How You Breathe Matters

During both of my pregnancies, I experienced what doctors call “pregnancy induced asthma”. This is technical speak for “I can’t f*cking breath”. I would take deep breaths, but wouldn’t feel satiated. The doctors gave me an inhaler and sent me on my way. The next time my breathlessness occurred, I took a few puffs of the inhaler. Nothing happened. I still felt like I couldn’t get a full breath, no matter what. I resigned myself to the fact that this was one of those things that comes with pregnancy. Bodies are weird, right?

Life went on, whether I could breathe or not. One day, I was out for a nice sunny hike at Smith Rocks in Oregon. With each step I took, breathing became harder and harder. Despite standing in the middle of a vast open gorgeous park, I felt like there were walls closing around me. Slowly suffocating me and my baby. I genuinely thought I was going to die. It was like there was a hole somewhere inside of me, leaking oxygen. 

Back then I knew very little about respiration or the intricacies of pranayama.  I had started my yoga teacher training, but wasn’t interested enough to explore the depths of breathing.  I wish I could go back to my younger self and convince her to dive deeper. Learn why this was happening, young Danielle! Also, go to bed earlier! 

My breathlessness makes sense to me now. Breath isn’t affected by just one thing.  It's interwoven throughout every aspect of your life.  My pregnancy was causing my body to make more progesterone, which can cause a decrease in CO2 tolerance. I was in a constant state of fear that I would do something to harm my baby. While on that hike in Oregon, I was moving my body a lot, had a ridiculous amount of anxiety coursing through me, and was on vacation (which meant having lots of yummy treats and meals not usually in our diet). Any of these factors would increase my respiratory rate and likely cause breathlessness on their own. But together? It was a recipe for disaster.

In the fitness world, when someone tries to get healthy, it rarely includes breath retraining.  They head to the gym, pre workout in hand, a "healthy" snack in their bag, and a fresh motivational playlist blasting through their headphones. Mouth breathing all the way to the machines.  Or they hop on a treadmill, huffing through their runs but never asking themselves why they aren’t improving.  Or go to a CrossFit gym and suffer through the WOD, yawning over and over despite not being tired.  They might never even get that far because their exercise induced asthma is so frustrating that they give up all together.  Maybe a big life event happens that creates such a state of overwhelm that they lose their exercise routine until the next time they commit to getting themselves healthy.

Breathing is always an afterthought (or not a thought at all).  Because it "just happens", we don't think about it. It’s a common myth that we have no control over how we breathe, but that’s not true!   The breath doesn’t take care of itself. You change your workout routine, but your workout only happens a few times a week.  You change your diet, but you only eat a few times a day.  Your breath is the only thing that happens 24/7.  It’s the only thing that happens while you're working out, doing yoga, eating, and sleeping. The return on investment of improving your breathing far surpasses other investments into your health.

When you workout with your breath in check, you oxygenate our tissues. This results in less pain afterwards.  When you breathe light during sleep, you sleep deeper and get a better night of rest.  When you retrain your breathing so you stop hyperventilating and start breathing light, you can actually digest and process the foods you take in.  Rather than all these factors being separate, they’re all interwoven with each other.  When you sleep well and digest your food, you could get an even better workout in.  When you move your body and breathe deep into the belly, you activate the parasympathetic nervous system and work out stress hormones.  Most importantly, when your breath flows well, you just feel better. 

You need to think about yourself as a whole.  You aren’t just what you eat, how you move, or how you breathe.  You’re all these things put together and then some.  

So whatever happened in the park that day? My husband found a place to sit down and very gently instructed me to breathe into my belly.  He kept telling me breathe slower like you’re in a yoga class. I closed my eyes, imagined I was somewhere else where I felt safer, and felt my breath move all the way deep into my belly.