To breathe, and not to breathe

Telluride Daily Planet, Friday, January 4, 2024

“The perfect human breathing is as if we are not breathing at all.” – Lao Tzu

A few years ago, a friend of mine – an 80-year-old psychologist – pulled me aside at the end of a brunch gathering and whispered to me that we had to speak. “OK,” I said, ushering him to a private spot at the end of our couch. 

“I’ve been watching you,” he said, smiling reassuringly and making eye contact, as good therapists do. He lowered his voice. “Are you aware – that you’re not breathing?” I stared at him, probably not breathing at that moment. “What do you mean?” I asked, thinking this line could be interpreted in a number of different ways. 

He meant it literally. “I mean I do not see any signs of your diaphragm moving, and that indicates to me you are not breathing in the way we are meant to breathe. Which means your breathing is happening up here.” He patted his own chest. I love this man and his wife for the way they epitomize staying young at heart and in practice. Though they’ve both had big health stories, they seem always to be doing the latest things to stay healthy and vibrant. Supplements, fasting, meditation, ozone therapy, you name it. 

It had been a long couple of winter months for me. I was recovering from a back tweak that had triggered me all the way to the dark side. No matter what I threw at it – therapies, stretches, chiropractors, doctors, books on mindset — it got worse. And I got more fearful and less gentle with myself. And it got even worse. 

Because of an injury I had sustained as a girl, my subconscious relentlessly tried to convince me that every major back “event” meant the end was near. Originally, the coccyx had broken with a fall on a sharp beach rock in the San Juan Islands. My father’s protocol? Do nothing, simply set me up in bed and tell me not to move. And so for a few very long days, I lay there thinking I would be paralyzed from the waist down. And, as we tend to do, I jammed the fear down, and continue to work with it to this day. 

My friend’s words had a very powerful effect on me. I started to examine and notice the tension inherent in my breathing, in fact. How I held my breath. How this affected my back. Had I always done this? Had I been breathing wrong throughout the whole ball of daily wax – life and sports, and yoga and Pilates classes, and stressful moments, creative moments and mundane moments? What about right now? And now? Virtually every time I made myself aware, I was chest breathing. 

Meanwhile, breathing – of utmost importance in most spiritual traditions and for thousands of years – had become a hot topic for the rest of humanity. New gurus (Stanislav Graf, Patrick McKeown, Stuart Sandeman, Wim Hof, James Nestor, etc.) were paving the way for better breathing by all. For something we do 20,000 times a day, it was mind-bending for me to consider how many times I might have done it better and what this actually meant in terms of my physical, mental and emotional wellbeing. How many times have we all heard someone close to us say, “Take a deep breath.” Reminding us, essentially to take a belly breath rather than a more puffed-up chest-wall breath. 

But as it turns out, balance is everything. There are pitfalls in overbreathing, as well (hyperventilation). Breathing too much and too frequently lowers C02, which hinders the actual delivery of oxygen to the cells (and makes one actually feel breathless). Ideally one wants to develop what is called C02 tolerance, which leads to maintaining slower, deeper breathing during times of high stress. High C02 tolerance also figures in lowering anxiety and inflammation. 

In the 70s, one of my brothers built an “orgone accumulator” based on the controversial work of Wilhelm Reich. Essentially this was a wooden box lined in metal that would radiate “orgone” or chi back at him and presumably increase his life force and longevity. He would get in and meditate for an hour or so. One night he came down for dinner and, beaming, said that he had gotten his breath down to one breath a minute. I did not know it at the time – age 12 to his 20 – but what he was doing was increasing C02 tolerance. We just all thought he’d gone off the deep end. 

In 2008 the term “email apnea” was coined by Linda Stone, a former Apple executive whose research showed that that 80% of office workers were holding their breaths unconsciously or breathing shallowly while sitting at their desks hour after hour and day after day. Eventually, her research and focus turned to how this was manifesting and what to do about it: Breathe better, move more, multi-task less. 

Breathe better, move more, multi-task less. You simply cannot go wrong there.