by such things as anxiety...

See above!

 

[MontyVeda]

as for how quickly to count... one elephant, two elephant, three elephant, etc. It's approximate seconds, surely?


as an unrelated side note... I don't believe nicotine helps with stress. It's the deep steady breathing one does when smoking the sh!t that's helping.

 

[yello]

I don't believe nicotine helps with stress. It's the deep steady breathing one does when smoking the sh!t that's helping.

Yes, i can see that being the case!

 

[oldwheels]

Poppycock!

I was in hospital for 9 days and having daily blood tests and vital signs monitoring. After a few days the nurse gently slapped my wrist during the tests and told me to breathe. I was bewildered and asked why she'd said that. It turned out that every time she came near my arm with a needle I stopped breathing altogether and it was completely messing up my blood oxygen saturation, blood pressure, and pulse rate readings! I was completely unaware that I was doing it.


See above!

I don’t intend to sound flippant but at my age and condition I could not afford to stop breathing when approached by a needle. It happens all too often. I will admit to looking away from the needle tho’.

 

[ColinJ]

I don’t intend to sound flippant but at my age and condition I could not afford to stop breathing when approached by a needle.

I didn't even know that I was doing it. At the time, I couldn't afford it either, given that I had turned my pulmonary artery into the near-equivalent of a black pudding!

I will admit to looking away from the needle tho’.

I must do that without thinking too, because I have never seen one going in.

Similar situation at the dentist. After multiple extractions and fillings, I have still never even seen the hands of the dentist near my face, let alone any of the scary tools!