If you've been to my classes, you might have noticed that I don't teach big, loud breathing. Instead I invite you to breathe only through the nose and to keep your breathing calm, subtle and quiet.
There's not a lot of time to get into this during class, but let me share more about this here because this is truly the most important thing I have ever learned!
Big, loud breathing is not healthy for us
Big breathing doesn't help us relax and destress, it also doesn't give the body more oxygen. It does the OPPOSITE!
Overbreathing, i.e. taking those full loud breaths that we're taught to so often in yoga, stimulates the flight and fight response and it actually reduces not increases the oxygen delivery throughout the body.
I know this sounds very counterintuitive, but let me get a little geeky and share some crucial facts about breathing physiology.
Respiratory physiology 101
Our bloodstream is almost always fully saturated with oxygen. Around 98% of our red blood cells already carry oxygen molecules at any given moment. Breathing more air doesn't increase how much oxygen is in the bloodstream (since it's already almost maxed out), but this excess air is additional burden that your body has to process.
Having lots of oxygen in your blood is one thing, but how efficiently this oxygen is delivered and released throughout the body is another.
What holds the key to release the oxygen from your blood to your cells, tissues, muscles and organs is a sufficient level of carbon dioxide.
Overbreathing drops carbon dioxide levels which makes the oxygen molecules bond more tightly to heamoglobin (the protein in our red blood cells that carries oxygen) hindering their release throughout the body - by breathing more air, you're actually deoxygenating yourself.
Subtle, slow, quiet breathing on the other hand increases carbon dioxide levels and oxygen molecules are more easily released from the bloodstream into the rest of the body.
What makes you feel out of breath is not lack of Oxygen, it's the body's sensitivity to Carbon Dioxide
If you're used to habitually overbreathe (as most of us will be due to chronic stress and not moving enough through the day) switching to subtle breathing won't feel easy to begin with. In fact, it will be deceivingly hard because you will feel out of breath. But feeling out of breath is not driven by a lack of oxygen (remember your bloodstream is almost always saturated at ~98%), rather the shortness of breath reveals your body's sensitivity to carbon dioxide. The more sensitive you are to CO2, the more out of breath you will feel during physical exercise or an intense yoga practice as CO2 increases with movement. The harder it may feel, the more you have to gain from restoring a calm, subtle, quiet breathing to balance this vital chemical exchange in your body. As crazy as it sounds, but when it comes to breathing, less is more. If I'm peaking your curiosity about this, I share a lot more about this on my Instagram - click on these videos below if you'd like to learn more and grab me after a class if you'd ever want to chat about it!
Big love,
Inga
