Breath Holding

As children we hold our breath to control the level of fear, anger or even love. This becomes chronic and if nothing is done about it, it stays with many through their entire life.

I sang solo for my entire student body at age 11 and then received several beatings and lost my ability so sing. http://www.breathing.com/articles/mypath.htm. For 40 years after that I yawned constantly, felt tightness in my chest, was often anxious, could not "hold onto/contain" high energy, was always in a hurry and could not catch my breath. I could not sing any more either.

You do not have to be traumatized to lose your breathing. Even "normal" parenting can create chronic tension. As an infant or child, hearing NO!! when you are about to pull a pot of boiling water on top of your unsuspecting little head, or DON'T!! loudly as you totter toward a steep flight of steps or throw your food across the room for the tenth time stimulates the "startle reflex" that Thomas Hanna talked about. This kicks in and causes your entire body to tighten up.

To get an example of how this effects your breathing, tighten up every muscle in your body. Now try to breathe in. Can't do it very well can you. This is a severe example of what has happened. Do this tightening enough times and trust me, you will not breathe very well. Even Yoga techniques use this tension and breath holding. It is to me a mistake for most people. I have seen its results.

As long as you disregard the oxygen cost of breathing you overlook the fundamentals of enhanced reflexive natural breathing and its innate oxygenating and healing potential.

Using breath-holding techniques, one tightens up the upper chest, diaphragm, throat, jaw, tongue and face. This often adds to voice problems and gasping on the inhale. The body gets less oxygen and more carbon dioxide. CO2 causes tension. We have plenty of tension in our present day to day living. The tissues may get more or less oxygen but the oxygen cost of breathing skyrockets. It also sets up tensions and restrictions of optimal breathing coordination.

Your cells can perform two types of respiration: aerobic (meaning "with oxygen") and anaerobic (meaning "without oxygen"). Aerobic respiration is the usual and preferred way for your cells to produce energy, but when you hold or in any way make your breath less so, you are depriving your body of oxygen and your cells have to resort to anaerobic respiration.

When that happens, the energy-producing process is kicked over to an alternate pathway called lactic acid fermentation. That burning, sore sensation you feel right after vigorous activity? That's a build-up of lactic acid -- it hurts.

To compare you could say that aerobic respiration yields 40 ATP, adenosine trisphosphate. This is the molecule your cells use for most of their energy. Lactic acid fermentation yields 2 ATP.

Fermentation will happen to some of your cells when you workout. But as I understand it, when you hold your breath, this lactic acid fermentation occurs in all of your oxygen-deprived cells, and it makes that burst of energy you want very short lived -- not to mention potentially painful.

So, make sure your breathing is as big and easy as it can be. Then go have a great workout. There are several breathing oriented exercises using weight training equipment outlined in the #191 Secrets of Optimal Natural Breathing.

From Michael Sky:
"I've had no direct experience with it; just what I've read online.

I was intrigued with some of the technical stuff, but they're basically teaching subventilation. Like people need to breathe less. I can't agree with anything that makes someone afraid of breathing too much. I think the success that some folks get from Buteyko comes with the feeling of control one gets from most any regularly applied breathing practice. It's better to feel in control than to fear that your breath might attack at any moment. But it's nothing like loving breathing. And it doesn't work nearly as well against asthma.

I think that asthma, like panic disorder/hypervent syndrome, begins as a spontaneous self-healing process. The respiratory system has been challenged, by chronic emotion-suppressing subventilation and/or by some environmental toxin, pollen, etc, and the body (well-designed as it is) reacts by hyperventilating. This initiates a healing crisis which can be terrifying to child and family if no one knows how to help it play through and resolve. So the healing gets interrupted and the symptoms of healing-in-process now become symptoms of chronic disease. From then on, the struggle for breath feeds the fear of breath which increases the struggle for breath which feeds the fear of breath and on and on.

BTW, the big problem I have with Buteyko is that there's no life-energy in the model. Reducing breath to the oxygen-CO2 cycle, is like trying to understand blood circulation without including the heart."

From Mike White:
I agree with everything you say and want to add that there is a mechanical component. The poor breathing coordination can be rapidly changed without the "confronting" energies of the "extra" breath. They both are very powerful. Different strokes for...

I believe Buteyko works largely because it inhibits sympathetic nervous system response by holding one's energy static for enough time to maintain equilibrium and inhibit or detach from associated thought processes that cause excessive/over-stimulated responses.

An acupuncturist colleague says an asthmatic's energy "goes up" meaning from the belly to the chest. I call it an over stimulation of the ANS. A Taoist might say that they are ungrounded. I would add, big time.

So when the patient is asked to consciously hold their breath they inhibit the sympathetic response. Much the same as I counsel people when I tell them to extend their exhale, then let a big deep easy in-breath occur. This is good for SOME asthmatics but not so for others. Some asthmatics need to be DRIVEN downward like one would drive a railroad spike. Not literally, but I hope you get the sense.

The two breathing control techniques are very different. Breath holding locks up the entire breathing system. Extending the exhale and stimulating the reflex does not. But stimulating the reflex may not work for asthma as well as breath holding. I believe breath holding gives the wrong inner sensing to the breath holder. There are better ways by using one of our capnometers, a biofeedback device that lets you watch your CO2 levels on a computer screen and manipulate the percentage by breathing slightly less or more.

Recommended Breathing Development Program