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The disease of deep breathing? Three dysfunctional breathing patterns; have you got one?

May 15, 2014 by info@breathingremedies.co.uk 2 Comments

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A client asked me recently “Why not write a topic about what deep breathing actually means in the Buteyko context?” So here goes, I am preparing to open a can of worms… But before I do that I will just recap that as a breathing educator I identify and help to correct (using the Buteyko method), disordered or dysfunctional breathing  and that: The aim of breathing education is to restore a healthy breathing pattern, to allow the natural, normal, nasal, soft, gentle, smooth, quiet, invisible, efficient, underlying breathing pattern to emerge, so breathing is easier and with the diaphragm free. The most effective way of doing this is by relaxation; by removal of layers of tension caused by bad breathing habits and stress. As the breathing softens and reduces, symptoms decrease too. Dr Buteyko called his method “reduced breathing by relaxation”. 19072  And when I teach I avoid the word DEEP like the plague! That is because it is so utterly confusing as it means two (at least) completely different things to different people: a)      The favourite interpretation of DEEP breathing is “fill your lungs to capacity”; these people may assume “the more you breathe the better” and that it is good to get in more oxygen and to flush out the toxic waste gases. They are in the majority and this deep breathing idea is ingrained, they look incredulous if you tell them “the more you breathe the less oxygen the body gets”. Sometimes people catch sight of my information stall – read the sign “better breathing-better health” and they are off, they stand in front of me filling their lungs with big, noisy breaths  – often with open mouth – the complete opposite of what I teach. I have had to ask people to stop, hyperventilation like that really could make them pass out! I think it is more accurate to call this big breathing or big volume breathing, and I never recommend it for people with healthy lungs (of course if you are exercising you will breathe more and that is entirely appropriate, and there may be rare instances where your medical professional may give you certain respiratory exercises). When Dr Buteyko talked about the disease of deep breathing, this is what he meant and “deep”probably was a poor choice of wording by the Russian to English interpreter!  (There are similar problems with the term “shallow breathing”). b)      The second interpretation of DEEP breathing is “diaphragmatic breathing” so breathing predominantly using the diaphragm, the thin layer of muscle that separates the chest and abdominal cavity that is designed to be the primary breathing muscle.  This is better.

Three dysfunctional breathing patterns; have you got one?

For this post I will describe 3 types of dysfunctional breathing focusing on where your breathe from (avoiding the term DEEP), and will leave a detailed description of why they are suboptimal and what good breathing is for future posts. Do you recognise any of them?

1 Big breathing

Are you breathing large volumes and /or fast breathing?  – you only need to use about 10% of your lung capacity at rest, some people use much more.  Moreover, many people breathe far faster than the norm of 8-12 breaths a minute at rest. It may be easy to see and hear your breathing at rest, and you might breathe through your mouth a lot. You may be using chest, shoulders and diaphragm.

2 Chest breathing

Often people with anxiety and panic hold in their stomachs tightly and have tense, raised shoulders. Or you might be holding in for vanity’s sake, or to squeeze into those fashionable clothes! Have you got stiff neck and shoulder muscles? A slumped posture is another way to restrict the normal range of the diaphragm and encourage chest breathing. Do you gasp through your mouth a lot when speaking? Don’t think you are off the hook if you work out, that 6 pack could also tend to hamper your diaphragm from doing its job properly!

3 Abdominal breathing

Right, you are more knowledgeable, have read that chest breathing is not good, that you must use your diaphragm and you may have even been taught to push out your tummy as you breathe in to prove that your diaphragm is engaged (belly breathing or abdominal breathing). But you may just have swapped one bad breathing habit for another, as this can be overdone! (I know, you can’t do right for doing wrong!) Alexander technique teachers call abdominal breathing “abominable breathing”! It is not part of normal relaxed breathing if you are forcing it, especially of you are trying hard not to use your chest at all to breathe and you and up with a stiff back/ribcage. Do you recognise any of them? (By the way, the second one, chest breathing was me for over 30 years -and I have to keep aware of my breathing to keep it at bay even now when I am in a rush or stressed). Let me know and open the discussion by commenting below on the blog. You can sign up for newsletters  too.

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Filed Under: Better breathing and better health, hyperventilation Tagged With: abdominal breathing, belly breathing, breathless, chest breathing, deep breathing, diaphragm, hyperventilation

Comments

  1. Kim says

    August 21, 2017 at 12:47

    I have all of these. I am at my wits end and have deep breathing all friigin day and excessive yawning along with tight upper chest had to have muscle relaxant coz when these episodes happen deep beathing excercises dont help also gets worse when using heaps of energy and also have bipolar used asmtha puffer as well not sure if it is a combination of hyperventilating overworking and also sigh alot doctor just says it is anxiety im goin to loss my shit soon

    Reply
    • info@breathingremedies.co.uk says

      January 31, 2019 at 17:33

      Yes Kim, it sounds as if better breathing could help your symptoms. Frequent sighing and yawning can be a sign of hyperventilation.

      Reply

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About me, Buteyko breathing educator

Janet Winter breathing and posture educator (Buteyko and Egoscue)

Dr Janet Winter (PhD)

Hello, I am Janet,  a  Breathing educator (Buteyko), and Posture specialist (Egoscue).

I help people recover from asthma, allergies, sinusitis, anxiety, sleep problems, headaches, IBS chronic fatigue (ME/CFS) and more, by improving their dysfunctional breathing.

Listen to a client’s (Suzy Glaskie, functional medicine health coach at Peppermint Wellness) 15 minute podcast on how Buteyko helped her.

I teach natural health control with no drugs, gadgets or manipulation. You can sign up to my newsletter here.

Phone me 01663 743055 (Dr Janet Winter) or contact me here.

What I do

Breathing education gently retrains a disordered breathing pattern and helps people naturally recover from breathing-related health problems.

The Buteyko Method relieves asthma symptoms, and has been listed in the UK Asthma Guideline since 2008.
I am a member of the Buteyko Breathing Educators Association and am fully insured.

I am also a qualified postural alignment specialist (PAS) Egoscue method. Good posture is essential for good breathing and proper function in general.

My background

I was involved in healthcare/biomedical research for 30 years although previously in a very different role: before training as a Breathing educator, I spent 20 years in drug discovery looking for new painkillers for a major pharmaceutical company based in a London Institute.
I worked as a neuroscientist and cell biologist, directing a team of bench scientists. (So I am not a medical doctor but I have a PhD in Neuroscience) I authored or co-authored more than 50 journal articles and reviews on my research.  My professional profile can be seen here on LINKEDIN.

Why I became a breathing educator

If you are reading this because you have CFS/ME, I know what you are going through. I know what it is like to hold onto a job by my fingernails, worried about how we would feed the family if I lost my job, come home and eat and sleep and spend my weekend recovering.

I had no social life. I was lucky to quickly get to a consultant who diagnosed me with candidiasis, and anti-fungals and a yeast and sugar-free diet helped a lot, but not enough.

I felt I had been “written off” and had nothing to offer. I was a mum, partner and employee with massively reduced physical and mental output compared with previously.
For me (after trying many different avenues, cranial osteopathy, chiropractic, mercury amalgam filling removal and more – I became a “fat-folder patient”).

How I got sick

I suspected my symptoms were “stress related” but they did not ease when I left my stressful job and moved out of London to the countryside.

Looking back on my history I can clearly see my own physical and emotional stresses accumulating, from a very traumatic bereavement, on-going work and family stresses, then a really bad summer respiratory infection and cough that was not shifted by two different antibiotics (but they probably contributed to unbalancing my gut flora, hence the fungal overgrowth/candidiasis).

A cough seems to be one of the best ways to mess up your breathing pattern, and many of my clients tell me “I was fine until I had that cough/chest infection, and I never really got my health back!!”

The breathing centre in the brain gets to think that big volume breathing is normal and unless you know about it, it is sometimes hard to recover. Luckily you CAN retrain your breathing by doing a series of gentle exercises and making some life style changes, and you CAN have hope of better health.

My recovery

Changing my breathing back to a more normal pattern really helped me. It was a big missing piece of my health puzzle, and one I had frankly never considered. One definition of stress is “anything that makes you breathe more”. And I know now that breathing too much can actually deplete the body of oxygen. And stress can be emotional or physical.

So that is why I do what I do and why I am passionate about it; I found a way to improve my chronic fatigue by better breathing and I trained as a breathing educator so I could help others with this devastating disease. There is so little help out there for them (you?).

Then chronic backache made good breathing impossible, and I discovered postural alignment therapy (Egoscue) to help with that. And I am still amazed at the progress I am making -it’s wonderful to have decreased pain and increased function when I had accepted decline at my age was inevitable. It’s not!


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