BREATHING AND THE BRAIN By D. J. Hazledine, Jr., PD Part 3 of 6

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DEEP ABDOMINAL BREATHING

• A) Lie on your back with your hand on your stomach, between your navel and the bottom of your breast bone.

• B) Inhale through your nose and push your stomach out so that you can feel your hand rise. (Do to a count of 4)

• C) Exhale through your mouth so you can feel ;your hand on your stomach drop as your diaphragm displaces the air in your lungs. (Do to a count of 8)

• D) Continue at your own rate for 5-10 minutes to begin with. Gradually over time work up to 15-30 minutes per day.

Mastering this basic technique is critical to receiving the maximum benefit of the more complex exercises to come.

Deep abdominal breathing is also called Diaphragmatic breathing. This is differentiated from Thoracic (chest) breathing. Using the diaphragm to breathe uses significantly less energy than using chest and rib muscles and allows more blood to be oxygenated in less time. If you use only the top third of the lungs you are oxygenating only about 1 tablespoon (15 ml) per second, if you use the top two-thirds of the lungs you are oxygenating about a pint (16 oz.) (960 ml.) Per second, if you now include the lower third of the lungs you are oxygenating over a quart at least (32 oz.) (1920ml) per second.

When your breathing becomes short and shallow you are creating an oxygen deficit. You may feel light headed, dizzy, anxious and nervous as experienced earlier. This lack of oxygen affects reflex time, hand and eye coordination, visual acuity, balance, movement and judgement. As stressors build we sometimes slip out of deep abdominal breathing which only serves to complicate the situation. We seemed to have been trained out of abdominal breathing. How many times have we heard “chest out, stomach in” when we were growing up. This looks nice but what we did not realize of course is that we were also changing the way we breathe.

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