#006: The Interesting Truth About Oxygen

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the context

I'm sitting cross-legged, eyes closed, focused on my breath.

My breaths come out shallow. Short inhale, sharp exhale.

Not breathing right. Is it the way I'm sitting?

I force a deeper inhale through my chest. My skin prickles. Agitation creeps in.

Be chill, but also...do better.

Later, I'm perched on my desk chair scanning my email. My breaths are wispy and light. I push, struggling to fill my lungs with more air.

Why can't I breathe normally? Why is this so hard? Am I deficient in something?

Behind every neurosis, there's usually a subconscious belief creating the problem.

Mine can be summed up as the following:

Oxygen good. More oxygen better.

If my breaths are feeble, this day has a cap on how good it’s gonna be.

If I get more of this stuff in my lungs, I'm unstoppable.

A book I picked up recently challenges this.

In his book, Breath, the author James Nestor finds most people are overbreathers. That inhaling too much oxygen might lead to health problems (respiratory problems, even), and the way to good health is breathing slow and less.*

Emphasis on less.

You ever felt like something was true, but something lodged in your brain stood in the way of you accepting it? Like you were the exception to the rule?

Then maybe, after some time, you revisit the notion, and something fundamentally clicks into place?

It was like that.

This wasn't the first time I'd heard about breathing less.

I vaguely recall learning about the breathing patterns of yogis and advanced breathing practitioners. Specifically that the breaths are so exceptionally slow and light, the airflow is imperceptible.

It's not that I didn't believe this the first time. I just didn't think I was a good enough breather to allow my breaths be slow and light.

This time around, the "less" part still didn't land for me. At least, not initially.

Even if it happened to be true, I didn't think it applied to me personally.  But because he'd made (what seemed to me) substantiated and less controversial claims about nose breathing earlier in the book, I stayed open.

the shift

I kept reading about the benefits of CO2, and how tolerating higher levels of CO2 in your system improved oxygen efficiency, circulation, and overall enhanced health.

Oxygen is valuable in the presence of carbon dioxide. More oxygen isn’t of much use on its own.

Without any real intention to do anything differently, the concept of breathing less and slow wormed its way into my brain.

I stopped feeling the strong pull to fill my lungs with oxygen whenever I was conscious of it. It felt like I was succumbing to a natural way of breathing my brain had long ago cast as "bad."

To go from thinking you're never breathing enough to languidly letting one ordinary (even feeble) breath be enough...

It's weird at first, like you're finally letting yourself off the hook.

But man, is it liberating.

It's hard to know just how strongly a belief is driving our thoughts or behavior until we loosen our grip.

It's one thing to deliberately work on your breathing. Just like changing your diet or fitness, there are habits and systems you can take on to improve your "biological parameters," so to speak.

With breathing in particular, there are exercises for increasing lung capacity and oxygen efficiency and being a better breather. (This is actually what the book, Breath, is all about.)

It's another thing to force behavior in a haphazard (and often, ineffective) way that makes you think about it all the time, especially when you’d rather be focusing on something else.

I've started to do a 3-minute breathing exercise every morning, but then, I try to move on.

I remind myself the whole point of improving any area of life isn't so it takes up more of my energy or time. It's to give back more of it. More of me.

I’m human, so this doesn’t always work out for me in practice, but it helps to remember that greater ease and happiness do not exist at the far end of a spectrum somewhere. That they hang in the balance of life’s elements.

Whatever our biological parameters are for the day, we can try our best to expand them (if we want to), accept where they are, and float on.

Embracing balance used to feel like a form of compromise or mediocrity. Now I think it actually might unlock what makes life precious. The full acceptance of reality expands your awareness to the spacious, blissful moment in front of you. Just as it slips out of your grasp.

Floating is brave,

Silvi

P.S. Have feedback? Click here to gimme your thoughts, anonymously! 🙂 

_{*If any of these insights interest you, I recommend checking out the book! Also, googling “breathing slow and less” and “Buteyko breathing technique” will surface several studies on the benefits of slow, controlled breathing.}

this week's souvenir

Even when something we read resonates, it doesn't always stick. That’s why I’m trying out a new section – “This Week’s Souvenir” – a quick affirmation (or doodle) aligned with this week’s content to help us reset and rewire, if desired.