How Yoga Affects Breathing

by Baxter

Jellies by Melina Meza

As I was reading an interview in my latest yogauonline.com newsletter with physician and yoga therapist Loren Fishman, MD and his collaborator Ellen Saltonstall called Can Yoga Preserve Freedom of Movement? (hell, yeah!), a short statement from Dr. Fishman about how physical movement and the breath are connected caught my eye:

“…something that is really very poorly recognized in the medical or the yoga literature: that moving your joints is one of the strongest stimuli to breathing properly and deeply. There are little movement receptors inside all of our joints, and they send signals that go directly and indirectly to the apneustic center, one of the centers in the brain that regulate breathing.”

You may remember that a while back Nina and I wrote a post Falling for Yoga Myths about some of the things that really do stimulate and regulate our breath, and that I also did a post How Breath Affects Your Nervous System detailing the relationship between the Autonomic Nervous System and the breath. Part of my purpose for writing these posts was to correct some common misconceptions about breathing that continue to exist in the yoga community. You may recall that I mentioned that the levels of carbon dioxide (NOT oxygen) in the blood stream are monitored by the deep brain structures, and it is the CO2 levels that have some of the greatest influence on changes in breathing moment by moment. In addition, the brain and the periphery of the body are also assessing the acid/base balance of the blood, or the pH.

But now, Dr. Fishman adds in a new twist to our understanding of breath! Turns out that the same nerve receptors we have talked about in relationship to balance, called proprioceptors, which are located in the muscles, tendons and joints, affect breathing, too. Not only do they tell the brain where you are in space, how fast you are moving and in which direction, but also the movement of joints, tendons and muscles stimulate part of the brainstem that regulates breath called the apneustic center. Located in the part of the brainstem called the pons, the apneustic center is involved in stimulating our inspiration or “in breath.” Movement—physical movement—stimulates increased depth of breathing, known technically as “hyperpnea.” In a serious, life-threatening situation in which the breathing was slowing and shallow, moving someone’s limbs could stimulate the breath back to healthier levels. Cold water and pain can have a similar effect on breathing.

This connection between bodily movement and improved depth of breathing is helpful news, especially when it comes to people who have been previously inactive, have become stiff, suffered a loss of vitality and notice that their breathing does not respond well to physical stresses such as an increase in work load for their body. By beginning to move the joints and limbs systematically, as we would do in a beginning level yoga class, we are (without even mentioning how to breath) going to stimulate an increase in the depth of breathing. I am sure many of you have had this experience: at the start of class, during an initial sitting meditation or centering practice, the breath and chest feel slightly tight and restricted, but when your attention is brought to the breath at the end of a balanced yoga asana practice, the breath seems to have greater freedom and depth with less effort. This body-to-brain connection of the proprioceptors and the pons of the brainstem are likely at work. Just one more reason to keep moving your body!

To read all kinds of nerdy details on the physiology of breathing, check out the article Regulation of Breathing.

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Falling for Yoga Myths: Yawning and Sighing and the Nervous System

by Nina

Heart and Lungs

I hope you realize by now that there are a lot of myths out there in the yoga world, such as that yoga nidra is an ancient practice or that Sun Salutations have been practiced for thousands of years. So here at Yoga for Healthy Aging, we try to do a bit of fact checking before we go ahead and write about a subject, whether it is medical, scientific, or historical. And when I edit a post, I try to confirm anything that looks a bit, well, suspect. But once in a while, I’m less than meticulous, and that can result in an error or two. After I read what Baxter wrote about the relationship between the breath and the nervous system in his post How Your Breath Affects Your Nervous System, I asked him to take a look at a related post I wrote some time ago called Your Key to Your Nervous System: Your Breath because I was concerned that perhaps my original post had errors in it. Although at the time I had been writing about what I was convinced were facts, Baxter confirmed that some of the information in my post about yawning and the affect of the breath on the nervous system, which I had learned from a yoga teacher, was actually incorrect. Baxter identified this misinformation as a yoga myth—ideas that seems to get perpetuated, despite the fact there is no proof of their validity.

So this post today is an update to my original post, with Baxter’s comments/corrections on my original statements. Well, it’s a journey for us, too, right?

YOGA MYTH: Nina wrote, “Have you ever wondered why you tend to yawn when you’re sleepy? Well, a yawn is a great big inhalation. And because your heart rate tends to speed up on your inhalation, that yawn in the middle of that boring lecture or business meeting is little message to your nervous system: wake up! On the other hand, when you are upset about something, you tend to sigh. That sigh—try one!—is an extra long exhalation. Because your heart rate tends to slow on your exhalation, that sigh while you are feeling emotional turmoil or are just stuck in traffic is a little message to your nervous system: take it easy, buddy, slow down a bit.”

BAXTER’S CORRECTION: Here’s what I found…and it does not seem to confirm your suggestions that it is the heart rate effects that are driving the yawn or sigh. There are four theories about why we yawn, none proven or much studied:

• Physiologic theory: Our bodies induce yawning to draw in more oxygen or remove a buildup of carbon dioxide. At least one studied seems to have disproved this theory.
• Evolutionary theory: Some think that yawning began with our ancestors, who used yawning to show their teeth and intimidate others. An offshoot of this theory is the idea that yawning developed from early man as a signal for us to change activities.
• Boredom theory: Although we do tend to yawn when bored or tired, this theory doesn't explain why Olympic athletes yawn right before they compete in their event or why dogs tend to yawn just before they attack. It's doubtful either is bored.
• Brain-Cooling theory: a more recent proposal is that since people yawn more in situations where their brains are likely to be warmer—tested by having some subjects breathe through their noses or press hot or cold packs to their foreheads—it's a way to cool down their brains. Cool brains think more clearly.

Why do we sigh? As it turns out, sighs do seem to work like the brain’s reboot button for regular breathing. According to a 2010 study Take a deep breath: The relief effect of spontaneous and instructed sighs, during mental stress, the volunteers’ breathing became more and more irregular as participants increasingly relied on deliberate breath control, at which point, a sigh occurred, causing automatic regular respiration to kick in again. Furthermore, muscle tension steadily built up before a spontaneous sigh and decreased afterward, supporting the idea that sighing helps release tension.

YOGA MYTH: Nina wrote, “It turns out that by intentionally taking in more oxygen (either by speeding up your breath or by lengthening your inhalation) you can stimulate your nervous system and that by taking in less oxygen (by slowing your breath or lengthening your exhalation), you can calm yourself down. It’s that simple.

BAXTER’S CORRECTION: It is actually likely not that simple, as the effect I described in my post How Your Breath Affects Your Nervous System really more clearly explains what happens: the inhale speeds up the heart rate (not because of O2 levels) and the exhale slows it down (not due to O2 levels, but due to the nerve input from breath cycle to heart). As the heart rate slows more over the course of five minutes of 1:2 ratio breathing, for instance, the slower heart rate is monitored by the brain and leads to even further turning on of the parasympathetic Rest and Digest response. And, in fact, carbon dioxide levels in the blood stream have a much greater influence on the rate of breathing than O2 levels, and are monitored much more closely by the brain moment by moment and lead to adjustments in the ANS tone of whether sympathetic or parasympathetic nerves are stimulated. The importance of “getting more oxygen” in is a myth that has been propagated for a long time by yoga teachers in this country. For further information, see Leslie Kaminoff’s article What Yoga Therapists Should Know About the Anatomy of Breathing.

CONCLUSION: Well, we're all learning this stuff together. Even Baxter went ahead and did a bunch of new research. And, sigh, at least I was right about sighing.

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Diving Deeper into Prana

by Baxter

When I want to dive a little deeper into any yoga-related topic, I feel blessed to work with one of the smartest and well-studied yoga teachers in America today, Richard Rosen. Richard is the owner of the Piedmont Yoga Studio in Oakland, CA, as well as author of two books on pranayama (a word I will let him define in a moment) and a Shambhala audio series on pranayama, as well as a new book on the earliest yoga poses Original Yoga (see here to read the introduction). To experience Richard’s writing firsthand, in addition to getting one of his books, you can sign up to receive Piedmont Yoga Studio’s monthly email newsletter (see piedmontyoga.com/). He always includes a fascinating article on some aspect of yoga, which I always learn a lot from!

When I asked Richard if he had written anything specifically on prana, or energy, he immediately sent me a twelve-page word document on pranayama that contained some intriguing kernels of information about prana that I thought would complement our initial look at prana last week (see May the Prana be with You). If you read that post, you'll see that I was not too far off in my definition of prana last week if we look at how Richard frames it:

“Prana is not specifically the breath, but rather the “life force,” a subtle energy that pervades the universe and manifests, in one important way, as breath and breathing”

He mentions breathing here, because he is ultimately interested in prana’s relationship to the yogic practice of pranayama. There are a lot of definitions of pranayama floating around out there. If you take a public class, you might think it refers to simply watching or observing your breath. Or you might think it refers to one particular way of breathing, namely taking a longer in breath and out breath. If you have been a student of Pattabhi Jois’s Ashtanga yoga, you might equate pranayama to the Darth Vadar-like breath technique known as ujjayi breath. And you’d be partially correct, as all of these things are part of the branch of yoga practice known as pranayama.

View from First Bridge by Brad Gibson

But let’s step back for a moment and take a look at Richard’s definition of the word. We have his take on prana, but what about the second half of the term, ayama?

“Ayama means both “extension” and “restraint.” I think of pranayama as the conscious, intelligent cultivation and refinement of the life force through the medium of the breath.”  

Because we in the west have such a love affair with yoga poses, that is, asana, we have come to equate yoga with asana. As Richard points out, “you might be surprised to learn that traditionally pranayama is considered the central practice of hatha yoga.”  So if pranayama is the central practice of yoga, what kind of boon does it promise if we actually start to practice it regularly? Richard points out many documented (meaning they are mentioned in the source books on hatha yoga we have available to us) benefits that come from regular, consistent practice, done over a long time, including such things as stoking the digestive fire, appeasing thirst and hunger, opening the sinuses, curing may diseases and conditions, and purifying both the gross and subtle energy systems of the body. In addition, prana and the practice of pranayama are said to destroy illness and increase longevity. The ancient yogis were interested in this because it gave them more time to achieve their yogic goals.

Richard  also points out some more benefits that we should eye with a bit of skepticism, such as making you look like you are sixteen, making you a second God of Love, and bestowing even more extraordinary mental and physical powers. For us regular “householders,” what can we realistically expect from a regular breath practice? This of course depends a bit on what you put into it!  Richard states:

“It’s likely that you’ll become more aware of, and gain greater control over, your everyday breath. Why is this a benefit? It’s already well known and widely accepted that your breath and your mental states are closely related, that the former reflects and can be used, to a certain extent, to influence the latter…. With the instrument of your breath then, you can monitor and modulate you psychic “temperature” throughout the day, cooling yourself down when the mercury rises, and heating yourself up when it drops off.”

Both Richard and I have heard from students who claim their work with prana via breath has resulted in a more relaxed and energized life on and off the mat. And, finally, Richard concludes: “all this to say that your breathing will become less effortful and more efficient.” Realistically, the more efficient and responsive your respiratory system is, the better you are able to handle stress. The lower your stress levels, the more beneficial the effect of yoga on the aging process. It all seems to come full circle once again. From my vantage point, I love the fact that so many different techniques are available to us under the large umbrella of yoga to assist us as we age!

Next time we look at pranayama, I’ll share with you my favorite summer breath technique, so until then, do what you can to stay cool!

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