Written by Liam McClintock
When you first sit down to meditate, it can be jarring to realize that your mind is completely out of control. It’s like the mind has a mind of its own. The task of sitting down and attempting to tame this beast might seem in some ways equivalent to taming a wild stallion.
Our conscious mind is like a cowboy trying to ride a wild stallion, representing the subconscious.
Breathing can help us tame the stallion and strengthen the cowboy.
Luckily we have some handy tools at our disposal for taming the stallion. We can control our mind (thoughts + emotions) by changing our physiology. As one study put it: “One’s ability to self-regulate the quality of feeling and emotion of one’s moment-to-moment experience is intimately tied to our physiology, and the reciprocal interactions among physiological, cognitive, and emotional systems.”[1] In other words, to change your mind, to get “unstuck” from negative mental patterns, you can begin by changing your physiology!
The best way to change the context (physiology) in which thoughts emerge is to gain conscious control over your breath. By changing breathing patterns, you send specific messages to your brain. Of all of the body’s automatic systems, the breath is the only one we can voluntarily change, the only input into the physical system that we have. That’s why it’s the primary link between mind and body.
The Importance of Breath
“Every neuron, every synapse, every muscle feeds on the flame of your breath. Breathing is not only critical to sustaining life, but done correctly and consciously, it can be a valuable tool for getting the most out of every human endeavor, from the most demanding physical challenges to the pursuit of understanding life’s deepest spiritual mysteries.” – Al Lee & Don Campbell, Perfect Breathing
When I told my Great Aunt that I teach breathing in meditation, she exclaimed, “Well I already do that!” And she’s right – it’s something we don’t generally need to think about. The importance of breathing is often overlooked because it seems so easy and automatic.
But the breath plays a vital role: each breath you take is both energizing and detoxifying. 20% of the breath’s oxygen goes toward fueling your brain, while 70% of the body’s waste is eliminated through breathing. Not breathing well means not thinking or functioning well.[2]
The manner in which you breathe can help determine your mental and physical state in each moment. Each breath you take signals your heart, lungs and brain via your autonomic nervous system (ANS). Specifically, a thin bundle of fiber called the vagus nerve transmits information between these different parts. Your breathing pattern influences the vagus nerve, which communicates to the rest of your body how it ought to behave. An elongated, smooth breath will tell your body to relax, while a rapid, disjointed breath will trigger the “fight-or-flight” system.
Breath → Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) → Hormones & Neurotransmitters → Mind
Changing your breath alters the way that you see the world by affecting your ANS, which is directly linked to your mind.
Physiological Coherence
When you breathe correctly, your physiology syncs up in a state called Coherence, defined as “a specific physiological state associated with optimal cognitive functioning and emotional stability.”[3] We can use the breath as a tool for achieving physiological coherence.
Coherence is defined by Heart Rate Variability (HRV),[4] which measures the variability in intervals between your heartbeats over time. HRV is a key metric that can quantify energy levels and predict the risk of cardiac arrest;[5] it’s a powerful indicator of what state your body and mind are in. If you’re healthy, in general you ought to have a higher HRV with greater variation, as your body is more capable of adjusting to and recovering from stressors.
In this coherent state of optimal physiology, cognition and emotional balance, your HRV ought to form a symmetrical sinusoidal wave (see below).
This was a personal measurement taken using HeartMath’s emWave2 software, demonstrating HRV plotted over time. Notice how the measurements form a relatively regular sine wave.
When I am working with high-performing executives and athletes, I focus on training them to come into physiological coherence using the breathing techniques we’ll discuss here.
The issue with performance today is that it’s quite different from the survival needs of our ancestors. Imagine that you are about to give the most important speech of your life, a speech in which you must convince a room full of hundreds of strangers to invest in your world-changing business idea. What sort of state would you want to be in for that talk? You’d probably like your thoughts to come clearly, your emotions to remain in check, and your body and vocal cords to obey your commands.
But evolution designed us so that challenges cause prefrontal cortex inhibition on a physiological level. Our ancestors faced predatory threats on the savannah, not modern challenges, like public speaking. If an early Homo sapiens tried to reason logically with a lion they were minced meat and didn’t pass on their genes. Your 200,000+ year old software program thinks that the only type of survival challenge is a fight or flight situation, and so your brain devotes resources to this system (increasing heart rate, narrowing vision, diverting blood and energy to your muscles, and a number of other “fighting and fleeing” perks). Remember that your ancestors never had to give an important investment speech or sink a golf putt in front of a crowd.
In order to perform at your best and have rational control over your mind, you can use your breath to come into a coherent state, in which your brain no longer thinks there’s a lion prowling nearby. Breathing in the right manner can make you smarter at that moment by enabling you to see more clearly and make better decisions, while frantic breathing results in a sort of self-lobotomy with lowered IQ. Optimal coherence is achieved through the breathing techniques that we’ll cover. Essentially you’re hacking into your evolutionary programming to signal your body to come into a balanced state of equilibrium – the breath is that powerful!
The Evolution of Breathing
“Over centuries we have altered our environment so dramatically that many of us have forgotten our innate way of breathing. The process of breathing has been warped by chronic stress, sedentary lifestyles, unhealthy diets, overheated homes, and lack of fitness. All of these contribute to poor breathing habits. These, in turn, contribute to lethargy, weight gain, sleeping problems, respiratory conditions, and heart disease.” – Patrick McKeown, The Oxygen Advantage
Why do we have to pay so much attention to the breath to begin with? It seems that we would have evolved to breathe properly, right?
Unfortunately, the modern world has eroded our ability to breathe properly. Most people take many short, shallow breaths. We also often breathe through our mouths in a vertical way (not using our diaphragms). Our modern living conditions create an environment-physiology mismatch in a few ways:
- We tend to put ourselves under a lot of mental stress & anxiety, which often results in erratic breathing. This reinforces a feedback loop, as erratic breathing creates more stress.
- Screens cause us to hold our breath in “anticipation” (this is an odd phenomenon that only becomes apparent upon close observation).
- Bad posture and tension in the body restrict proper breathing, causing as much as a 30% decrease in breath capacity.[6]
These bad habits can throw your mind and body out of whack. Struggling to get enough oxygen in these conditions, we resort to heavy mouth breathing. Your ancestors would breathe through their mouths primarily in very dangerous situations, so mouth breathing is synonymous with emergency fight or flight situations. Here’s the bottom line: in the modern world we often don’t breathe the way that we were designed to.
Coherent Breathing Technique
So how should we be breathing?
For starters, you must become conscious of your breath in order to manipulate it.
Dolphins are conscious breathers, meaning it’s something they must “choose” to do. As a result, they sleep with only one half of the brain active at a time, and if you anesthetize them they will suffocate. Humans, on the other hand, breathe primarily unconsciously. Luckily we can’t just forget to breathe. But there’s value in being able to observe and control the 20,000 or so breaths you take each day. The more that you can breathe like a dolphin, which is to say consciously, the more control you can have over your mind in any given moment.
Becoming conscious of the breath ensures that you’re breathing properly. We’re all patterned unconscious breathers by default, but for the reasons I mentioned earlier, we must become conscious of the manner in which we breathe. Breathe like a dolphin as often as possible!
Let’s hone in on the three most important aspects of breath, which you can focus on to achieve optimal physiological and mental states.
1. Full Diaphragmatic Breathing
Full diaphragmatic breathing will activate your rest-and-digest system and remove stale air in the lower lungs. Breathing fully and deeply through your diaphragm will also give you maximum energy from the breath.[7]
If you want to see perfect diaphragmatic breathing, watch how a baby breathes naturally. We basically need to re-learn to breathe like a baby, as we did before modern life coded us to breathe in a shallow and disjointed way.
2. Smooth Breathing
Try to focus on making your breath as even as possible. In other words, you want a steady flow rate, an equal volume of air entering your lungs consistently throughout the time you’re inhaling and exhaling. The opposite of this would a lumpy, staccato breath, perhaps gulping in air to start and then taking in less air at the end.
Smooth Breath = Smooth Mind
You might notice the ripples of your mind beginning to grow calmer, like the surface of a lake, as your breath becomes smooth.
3. Rhythmic Breathing
You want a fixed ratio of inhale to exhale. Whether this is 5 seconds in and 5 seconds out, or say 4 seconds in 6 seconds out, it should remain a constant ratio. The key is that you bring regularity to your breathing pattern.
In order to practice this rhythm, which certainly didn’t come naturally to me, I recommend using a metronome (there are a couple of free apps out there). Although the metronome may prove distracting in your meditation practice, it’s a good way to get your rhythm, after which you can turn it off and simply estimate and feel the rhythm.
What’s called your “resonant rate” is the ideal breathing rate for you personally, which involves taking longer breathes the larger your lung capacity (the taller you are). It’s been shown that Zen Buddhist monks in deep meditation naturally breathe at 6 breaths per minute. While most people naturally breathe at 6 – 12.5 breaths per minute, coherent breathing has been found to be around 5 breaths per minute, which might be closer to 3 breaths/min if you’re taller. The resonant rate has a significant impact on your physiological state, affecting HRV.[8]
All three of these areas work to bring you quickly into the physiological coherent state mentioned earlier. Breath is an area that most meditation apps and instructors neglect. Yet the breath is a key component to most traditional meditation practices. Coherent breathing is like weeding the garden of your mind. You need a clean garden in order to plant seeds, and a clear mind is a good state in which you can train effectively through meditation.
About the Author:
Liam McClintock studied Psychology at Yale and became certified as a YTT Meditation Teacher. He now runs a corporate meditation training company, FitMind.
References:
[1] McCraty, Rollin, and Maria A. Zayas. “Cardiac coherence, self-regulation, autonomic stability, and psychosocial well-being.” Frontiers in psychology 5 (2014): 1090.
[2] Lee, Al, and Don Campbell. Perfect Breathing: Transform Your Life, One Breath at a Time. Sterling, 2009. “Few people realize that 70 percent of the waste that our bodies generate is removed by the breath. Only 30 percent is removed via sweat and elimination. So taking slower deep breaths not only increases the energy your body is receiving but is also crucial to cleansing your body of the waste and toxins that your metabolism generates.”
[3] McCraty, Rollin, and Maria A. Zayas. “Cardiac coherence, self-regulation, autonomic stability, and psychosocial well-being.” Frontiers in psychology 5 (2014): 1090.
[4] For a comprehensive overview of HRV, see: Camm, A. J. M. M., et al. “Heart rate variability: standards of measurement, physiological interpretation and clinical use. Task Force of the European Society of Cardiology and the North American Society of Pacing and Electrophysiology.” Circulation 93.5 (1996): 1043-1065.
[5] La Rovere, Maria Teresa, et al. “Short-term heart rate variability strongly predicts sudden cardiac death in chronic heart failure patients.” circulation 107.4 (2003): 565-570.; Also see:
http://www.complete-coherence.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/HRV-White-Paper.pdf
[6] https://chiro.org/LINKS/Forward_Head_Posture.shtml
[7] Your blood is already saturated with 95-99% of its oxygen carrying capacity during normal breathing, so you’re not breathing deeply to increase oxygen content. It’s all about getting this oxygen into your tissues, loosening it from the hemoglobin that carries it around in the tissues. Oxygen releases into tissues when the right amount of CO2 is present in your body, so it’s really all about having the right amount of CO2, which can be attained through proper nose breathing. In what’s known as the “Bohr Effect,” CO2 exerts the primary influence on your breathing efficiency. As Patrick McKeown puts in in The Oxygen Advantage, “Correct breathing both relies on and results in the right amount of carbon dioxide being retained in your lungs.”
[8] Lehrer, Paul M., Evgeny Vaschillo, and Bronya Vaschillo. “Resonant frequency biofeedback training to increase cardiac variability: Rationale and manual for training.” Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback 25.3 (2000): 177-191.
